Okay, yes, everybody -- especially vegans, corporation-haters, and bloggers who like writing about gross things you just put in your mouth -- got a little excited over the news that Starbucks' Strawberries & Creme Frappuccino derives its red color from crushed bugs. But here's what you didn't know: That's actually a good thing.

Globally, every year fossil fuels get six times as much money in subsidies than renewable energy. Given a world population of around 7 billion, that means every man woman and child on the planet is spending an average of $58 a year to prop this industry up, but only around $9 to support renewables.

Last week, NASA released satellite images showing that the Saudis are irrigating the desert in order to grow food -- with fossil water that accumulated during the last Ice Age and will be gone completely in 50 years. It's the very definition of unsustainable.

Data visualization wizards Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg have devised a real-time map of wind speeds in the U.S., and it beats the pants off spiky cold fronts, happy suns, and whatever else they're putting on weather maps these days. It's simple, elegant, and crazy hypnotic -- watch it together with the lava lamp ocean currents, and you might just go into a turbulence-inspired trance and start making noises like Osborne Reynolds. (Look it up, jerks.)

This is going around Facebook today -- it's actually from 2010, made in response to a specific piece of legislation, but the message here is (pardon the pun) evergreen.

Did you fall for Grist's April Fools' joke? Or the other one?

America sucks at Earth Hour. (Unfortunately not an April Fools' joke.)

Outside of America, Earth Hour meant lights out for famous landmarks from the Acropolis to the Eiffel Tower to the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Check out the video (or pictures).

Total, the French oil company responsible for the gas leak in the North Sea, is figuring out how to cap the offending well.

Small forage fish like anchovies and sardines have more value when left in the ocean as food for bigger fish than when caught and turned into fish oil.

Lunch at Gathering Together Farm

At Gathering Together Farm, in Philomath, Ore., owners Sally Brewer and John Eveland sit down with all their employees three times a week for an all-farm lunch. At the height of the growing season, Gathering Together Farm employs as many as 100 people, so Brewer and Eveland bring in employees on those days especially to cook. It’s no small expense, but it’s a way to ensure that the field crew gets face time with the irrigation crew, the office employees, and the farmers market crew.

“It’s a huge meal, and it’s part of the benefits package,” says Rose Mahoney, who helps manage the farm. “It really has a family feeling.”

Q. Dear Umbra,

I’ve been in my rental apartment for 20 years and have had the same refrigerator the whole time. A friend told me a new refrigerator would be much more energy-efficient. While it leaks a bit now and then, my current refrigerator works fine, and my electric bill is OK – about $30 a month. Should I buy a new one for the efficiency? Would that offset my old but still-functioning refrigerator being landfilled?

Tam T.
San Francisco, Ca.

Photo by Matt McGee.

A. Dearest Tam,

Before we get to poking around in your refrigerator, let me leak a big secret: April is my birthday month! In a few weeks, Grist will be celebrating 10 years of Ask Umbra -- so please feel free to shower me with warm wishes, surprise me with incredibly original questions, or pen a birthday haiku in my honor. The most creative notes I get will be featured on the site.

Now back to our regular programming. Tam, you had me at “it leaks a bit now and then.” I’m wondering what it leaks. Coolant? Water? The last remnants of soup from a forgotten meal? Whatever the substance, it indicates that your fridge, besides being a hulking old energy-sucking dinosaur, is probably operating even less efficiently than it should.

Your friend is right: It is time for a new refrigerator.

If you had to choose a Public Enemy No. 1 for the food movement this year, pink slime would be a strong contender. This slurry of ammonia-soaked leftover "fatty trimmings" from industrial meat has been used in everything from school lunches to McDonald's Big Macs. Now, after much public outcry, fast-food chains have dropped it, and the USDA has started to pay attention to its presence in school lunches.

But small-scale organic meat producers across the country are discovering something unexpected about pink slime: They actually like it.

More signs that the movement to stop global warming has run out of gas emerged yesterday as Bill McKibben, the 350.org founder and Keystone XL pipeline opponent, announced that he was hanging up his hat.

The surprise retirement capped a hectic week for the environmental movement, during which one leader after another declared they were giving up on the cause.

"I'm bone-tired and written out. It's time for the planet to take care of itself," McKibben told a crowd of supporters who were sweating in the freakish early-spring heat wave that has rolled across much of the U.S. "I'm going skiing. Uh, make that water-skiing."