Thomas Edison's great-grandson, David Edison Sloane, is not mincing words when it comes to the GOP wanting to repeal energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs: As an inventor, Edison would have no interest in turning back the legislative clock. The wizard of Menlo Park dedicated himself to advancing human comfort, not freeze life as we knew it in 1879. Oh snap! Edison's great-grandson just called you retrogressive. It's kind of amusing to dig up a scientist's great-grandson (who is not a scientist -- he's an English professor) to guess at what his famous scientist ancestor would have wanted. It's as if, …

Waste Management Inc. owns 1,000 trash trucks that run on natural gas, plus a bunch of landfills that are constantly pumping out natural gas as a natural product of the decomposition of organic waste. Closing the loop on this cycle is a no-brainer, but it took Waste Management a decade to perfect the technology required. Now they’ve got trash trucks that run on gas from the trash they carry. At its Altamont, Calif. landfill, Waste Management turns methane into liquid natural gas at a rate of 13,000 gallons a day. The California Air Resources Board estimates that trucks that run …

Passengers using a newly retrofitted light-rail station in downtown Phoenix, Ariz., can press a button to be showered in cool air, powered by solar energy and cold water from an efficient district cooling system. The system, which was inspired by similar installations in Dubai, uses solar power to run fans that blow cool air. The cool air itself comes from a system of chilled water that has been running in Phoenix's business district since 2001. It's called district cooling: A central plant run by NRG Thermal cools the water, which is then piped to nearby buildings to be used in …

This is a carbon tax: Australia is going to put a tax of $23 per metric ton on carbon emissions from 500 companies. Hybrids and electric vehicles may no longer be legally allowed to slink quietly down the street, surprising pedestrians and dogs everywhere. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing a rule requiring that the near-silent cars emit some sort of sound at low speeds. The EPA is not happy with ExxonMobil and the company's plan to clean up the Yellowstone River. I mean, it’s in favor of cleaning up, it just thinks this particular plan stinks. France …

This is not even the first time that someone in New York City has compared cyclists to terrorists, but it might be the dumbest: New York's CBS 2 is concerned that bike lanes will facilitate acts of terror. A Second Avenue bike lane is next to the Israeli consulate, leaving many wondering what would happen if a man on a bike were a terrorist. It's true! If a terrorist could ride his bike in the street only a sidewalk's width from the door of the Israeli consulate, which would be shielded by nothing except giant concrete planters (yes, I Street …

The economy sucks, housing prices have yet to hit bottom, and your biggest fixed expense is almost certainly rent, unless it's summertime, in which case it's your electricity bill. Sounds like it's time to lead a richer life by reducing your dependence on worldly goods and wasted energy, no? The growing Tiny House movement -- here's an example of the genre -- addresses all these issues at once, and in style. But where to find one? Tiny House Listings has you covered. OK, so there are only a handful of homes on offer. But many are for sale directly from …

It's nowhere near the level of destruction wrought by coal mines, oil and gas wells, or giant conventional power plants, but solar installations do have their consequences. Among them: making habitats hostile to prairie dogs. In order to save the animals -- whose home is about to be heavily shaded by a six-acre installation of 15-foot-high solar panels in Flagstaff, Ariz. -- the nonprofit Habitat Harmony baits, traps, and relocates them to a private ranch. Over the past 10 years, the organization and its volunteers have relocated almost 500 prairie dogs. "Ultimately, we like to co-exist with the prairie dogs …

The green movement doesn't have much use for lawns. Yeah, they make suburban enclaves look tidy and uniform, but really, would it be so effing bad if your house had something useful -- say, a vegetable garden -- instead of a high-maintenance water-hog outdoor carpet? What's the worst that could happen? Well, as Michigan woman Julie Bass discovered, if your city planner is certifiably power-crazy, you could be looking at 93 days in jail. After her front yard got dug up for sewer line maintenance, Julie Bass decided to put in raised vegetable beds instead of reseeding the lawn. It …

Rawwwrrr! It's a progressive cat-fight! On the one side is New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who wants to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River, just 25 miles north of the Bronx. On the other side is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who thinks this would be a really crap idea, mostly because it would mean replacing fully a quarter of the power delivered to NYC with greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuel power plants. Also, it would probably lead to brownouts. Cuomo's reasoning is that the Indian Point plant happens to be right on top of an earthquake …

For a long time, scientists thought, as any reasonable person would, that the female ancestor of modern polar bears came from some Alaskan island. But it turns out that, like humans, bears are sometimes attracted to bears that come from foreign places, especially if they have cute accents. In fact, the female ancestor of polar bears came from, of all places, Ireland. (A press release from the Office of the Polar Bear King confirmed that yes, polar bears will be participating in St. Patrick's Day parades worldwide next year.) The love story goes something like this: some time between 20,000 …