It's possible that the 19th century British powers-that-be were just running a really, really long con when they sent their convicts to settle Australia, because anyone who lives there now is royally screwed. In Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell chronicles exactly how screwed. (Answer: Royally.) In the few weeks he was there, Goodell encountered: a record heat wave, a crippling drought, bush fires, floods that swamped an area the size of France and Germany combined, even a plague of locusts. And in the longer term, What water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, …

You know that fantasy you have where you move to Maine, go off the grid, and raise your children to know what nature and good old American values are like? Well, one family is living that fantasy, and writing about it for The New York Times. All summer, Craig and Susannah Hopkins Leisher have been living with their three sons in a cabin in the Maine woods. They're not cut off from civilization: They have laptops, and Craig works remotely for the Nature Conservancy. But they do things like cut their own wood, go canoeing for hours, teach their kids …

Yesterday, an E.U. commission got behind environmental standards that could keep tar-sands oil from being used in Europe. Another nuclear reactor in Japan shut down. Clean energy investments can only go so far in keeping China's emissions down. The country will meet its environmental goals in the short term, researchers say, but it’s growing too fast for its emissions to stay manageable for long. Investors see the solar industry as "a real mess." The government want to take fries -- wait, all potatoes -- away from our kids. (Okay, only on some days.) The potato industry is responding by touting …

If a clean energy project in the Arizona desert goes forward, the second tallest structure on Earth will be a 2,600-foot solar updraft tower, which could last 80 years and generate 200 MW of electricity each day -- using only hot air. (Insert your own joke about how we could power Cleveland with Bill O’Reilly.) The tower works on the principle that hot air rises. In this case, it rises through the tower, turning turbines as it goes. The tower uses no water, and it works pretty much all the time, unlike wind and solar projects. (At night, the ground …

The Chesapeake Bay's sad state has yielded on positive result: the bay ecosystem inspired the  University of Maryland's "WaterShed" house, which won the Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon over the weekend. You can take a tour of the house above. WaterShed features solar panels, a green roof, a rain harvesting system, solar thermal water heating, sink and shower water filtration, "constructed wetlands" instead of gardens, and an indoor waterfall (!) that helps control humidity. It won the architecture competition and received a perfect score on "energy balance." It also came in second on market appeal. And unlike some of the …

Oof. Only 10 percent of people the Labor Department trained for green jobs have found work. Using solar energy to extract oil must be the ultimate example of greenwashing. In Afghanistan, networking generators together can relieve 7,900 fuel trucks of their duties and keep soldiers from risking their lives to bring oil into the country. India's accusing Monsanto of biopiracy for stealing eggplant and creating a GM version without permission. America's not the only country guilty of underwriting fossil fuel consumption: In 2010, subsidies lowered fuel prices by $110 billion more than they did in 2009, according to the International …

Start playing the video above, and after you're suitably grossed out by the close-ups, skip to about 0:45. These are insects called hairy crazy ants -- that is what they’re really called -- and they are terrifying. How do they move that fast? These guys are invading the American South. They are called hairy, because their bellies are hairy. They are called crazy, because they move crazy fast, and also they are crazy with nothing to lose. And they're hard to kill: if one dies, the others swarm the site to attack the danger. This one guy in Texas tried …

I hear New Zealand is beautiful, but I'm never going there, because the ozone is thin and I'll die of skin cancer. I hear Norway is beautiful, too, but it looks like I can't go there either, because now there's an unprecedentedly big ozone hole over the Arctic. Winter often thins the ozone layer over the Arctic, but this year, for the first time, scientists are saying the hole is comparable to the one of over Antarctica. It's twice as bad as the two biggest holes scientists had previously observed over the Arctic, and in some sections, 80 percent of …

"I'm not afraid to say I'm a skeptic about [climate change]." -- Rick Perry, ladies and gentlemen. So fearless. A Bloomberg investigation found that Koch Industries has paid bribes to obtain contracts and sold Iran petrochemical equipment, in violation of the U.S. trade ban. Trees are nice. Probably not a great idea to destroy them all. If you have an electric toothbrush, extra-large fridge, laptop, iPad, iPhone, multiple flat screen TVs, a flat screen monitor, and god knows what else -- you're killing us here! China wanted its high-speed rail system to represent the country's superior technology, but it’s actually …

If you thought you were melting over the summer, just be glad you're not an ice sheet that's been chilling out since before Europeans settled in Canada. Over the summer, two huge Canadian ice shelves in the Arctic shrunk down precipitously, report scientists from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. One sheet had already split into two sections and just kept getting smaller; the other broke in half this year. Icebergs are breaking away and "pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes," reports the Associated Press. "Since the end of July, pieces equaling one …