Humanity spends a lot of time on the internet. Too much, probably. And every little Google search, Facebook message, and tweet uses some energy. All that Hulu uses a lot more. It's been clear that energy going to internet use is growing, but how does it compare to total energy use? If we really want to become sustainable, are we going to have to stop playing so much Words With Friends? Well, maybe. But at least now we know that the internet accounts for less than 2 percent of the world's total energy use. That's still a pretty big amount. …

Patagonia, the official apparel of green-minded outdoorsy people and all of San Francisco, wants its customers to buy fewer of its products. Instead, the company is asking that Patagonia lovers reuse and repair their clothes. The company will mend its products for cheap, and help customers sell them on eBay or through their website. It will give money from new sales to environmental groups. The key here, perhaps: The company's owners claim they "aren't looking to get wealthy." Instead, they're just looking to do well by themselves and the planet.

Hurricane Rina is heading towards Cancun. The U.S. wants to start trade wars all over the place. First, the solar industry goes toe to toe with China, and now the House of Representatives is mixing it up by trying to exempt U.S. airlines from the EU emissions scheme. Multinational energy companies who want to exploit Indonesia's geothermal resources are annoyed that Indonesia's government wants to regulate the process, and citizens have some concerns about the whole thing. Environmentalists in Bellingham, Wash., are fighting against a new terminal that would ship coal to China. Venture capitalists are shying away from investing …

It's not just hippie paranoia that should keep pregnant women from eating too much BPA-laced canned food. A new study found that 3-year-old girls were more likely to show symptoms of depression and anxiety if their mothers had tested higher for BPA levels during pregnancy. (There didn’t seem to be a correlation for boys.) The symptoms are still within the normal range, but as one researcher says, "subtle shifts" can have "very dramatic implications" for these girls’ lives. In other words, your daughters won't be totally crazy but they might be worse off than they'd be otherwise. Naysayers say that …

The Javan rhinoceros, an endangered species, no longer exists in Vietnam: poachers killed the last one and took its horn, according to the World Wildlife Fund. That rhinoceros was killed last April and since then there have been no signs (viewings, scat, etc.) of any others remaining in the Cat Tien National Park where they used to live. As many as 60 rhinos remain outside of Vietnam, living in Indoneisa's Ujung Kulon National Park, so the entire species isn’t extinct yet. But it’s super, super endangered. Demand for ground-up rhino horn, used as a curative, drives poaching. That last Vietnamese …

Climate change caused the Russian heat wave, according to statistics and science (if you believe that sort of thing). Nebraska could reroute the Keystone XL pipeline. Eugene Robinson smacks down climate deniers. Money quote: "It is the know-nothing politicians -- not scientists -- who are committing an unforgivable fraud." This German transportation system is a car share, bike share, and public transportation ticket all in one. The more you bike, the less you pay. Restaurants are phasing out disposable wooden chopsticks.

If you want to generate some solar energy but don't want to have weird-looking solar panels on your roof, Dow Solar has a solution for you. The company has achieved solar shingularity: Its roof shingles are solar panels! The solar panels are shingles! The discerning homeowner can live out green dreams while still conforming to suburban norms. The shingles use thin-film solar technology, which generally is not as efficient at converting light into energy as traditional silicon solar panels. But thin-film panels are often cheaper to manufacture and can be more durable than silicon panels. And if you’re doing your …

New York City is fielding proposals from universities to build a new science and technology campus on Roosevelt Island, and the competition is showing how desirable green buildings are becoming. The two front-runners, Cornell and Stanford, are falling over themselves to offer all manner of green features in their plans: acres of solar panels, geothermal wells, net zero energy buildings, a marsh to filter water, green roofs, and storm runoff recycling. One campus would generate 1.8 megawatts of power. If every new building in New York had this much green swag, the city would cut down its carbon use in …

More than 200 people died in a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Turkey. California finished its cap-and-trade plan with minimal drama. Here's how they did it. If you are rich and worried about your environmental footprint, you can hire a whole other human being to screw in LED lightbulbs for you, run your errands on a bike, and buy cleaning products with fewer chemicals in them. An Oregon State University study found that collecting forest biomass and turning it into biofuel uses more carbon than burning fossil fuels. Why is it so hard to make meetings green? We’ll just have to …

The New America Foundation has a new, sharp report out on what they call "the energy trap." With prices for gas climbing, many Americans want other, better options for getting around, but they have little choice but to keep pouring money into the gas stations. Just check out the map in the first chapter to watch the country go from light pink (less than $300 spent on gas per month per household) to dark red (greater than $400 spent) in one year. To understand America's abusive relationship with gasoline and cars, NAF interviewed "scores of people" and conducted a sociological …