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 …

A Berkeley scientist who was once critical of climate science did an independent study that confirmed that climate change is happening and that common claims from skeptics are totally spurious. Skeptics are still skeptical. Three-quarters of Americans think that the government should push harder on developing clean energy. Shocker: The government also invested in electric cars and some of them were not perfect, i.e., THIS IS THE NEXT SOLYNDRA. Natural gas companies don't understand why the EPA would want to make rules about fracking wastewater disposal: "We'll do it in a responsible way! Well, at least, we do now, after …

Texas Republicans hate federal energy subsidies. Unless, of course, those energy subsidies are going to Texas! Both presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Texas Rep. Ron Paul pleaded with the energy department in 2008 for a loan guarantee. The project they were supporting was a nuclear facility. (Clean energy!) Here is what Perry had to say about energy subsidies this Tuesday: We don't need to be subsidizing energy in any form or fashion ... The government shouldn't be in the business of subsidizing any form of energy. The project Perry and Paul were pushing for wasn't even a …

Peer pressure gets a bum rap -- you hear it and you think of vaguely threatening junior high schoolers going “come on man, what are you, chicken?” But it’s not always bad news. For instance, peer pressure works to change the environment -- when people see their friends and neighbors going green, they’re more likely to change their habits. This infographic gives a taste of how that works; for more instructions on the science of peer pressure, check out the whole thing.

The supercommittee that's supposed to be killing the country's deficit asked the rest of Congress to submit ideas for places to cut. Thirty-five members of Congress submitted a motion that would do away with oil subsidies worth $122 billion. This idea comes from Democrats (and Democrats that Think Progress describes as "progressive climate hawks") so there's not a huge chance that the committee chairs are going to adopt this particular proposal. But $122 billion! If Republicans are serious about getting rid of the budget deficit, oil subsidies would be a good place to start.

A consortium of northeastern states stretching from New Hampshire down to Maryland is working together to construct an electric vehicle network. EV infrastructure is only just starting to build up, so it's great that states are coordinating on it, rather than each building their own system and creating a hodgepodge of nonsense that no sensible person could actually use. Instead, the Northeast Electric Vehicle Network is going to work on agreeing what the most sensible places are to locate charging stations and working with owners to help upgrade their home chargers. Commuter rail stations are one idea for plug-in locations; …

American solar companies filed a trade complaint against China for dumping cheap solar panels in the U.S. market. California could pass cap-and-trade. Adrian Grenier from Entourage is opening a pop-up gallery in L.A. that focuses on sustainable living. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has to be the worst environmental regulatory body in the country. It just gave permission to one natural gas company to stop providing clean water to people whose wells were contaminated with methane. The company claims that water's fine; residents say it's still gross, milky, and methane-filled. Before signing mortgages on properties with gas leases, some …

One of the many arguments that deniers rely on to pooh-pooh climate change is the prevalence of the "urban heat island" effect, i.e. the tendency for cities to absorb and retain heat. The problem’s not gas-belching cars and factories, it’s all those city-dwelling lefties! But according to a new study from Stanford University, there's just no possible way that cities are causing global warming, at least not on the same scale that greenhouse-gas emissions are. At most 4 percent of "gross global warming since the Industrial Revolution" can be traced back to urban heat island, the study found. Greenhouse gases …