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 …

The latest numbers from the Labor Department are out, and the jobs picture is ugly -- the private sector is stagnant, and government is laying off workers in droves. Good thing we've got our Yankee ingenuity and forward-thinking leaders to help us dig out of this hole! Except, oh wait, it appears we're busy exporting jobs in the only industries that are expected to experience significant growth in the 21st century. For example, America just lost approximately 1 million jobs to Europe simply because Boeing has been unwilling to invest in fuel efficiency as aggressively as Airbus, which is now …

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 …