The EPA's new rules regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants, limiting air pollution from coal plants in 27 Eastern states. According to the agency, this could result in 34,000 fewer premature deaths per year by 2014, plus preventing 15,000 heart attacks and 400,000 cases of asthma every year. (The above map shows how many early deaths could be prevented in each state.) By then, the rules will have cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions by 54 percent below 2005 levels -- an ambitious goal, but one that will save lives and, not incidentally, also save $280 billion a …

A week after an ExxonMobil pipeline burst under Montana's Yellowstone River, spots of oil have been found more than 80 miles downstream from the original spill. Exxon is on the clean-up case; more than 500 Exxon clean-up workers are on the scene, and the company has put down 8,000 feet of absorbent booms and 150,000 pads to soak up the oil. But the company is also being so sneaky in their proceedings that Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and his team huffed out of the incident command center and set up their own clubhouse. Schweitzer and his team is opening an …

The Senate is ending a $6 billion subsidy program for ethanol; anti-ethanol food and environmental groups say it's "not a perfect comprise" but that they're "encouraged" by the step. Carbon captured from coal plants can feed biofuel-producing algae. Which is awesome because nobody else wants to eat it. Put that tuna burger down! Overfishing could extinguish five out of eight tuna species. Can renewable energy keep up with Japan's demand for fuel-suckers like heated toilets? Former New York Gov. George Pataki said he might run for president because he doesn't like the White House's energy policies. Um, okay. The Interior …

A gym in Portland, Oregon (where else?) claims to produce 36 percent of its electricity from a combination of solar panels and special exercise bicycles that transform patrons’ exertions into electricity. The idea is straightforward: Exercise equipment that provides resistance turns your effort into waste heat, so why not turn it into usable electricity instead? So far, three different companies have applied this technique to stationary bicycles, elliptical trainers, and stair-steppers. The Green Microgym in Portland uses a type of custom-made stationary bicycle to produce power. Other gyms have gotten in on the act, including the New York Sports Club …

Robert Bryce, who has made a career out of saying things that are popular with the petroleum industry, is a lying liar who lies, most recently in the pages of The New York Times. In a recent op-ed he claimed, basically, that natural gas is greener than renewables because he says so. Meanwhile, inventor and academic Dan Kammen is the chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank, and he says Bryce is bad at math and also sort of making stuff up. Bryce purports to calculate just how challenging it would be for the …

Germany's Green Party has a penetrating concern: Toxic substances in sex toys. Vibrators and other plastic entertainments can contain high levels of plastic softeners like pthalates, which can cause a host of ills such as hormone imbalances, Green Party members of parliament wrote in their report "Sexual Health as a Consumer Protection Issue." Pthalates and other plasticizers are highly regulated in children's toys, but adult toys -- which are, after all, designed to get all up in your mucus membranes -- can have all the plasticizers they want. The Greens want to know what the government is proposing to do about …

You don't have to wait to find out what the American Southwest will look like when it becomes a permanent dust bowl, with unrelenting drought conditions worse than the 1930 disaster you know from cheery books like The Worst Hard Time. Just watch this video of what it’s like to drive into a "haboob," a.k.a. a gigantic dust storm often seen in the deserts of the Middle East -- hence its Arabic name. Continuing the planet's recent theme of "extreme weather is the new normal, puny ape-people," this haboob is right in line with scientists' predictions for what will happen to …

A new report from the Energy Information Administration shows that in 2011, renewable power in the U.S. surpassed nuclear for the first time. In the first three months of the year, renewable energy plants -- including geothermal, biomass, wind, water, and solar -- were responsible for about 12 percent of the country's energy production, while nuclear produced only 2 percent. Renewable energy -- especially biomass, which accounts for almost half of the country's renewable plants -- has been surging in the U.S., showing a 25 percent increase since 2009. Solar production alone, though it represents a small part of the …

Here's the big innovation that will be accompanying the space shuttle on its final launch this Friday: A zero-energy still that converts urine into a sweet, drinkable liquid. Still want to be an astronaut when you grow up? The shuttle already carries urine-recycling equipment, but it's heavy and a big drain on the craft's limited electricity. The new filtration kit is the size of a large book and relies on a process called forward osmosis, which doesn't require outside power. Instead, electrolytes pull fluid through a semi-permeable boundary, leaving contaminants behind. The resulting liquid supposedly tastes like Capri Sun, which …

An LA-based design think tank called APHIDoIDEA has an idea about how to build an environmental education center that practices what it preaches. They imagined an Environmental Center of Regenerative Research & Education -- or eCORRE -- Complex that would teach visitors about green ideas like solar energy and passive cooling techniques. It would have classrooms, offices, an exhibition hall and a public plaza. Here's the cool part: the building would be made of 65 shipping containers. The idea is to begin with containers stacked in a rectangle. Next, the designers propose elevating some containers, leaving others down low, and …