From the Department of Silver Linings: Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas are safe, at least for the moment. And Virginia’s offshore lease appears to be, well, dead in the water. Thanks, BP! In the Obama administration’s most decisive policy response yet to the BP oil spill, today Barack Obama delayed or canceled deepwater offshore oil [...]

Olivia Bouler, a 10-year-old from Islip, New York, is, in her words, “devastated” about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But she isn’t just wringing her hands; she’s wielding pens and colored pencils to help the recovery effort. Olivia, a frequent visitor to Orange Beach, Alabama, loves the birds there – and [...]

Running shoes don’t last long: 300 miles of pounding, and they’re trashed – sometimes literally. And in the landfill, they last practically forever. Except my Brooks. Why? They’ve got BioMoGo. No matter how many lives I give my running shoes – from training to casual street wear to yard work to the donation pile – [...]

Green Product Category: Messenger Bags; $90 We gave our Keen Cornell II sustainable messenger bag the ultimate test: a middle schooler. He lugged books, lunches and lacrosse sticks, stuffing the bag to well beyond capacity – and lobbing it at his locker. Despite the abuse, the material held up well, with seams and zippers intact. [...]

Welcome to 2010, the soon-to-be hottest year on record. This week the US National Oceanic and Atomspheric Administration (NOAA) released its preliminary global temperatures for April. Verdict: hot. In fact, this April was the hottest on record:

If Annie Leonard’s Story of Bottled Water doesn’t convince you that bottled water is a scam, maybe comedian Lewis Black will. Black waxes bombastic on the bottled water industry: “Because when I think clean water – oh, yeah – I f***ing think Coke and Pepsi.” Beware: Black’s language is about as clean as Coca-Cola’s waste [...]

I figured I’d regret giving BP credit for its oil spill response. Daniel Gross catalogs BP bumbling.

I’m trying to teach my 6-year-old about conserving resources and reducing waste. My recent object lesson: paper towels in public restrooms.

Thinking about solar panels for your roof, but not sure about the cost? Use Google Earth to suss out your home’s solar energy footprint. RoofRay.com zeroes in on your rooftop via Google Earth to analyze your roof’s sunlight potential and estimate your solar ROI: how much would solar panels cost you, and how much could [...]

In Dell’s ongoing efforts to green their business, the company just announced that their new bamboo cushion packaging is certifiably compostable, having received the American Society for Testing and Materials ASTM D6400 certification. Dell started shipping netbooks in the packaging in November 2009; they now use it for some of their Inspiron line of laptops [...]

The THINK electric car company just received a $40 million “battery charge” – an equity investment designed to help the company increase product development and launch in the United States. The Norwegian automaker plans to start selling the THINK City EV in the US in 2010 and will begin manufacturing the vehicle in Elkhart, Indiana, [...]