The transportation and distribution, developing the plastic for the water bottles, the cost of the water, has a huge environmental and economic impact....the difference between bottled water and Diet Coke is that you can’t get Diet Coke from the tap. It’s not like any other bottled liquids. These people are making huge amounts of money selling God’s natural resources. Sorry, we’re not going to be part of it. Our water in San Francisco comes from the Hetch Hetchy [reservoir] and is some of the most pristine water on the planet. Our water is arguably cleaner than a vast majority of the bottled water sold as "pure."

"We're going to have to solve the climate-change problem if we're going to have nuclear power, not the other way around. As the climate warms up, nuclear power plants are less able to deliver."

“It’s an informative well put together podcast made on a low budget. All we’ve got is an ipod and a microphone. But there’s so much going on in the Dyfi Valley we just wanted to get out there and record it all. We wanted to show how important it is to build strong low carbon communities wherever you live.”

...researchers were surprised to see that the dam affected rainfall over such a large area - a 62-square-mile region - rather than just 6 miles projected in previous studies.

"The combination of breakthroughs and setbacks highlighted the blocking power of the entrenched industry groups, from oil companies and electric utilities to car manufacturers, that had blanketed Congress in recent days to defend their interests.

Too much of a sterile environment is a bad thing. People need background innoculation from natural sources, and they get that from ordinary, unnoticed background dirt.

We've taken note of Wal-Mart's plan to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs by the end of this year, and its partnership with manufacturers to lower the mercury content in the energy-efficient bulbs. This week, the company announced yet another initiative related to the swirly bulbs: tomorrow, Wal-Mart stores, Supercenters and Sam's Clubs in California, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Tulsa, Oklahoma will hold a fluorescent light bulb recycling day. Consumers can drop off either CFLs or fluorescent tube bulbs from 8 to 4 at kiosks outside the stores. Wal-Mart is hosting the free bulb take-back with Waste Management’s WM LampTracker, Inc. This event, and Wal-Mart's other sustainability initiatives, continue to win praise from sustainable business advocates (though, in fairness, groups like Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up, Wal-Mart have labeled them distractions). In response to the announcement of the take-back event, friend of Treehugger Joel Makower told the Twin Cities' Pioneer Press "This is one part of a larger effort Wal-Mart's been undertaking to show some green leadership, and they have an uncanny knack for green initiatives that really help build sales where they can really combine doing well with doing good."...

“Israel is a hot country, and its residents need shady, cool green areas. What are those palms going to contribute?"

"In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal. We went again in May and to our surprise we found the lake had completely disappeared," Juan José Romero, regional director of Chile's National Forestry Corporation, said this week. "The only things left were chunks of ice on the dry lake-bed and an enormous fissure."