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Here’s what we can do - now: we can make an immediate and large strategic investment to put people to work replacing 19th-century energy technologies that depend on dangerous and expensive carbon-based fuels with 21st-century technologies that use fuel that is free forever: the sun, the wind and the natural heat of the earth.

What follows is a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis - and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.

People should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming, says the UN’’s top climate scientist. “The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat production account for about 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions,” he told BBC News. 

A US team reports in Science magazine how it built in the lab the entire set of genetic instructions needed to drive a bacterial cell. The group hopes eventually to use engineered genomes to make organisms that can produce clean fuels and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Almost one-third of the world’s species will face extinction if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, a United Nations report will say this week.

The Equinox, GM’s fourth-generation fuel-cell car, has an electric motor - which has no fuel injection, no pistons, no transmission, no motor oil. It is powered by a hydrogen fuel-cell engine, which converts hydrogen gas into energy.

Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers...Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

We first released our ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’ in August 2006. The guide ranks the 14 top manufacturers of personal computers and mobile phones according to their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling.

In this fifth issue of the Guide, Nokia maintains top spot with Sony Ericsson close behind. Dell and Lenovo tie for third place. Sony is the biggest mover and together with LGE has moved out of the red zone. Apple, Panasonic, Acer, Toshiba and Samsung move down the ranking for failing to make any additional improvements. HP is the only constant faller in the guide and is now in 13th position.

Scientific tests, arranged by Greenpeace, reveal that Apple’s iPhone contains hazardous chemicals. The tests uncovered two types of hazardous substances, some of which have already been eliminated by other mobile phone makers.

Simulation and modeling is one of the keys to a sustainable future. Otherwise progress can only happen by trial and error, which on the architectural scale is a horribly slow process. Simulating a building’s energy use is a hard problem, requiring not only a model of the building and the materials that make it up (including insulation, windows, foundation, etc.) but also a model of the building’s location, with the path of the sun through the year and weather data that is accurate and detailed, including humidity, wind, simple daytime-nighttime temperatures, and a host of other information. And of course, the challenges are compounded when you want to make a simulation that will work in any part of the world.

Scientists in India are reporting an advance toward discovering a Holy Grail of the illumination industry — a white LED, a light-emitting diode that produces pure white light suitable for interior lighting of homes, offices and other buildings.