"Energy security and climate change are two of the most significant challenges confronting humanity. What we see, in response, is the familiar capture of policymaking by well-organised special interests. A superb example is the flood of subsidies for biofuels. These are farm programmes masquerading as answers to energy insecurity and climate change. Not surprisingly, they have the depressing characteristics of such programmes: high protection, open-ended support to producers, and indifference to economic rationality."

If an elementary school teacher like myself can make this happen, with panels that are less than 6% efficient, it is worth contemplating what our country could have done by now if we'd made the effort. But as they say, better late than never.

At issue is the water intake structure in Lake Michigan that would provide water to cool the plant. Environmental groups Clean Wisconsin and Sierra Club -- as well as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- oppose the structure. They say it relies on ld technology that would cause more damage to Lake Michigan fish than a modern system requiring cooling towers. The dispute over the plant was kept alive earlier this year when a federal appeals court threw out an Environmental Protection Agency rule that Wisconsin regulators relied on in approving the water intake structure. Discussion of the project came after Wisconsin Energy announced third-quarter earnings rose 17 percent,

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday declared themselves flatly opposed to building a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, a clear indication that the 2008 presidential election could end a 25-year effort to build the controversial dump. Clinton delivered her opposition in person and Obama by letter as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held its first hearing on Yucca Mountain since Democrats took over Congress in January. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the panel's chair, said she had scheduled the hearing at the request of Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, who has been campaigning in Nevada on the issue. The state caucuses are Jan. 19. Congress has been planning for an underground repository to hold spent fuel from commercial power plants and waste from defense plants since 1982.

“I foresee the time when industry shall no longer denude the forests which require generations to mature, nor use up the mines which were ages in the making, but shall draw its raw material largely from the annual products of the fields,” he declared. “I am convinced that we shall be able to get out of the yearly crops most of the basic materials which we now get from forest and mine. We shall grow annually many if not most of the substances needed in manufacturing. “When that day comes, and it is surely on the way, the farmer will not lack a market and the worker will not lack a job. More people will live in the country. The present unnatural condition will be naturally balanced again. Chemistry will reunite agriculture and industry. They were allowed to get too far apart and the world has suffered by the separation.”

When charged using ordinary electricity, G-Wiz emissions (including those generated at the power station during the production of electricity) are at least 40% less than the cleanest hybrid and two-thirds cleaner than the average car. When charged using electricity from renewable sources, the G-Wiz is a completely sustainable and non-polluting vehicle.

"A martini isn't exactly the hardest drink to make, but why should you even be bothered when there's a cool new appliance that makes them automatically? Yes, that's right, the Waring Pro Automatic Martini Maker ($100) is a commercial quality stainless steel electric martini maker. Simply add your favorite ingredients using the 1-ounce shaker cap, turn it on, wait for the green olive to light up, press shaken or stirred on the touchpad and you've just made the perfect martini, right in your very own home. Life sure is good...for the lazy."

SYDNEY'S controversial desalination plant will be supplied with power from 75 wind turbines from as many as six wind farms to be built across the state. The $1.7 billion project will demand almost one-fifth of the country's wind-generated energy, providing the biggest ever boost to the state's green energy industry....

“Typically, a producer must use a variety of synthetic or man-made chemicals to produce gold nanoparticles. In addition, to make the chemicals necessary for production, you need to have other artificial chemicals produced, creating an even larger, negative environmental impact. Our new process only takes what nature has made available to us and uses that to produce a technology that has already proven to have far-reaching impacts in technology and medicine,” said Kattesh Katti, the project's lead scientist and a professor of radiology and physics at the university.