It has a way of really hamstringing environmental activism. (Image via the always-hilarious Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.)

Energy tax breaks are on trial in the Senate, amidst a weird vogue for Republicans opposing them. What are they planning? People outside of Washington do believe in climate change, whatever their political beliefs. They also overwhelmingly support bike lanes and expanded public transportation. Even people who vote Republican like this stuff. Congresspeople, take note. Cheap natural gas is making it hard for money-minded people to invest in renewable energy. China wants Russia's gas, but not at European prices. Fuel made from camelina seeds is going to help take a jet all the way to Paris, on the first biofuel-powered …

Catherine Ferguson Academy, the awesome urban farm high school for pregnant and parenting teens, has risen from the ashes. Michigan's emergency financial manager decided last week to shutter the school, which has a 90 percent graduation rate. But it's been rescued by a company called Evans Solutions and will continue as a charter school, which will be open to all Detroit public school students. This is awesome, because seriously, if you read a young adult novel about this school you would roll your eyes about how unrealistically idyllic and successful it was: Only half of teen mothers have a high …

Solar power in New York could meet half of the city's peak energy demands. The city's been fully assessed for solar capability, using a plane-mounted radar system called Lidar that checks out whether rooftops are suitable for solar panels. Turns out a full 66 percent of them are, and the city and its inhabitants could be saving a buttload of money and energy by making use of that fact. If New York could harness all its rooftop potential, it would triple the amount of solar energy currently installed nationwide. City University of New York -- which partnered with the city …

At the end of May, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Mario do Espírito Santo, were killed. Both lived in Brazil's Amazon rainforest and had fought back against loggers illegally harvesting wood. Da Silva had expected death for a long time, but said he wouldn’t let that stop him: “[M]y fear does not silence me. As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest." That same week, another activist, Adelino Ramos, was shot and killed. The week after that, an activist identified only as Marcos was shot. When …

Next to agriculture, the industry most vulnerable to climate change is, arguably, the extraction of the very fossil fuels that are causing it, says Michael Cote at GOOD. And while this industry is spending millions to deny that climate change even exists and to block efforts to deal with it, it's also going to need to spend billions to cope with its effects. Sure, climate change sucks harder than a collapsed star, but at least it's leading to ironies so vast that only particles of sputtering dumbfoundedness can escape. With climate change come the obvious gotchas: Not all drilling platforms …

Yeah, it sounds a little Calvin & Hobbes, but riding around with corrugated cardboard on your head can actually be safer than the plastic and Styrofoam concoctions you get at the bike store. The Kranium cardboard bike helmet absorbs four times more impact energy than equivalent polystyrene. One helmet was smashed five times in a row and still had enough muscle to pass a standard safety test. And yeah, it's waterproof. Kranium helmets can easily be cut to a custom fit by scanning your head measurements, but the helmet's designer, Anirudha Surabhi, also envisions a world in which you can buy …

Some day solar cells will be as cheap as house paint, and the renewables vs. fossil fuel debate will seem as quaint as Whigs vs. Jacksonian Democrats. Getting there has inspired all kinds of crazy ideas, and the craziest, perhaps, is to do it exactly like plants do. Thing is, your average plant turns out to be exploiting tricks of physics that most scientists used to think were only possible inside a lab, under high vacuum, at the intersection of a bunch of laser beams cooling a handful of atoms to near absolute zero. A new discipline called "quantum biology" …

Man, is this ad from 350.org ever edgy! First, it has a big picture of Scott Brown -- granted, just his face, not even his pecs or anything, but you know what's implied by a picture of a congressman. Rowr! And just look at those naked facts, parading themselves around so shamelessly. No wonder the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority refuses to post it on trains. The company that handles advertising for MBTA told 350.org that the agency "did not approve of this creative due to its political stance," and therefore would not be running it. Which is a funny thing …

If you have a cable box and a DVR, their combined power draw is a stunning 446 kWh per year -- more than a new refrigerator. And two-thirds of that energy gets sucked down when the boxes aren’t even in use. In fact, they draw almost as much power when the TV is off as they do when they're playing content. Eighty percent of U.S. households pay for TV, and cumulatively, we spend $2 billion a year on electricity for our set-top devices. Just eliminating the power they draw when not in use would reduce electricity consumption by the equivalent …