Swimming pools — so awesome and fun, but so not actually good for the environment in any way. But KB Custom Pools, a pool company in Texas, has a sorta-kinda-more-like-a-real-body-of-water alternative. Their Eco-Smart pools match the topography of your backyard, use a filtration system that doesn't require harsh chemicals, and can be heated using solar panels. Gizmodo goes so far as to say it's positively lake-like (minus, of course, the mucky bottom and the fish). Of course, if, like this company, you're located in central Texas, there's still the itsy, bitsy problem of record-breaking droughts, which means that there's still …

The number of non-residential solar panel installations is growing. Disasters connected to weather or climate made more than 30 million people in Asia refugees last year, the Asian Development Bank reports. Oil industry consultant Daniel Yergin wrote a new book about energy. It'll probably annoy you. A professor in Canada made a machine that could suck carbon out of the air. China suspended production at the solar panel factory that protestors said had polluted a nearby river. Kids have their priorities straight: 82 percent of them want to learn about green issues more than they want to learn about traditional …

Solar leasing companies have been ramping up their business in the past year or so, and, looking at Colorado, you can see how successful they've been. So far this year, more than half of home solar installations were leased systems; last year, it was only 40 percent. The solar leasing companies say it's because it makes solar affordable to a broader swath of people. "Leasing is the great equalizer," said Eric Wittenberg, regional director for SolarCity. "It makes solar available to everyone." At the very least, people seem to like it. And it’s another way to make solar accessible for …

Last year, about a third of the biodiesel plants in the country went idle and output fell by half. But now federal tax credits and renewable energy mandates mean that biodiesel is booming again and plants are opening back up. Their hold on success is tenuous, though: It depends, the industry says, on Congress extending a tax credit that pushes fuel blenders to include biofuel. The current boom started when Congress restored that credit back in December. But that was only a one-year reboot. For the industry to revive completely, producers say they need a longer extension. Although plants are …

Solar power isn’t all rainbows and puppies. In China, protesters have spent the past few days outside a solar panel plant, which they say polluted a nearby river. A U.S. wind turbine company is suing a Chinese company for paying an employee of American Superconducter more than $1 million to steal wind turbine technology. China's also put $15 billion into Alberta's tar sands in the past year and a half. We're going to keep hearing about Solyndra all next year. Remember how all those Brazilian rainforest activists kept getting murdered? Police say they've arrested two of the men responsible. Solving …

Two Minnesota college campus have banned bottled water, and students are, like, totally flipping out. As one College Republican, who apparently is also enrolled in the Sarah Palin School of Political Oratory, put it: “A little bit goes along the line of free choice. For us, that’s a big principle, in College Republicans is that you can’t really delegate to students what they can and cannot do in their own free will,” said Caitlyn Spence, chair of the St. Benedict Republicans. (What?) In reality, these students need not worry about their important and Constitutional freedoms to drink out of planet-killing …

Al Gore said some stuff. Texans return to their burnt-out homes. If these droughts keep up, it won’t be too long before the state gets on board with Gore. The EPA won't make a deadline for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Here's what an imaginary, perfectly green Obama would do on environmental issues. Democrats should run this guy in 2012! Guess what? Investing in cutting edge technology is risky. Maybe the government should fill out one of those investment worksheets that tell you how much risk you can tolerate before investing in any more solar projects. One Chinese economist is trying …

Apparently public transit is now helping the terrorists win. That's according to a Tea Party group in Georgia, at least. The group wants to 86 a light rail project because "when they [THE TERRORISTS!!] blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt." So we should not build rail in the first place, because in the event of terrorism it would cease to work. Makes sense! To be fair, the dude who said that also seemed to be ok with a bus system, because in his words "if the terrorist blow up a single bus, we …

The Stranger, Seattle's alt-weekly, has had it with the nasty attacks from car-loving, carbon-spewing, anti-bike crazies. The city's bike advocates have been accused of waging a "war on cars," and after too many hours trying to defend itself, the Stranger got angry: For cars we have paved our forests, spanned our lakes, and burrowed under our cities. Yet drivers throw tantrums at the painting of a mere bicycle lane on the street. ... No more! We demand that car drivers pay their own way, bearing the full cost of the automobile-petroleum-industrial complex that has depleted our environment, strangled our cities, …

Climate change kills jobs: A new study says California's economy could take a hit in the hundreds of millions of dollars as climate change takes it toll. So really, any program that fights climate change should be considered a job-saving program. Job creation may be a different story. Loan guarantees for green energy projects aren't creating as many jobs as the Obama administration promised. Green groups in Texas are growing, which means staffing up. (Now green is good for jobs again!) How to understand climate change? Ask the robots. This bridge in India is made of living roots and branches, …