The next time you're sitting in the bus lane, humming "Don't pull me over Mr. Officer" as NYC's finest ambles up to your window to ask for your license and registration, check your rear-view mirror. If you're lucky, you can take solace in the fact that you've just been nabbed by an officer driving one of the city's 50 brand new plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt cruisers. They're part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's larger PlaNYC effort to reduce the city's emissions and prepare for climate change. Future efforts could include electrification of the city's taxi fleet. All-electric Nissan Leafs are already …

Like your body, the planet can heal itself a little bit. Some places, like forests and oceans, are carbon sinks -- they absorb carbon from the atmosphere, slowing down the rate at which everything goes to hell. But climate change is no papercut, and as it gets worse, it’s actually breaking the planet’s immune system. Two new studies in Nature argue that two types of carbon sinks -- oceans and soil -- are becoming less effective as climate change advances. Oceans simply can't absorb as much carbon dioxide as their average temperatures rise -- so the more we need them …

What happens when L.A. is debilitated by repairs on a 10-mile stretch of freeway? Some people hop on a 35-mile plane ride to bypass it. And others get on their bikes and make it there in half the time.  A team of cyclists challenged JetBlue's $4 Carmageddon special, a 22-minute flight from Burbank to Long Beach designed to airlift people over the shut-down Route 405. Bikers and flyers set out at the same time, and bikers reached the goal (the Long Beach lighthouse) in half as long, 1:34 versus 2:54. Taking public transportation and then walking was also way faster, …

The Yellowstone River spill could have included heavier, more corrosive tar-sands oil, federal officials said. This type of oil eats through pipes more quickly, and if ExxonMobiil was using those pipes to transport tar-sands oil, that decision could have contributed to the spill. Carmageddon = over. And it turns out that, given the choice to avoid the freeway by plane or bike, it’s faster to bike. It's not the best idea to buy meat from Japan right now. Just saying. Your fish oil tablets are destroying marine ecosystems. Now China is starting a carbon emissions trading program. Hey, that was …

The designers of this "Transit Accelerator" in the Dutch city of Utrecht have the right idea about making public transportation fun: turn it into a board game, or recess. What other inspiration can public transit take from childhood? Personally I'd like to see merry-go-round train cars where you ride on My Little Ponies.

Raquel Nelson of Marietta and her three children were hit by a tipsy two-time hit-and-runner, Jerry L. Guy, in April 2010. Nelson's 4-year-old later died of his injuries. But prosecutors dropped a homicide charge against Guy, and he was sentenced to two years for hit-and-run and served only six months. Nelson, who was convicted this week of vehicular manslaughter for having the chutzpah to cross a street, could get 36 months -- six times longer than the man who killed her child.  What could Nelson have done instead? Basically either stayed inside or gotten some flying shoes. The court considered …

There's a reason California is the largest solar market in the country -- I mean, aside from its abundance of sun. Namely, its regulators keep coming up with new ways to allow people to DIY-up their own distributed energy systems. Their latest brainstorm is a measure that allows renters to take advantage of the same solar incentives as people who own their own homes. The program is called “virtual net metering,” and the way it works is that any renter can get together with others in their building to put solar on their rooftop. The electricity it produces is sold …

Panasonic, the largest appliance maker in Japan, has announced plans to shutter 20 percent of its 230 factories in order to cut costs. But rather than lose that land, the company is capitalizing on Japan’s post-earthquake need for housing. It’s replacing the factories with “smart towns,” featuring "solar panels, energy-efficient refrigerators and rechargeable batteries," the company tells Bloomberg. It's all part of the company's wider strategy to make the best of the contraction in its TV set business, and capitalize on the Japanese peoples' renewed interest in energy independence in the wake of blackouts caused by the shutdown of the …

With a little development elbow grease, we could be in pretty good shape for the day the energy apocalypse comes and states have to split into small self-reliant compounds. The majority of U.S. states -- 31 of the 50 -- could be completely self-sufficient with locally-produced renewable energy, according to a report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. In fact, most states could produce many times more energy than they need. They've got South Dakota down as having the potential to produce 32,431 percent of its energy usage! (There's also a bigger map and an interactive map that is actually not all …

Politicians might not believe in climate change, but insurance companies do. They track disasters, and it turns out that disasters just in the first six months of this year already cost the world more than any other year of disasters on record. The price tag for 2011 disasters reached $265 billion. Most of that cost ($210 billion) came from the tsunami in Japan. But flooding in Australia, tornadoes in the United States, and earthquakes in New Zealand also contributed, and the Munich Re insurance giant draws a connection between some of these disasters and climate change. Before 2011, the record-holding …