If you’re looking for Great Tits, go to England. Since 1947 scientists have been visiting Wytham Woods, England for one reason: to watch Great Tits. And since 1961, they’ve been using the same methodology to study the Great Tits.

The birds (obviously) are pretty predictable. Each spring, the female lays eight to nine eggs. The eggs hatch after about two weeks and approximately two weeks later the chicks are full-grown. To go from hatchlings to full-grown Great Tits in two weeks requires a lot of food and so the chicks gorge on winter moth caterpillars—each chick eats about 70 caterpillars a day.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Here’s the catch: the caterpillars are only around for a little while (about 6 weeks) so the Great Tits have to get the timing just right if they want their little Great Tits to grow up to be big Great Tits. And there’s another catch: the caterpillars hatch when the days begin to warm (at budburst) and, thanks to global warming, the days are getting warmer earlier and earlier so the caterpillars are hatching earlier and earlier.

What’s a Great Tit to do? Adapt, of course. And that’s exactly what the Wytham Woods birds have done. Scientists report that they now lay their eggs two weeks earlier than they did 47 years ago. Great Tits in Holland have adapted too, but they haven’t been quite as successful. They lay their eggs earlier, but not early enough to catch the new peak caterpillar time.

Enough about Great Tits; let’s talk about Boobies, Abbott’s Boobies. The Abbott’s Booby is an endangered seabird that nests on Australia’s Christmas Island and fishes in the Indian Ocean. Despite it’s fabulous name, you don’t want to be an Abbott’s Booby.

First of all, Abbott’s Boobies are big, but they have long narrow wings—the Australian Broadcasting Corporation calls them the jumbo jets of Boobies—so takeoffs are difficult unless they have plenty of runway or a high starting point (like their nests in the tallest trees). But tree-top nesting has its risks, especially during monsoon season when tropical cyclones threaten Christmas Island. If an Abbott’s Booby falls out of its nest and lands on the forest floor it must climb back up to its nest or at least climb high enough to catch the breeze so it can fly. If the Booby can’t fly, it can’t fish and if it can’t fish, it can’t eat. And if a baby Abbott’s Booby falls out of the nest, its chances of survival are pretty slim. After all, they only have one shot at learning how to fly.

Secondly, there aren’t very many tall trees to choose from. Between 1965 and 1987 phosphate mining destroyed one-third of the Abbott Booby habitat on Christmas Island. 

Then there are the Yellow Crazy Ants. Yellow Crazy Ants are an invasive species that were introduced to Christmas Island in the early 1900s. They weren’t particularly threatening until the mid-1990s when they started forming super-colonies with multiple queens and several thousand worker ants. Super-colonies have the potential to extend their range by up to a kilometer a year and they quickly grew to occupy more than 28% of the rain forest. Because of their tendency to attack any creature that enters their territory (they spray it with formic acid) and because they spread scale insects (who produce honeydew which promotes the growth of tree-killing mold) throughout the forest, the Yellow Crazy Ants have managed to wreak havoc on much of the Abbott’s Booby habitat. But don’t fret: the Crazy Ants are being chemically controlled.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Pacific Trash Vortex, a.k.a. “the Eastern Garbage Patch.” In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in the midst of what oceanographers call the North Pacific Gyre (subtropical?), lies a massive stew of garbage two times the size of Texas. Most of the visible trash is plastic—thanks to plastic’s fabulous floatation capabilities. Bottle caps, traffic cones, plastic bags, six-pack rings, tires, nets, cups, bottles, toys, motor oil containers, and nurdles, lots and lots of nurdles. It’s all there, collected by nature’s street sweeper, the gyre.

A gyre is a large circular ocean current. Gyres flow in a clockwise direction in the northern hemisphere and a counterclockwise direction in the southern hemisphere. As the gyre flows, it picks up anything nearby, gradually pushing it towards the center of the gyre. Because there are gyres in every ocean body, there are garbage patches in each ocean, but the Eastern Garbage Patch appears to be the worst.   

As Swamp Thing told us in the early ‘90s, plastic doesn’t biodegrade. If Swamp Thing didn’t pick up Omar and Darryl’s plastic cup, it would have gone through a process of photodegradation where sunlight would have broken the plastic into smaller pieces until it became plastic dust. Plastic left in lakes, rivers, and the ocean take longer to photodegrade than plastics on land because the water keeps the plastic cool. In the North Pacific Gyre, scientists have measured six times more plastic than zooplankton.  

And then are nurdles. Nurdles are chickpea-size plastic resin pellets. Each year, more than 250 billion pounds of the little buggers are shipped to plastic processors where they are molded into the form of plastic we’re used to seeing.  Nurdles are small and light so they’re hard to wrangle. Studies estimate that nurdles make up 10% of the plastic debris found in the oceans and on beaches worldwide. That means that 10% of our plastic debris hasn’t even been used yet—not for a girdle, a hurdle, or even a toy turtle.

Nurdles are hoarders. They suck up persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like DDT and PCBs from the surrounding waters. And then they hold on to the toxins so that a single nurdle is one million times more toxic than the water in which it floats.

Toxic or not, these cute little nurdles look an awful lot like fish eggs to a bird or fish looking for a snack. Plastic bags look a lot like jellyfish to a hungry turtle and brightly colored pieces of plastic look like baitfish to foraging seabirds. And so the critters devour plastic—Dutch scientists found 1,603 pieces of plastic in a single bird. The UN estimates that plastic waste kills up to a million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and zillions of fish each year. (Some of these animals choke on plastic debris, some die of starvation and some get caught in the debris and drown.)

Why is plastic the culprit? Because plastic never really goes away. When we recycle plastic we save it from a landfill—or a waterway. But most plastic can’t be recycled into plastic because of its tendency to hold onto pollutants. If you try to burn the pollutants (or say, milk residue from a milk jug) off the plastic, some plastics release deadly vapors. Recycling plastic is still a great habit—how else would we make fleece jackets—but recycling plastic doesn’t reduce the amount of virgin (new) plastic in the world. And that demand for virgin plastic means that more and more nurdles will be shipped worldwide—and undoubtedly, some will escape.

  You may have seen the new Haagen-Dazs ad, the one with operatic music and the dramatic shot of a bee courting a bright red flower, only to be pushed away by stormy winds (if you haven’t, it’s worth checking out at this blog. The ad cuts to a matter-of-fact voice that says honeybees are dying, and asks you, the viewer, to help Haagen-Dazs save them.  

  Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD; not to be confused with OCD) occurs when a hive loses all or most of its adults. Hives die off every now and again, its natural. But what makes CCD odd is the condition of the hive-there is still honey in the comb and the queen bee and a whole bunch of immature bees are still in the hive, alive. The adult bees are gone, but there is no sign of dead bees anywhere near the hive. Without adult bees to collect nectar, make honey, defend the hive and tend to the queen, the hive is doomed. And without the hive, individual bees are doomed.

  A lot of researchers are puzzling over the cause of the collapses. Are the bees succumbing to something natural, like a new pathogen or virus, or are we causing the colonies to collapse? Is it overexposure to pesticides or the stress of constantly moving hives from one pollination job to another? How about poor nutrition, either from overcrowding within the hive or from making bees pollinate plants with nutritionally-poor nectar (like pear trees)?

  Whatever the cause, CCD is a big deal. Apart from producing honey, the bees’ major contribution to our health and well-being is through pollination of various crops. Worker bees (the ones that leave the hive in search of flowers and nectar) visit anywhere between 50 and 100 flowers in a given trip. When a bee lands on the flower, it’s looking for the good stuff:  the nectar. It sucks up the nectar (a mix of sugars and water) and stores it in a nectar pouch inside its body. In the process, the little hairs on the bee’s body come into contact with the pollen from the flower. The pollen is sticky and clings to the bee, to be deposited on the next flower the bee visits. Pollination achieved.

  The US Department of Agriculture estimates that honey bee pollination adds close to 15 billion dollars in crop value to the U.S. food industry. Almonds, apples and blueberries are major beneficiaries of the humble honey bee, not to mention broccoli, carrots, cherries and pears. The almond crop alone in California requires the pollinating efforts of more than 1.3 million colonies.  

  Honey bee pollination is a commercial enterprise. Colonies are trucked all over the nation, plopped down in the middle of a farmer’s field and left to do their magic. When the job is done, the colonies are put back on the truck and driven to the next field where they start pollinating a new set of crops. In short, just like you can rent a back-hoe to dig a ditch you can rent bees to pollinate your farm or orchard.

  Honey bees aren’t the only ones that go from flower to flower. In fact, they aren’t even native to North America-the colonists brought them over from Europe. Bumblebees, butterflies, bats, hummingbirds and many other insects, mammals and birds also help pollinate our crops, but there is no question that honey bees are the most efficient of the lot. In fact, experts say that honey bee pollination contributes to one out of every three bites of food we eat.

Is there any better way to celebrate Earth Day than by raising a glass to Mama Earth? We didn’t think so. Read on for everything you need to know to be an earth-friendly oenophile.

Let’s start with the good stuff—the vino. There are two main types of environmentally-friendly wine: organic and biodynamic. Organic standards differ slightly from country to country, but basically, organic wines come from organic grapes—grapes that have never been near herbicides, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers or fungicides. To meet the standards for USDA organic certification, vineyards must be free from chemical herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers for at least three years before the vines are planted and the winemaking process must be free from any flavoring agents or sulfites. (If a winemaker adds sulfites, the label will say “made from organic grapes” rather than “organic wine.”)

Biodynamic wines are organic, but biodynamic vintners and farmers go above and beyond typical organic practices. They view the farm/vineyard as a living organism. The goal of a biodynamic farm or vineyard is to be totally self-sufficient so all of the plants and animals (including the bugs), the soil, and even the moon and stars plays an integral role in the health of the farm.

That’s all very interesting, but do organic and biodynamic wines taste good? Fer sure, just ask our friends at the Humble Gourmand.

But to be a true connoisseur of “green” wine, you’ve gotta go beyond the juice. Today, concerns about TCA (a fungus that taints the cork and affects the taste of the wine) have led more and more wineries to replace natural corks with screw tops and synthetic corks. Environmentally-speaking, that’s a problem. Right now, cork is harvested sustainably from the bark of cork oak trees in the Mediterranean. Workers peel the bark off in large strips, then allow the bark to regenerate for 10-12 years before the next harvest. Each tree provides useable bark for up to 200 years. Cork oak trees provide habitat for endangered species like the Iberian lynx, Barbery deer and the Imperial Iberian eagle and cultivation of these trees protects this habitat. As wine companies shift to synthetic corks, the demand for natural cork declines and so does the need to cultivate cork oak trees. Without cultivation, World Wildlife Fund warns, these trees don’t have a chance. And if the cork oaks go, at least three endangered species will loose a chunk of their habitat.

Choosing naturally corked organic or biodynamic wine will get you closer to eco-friendly bacchanalia, but there’s one more way to strive for eco-perfection: take a look at the winery’s carbon footprint. In Napa Valley, wineries can apply for certification as a Napa Green Certified Winery (NGCW). As a certified NGCW, wineries make an effort to reduce their carbon footprints by conserving energy and water, reducing waste and preventing pollution.

Raise a glass of environmentally-friendly vino and propose a toast to the planet. And of course, recycle the bottle and the cork (click here or here to find out more) when you’re done. Happy Earth Day!

You might know that cheetahs can run 70 miles per hour, but did you know that their hips and shoulders actually swivel on their flexible spine to stretch out their stride? And did you know that their beautiful spotted fur is as soft and smooth as Astroturf? Yup. That’s just one of the reasons why leopard skin is all the rage, but cheetah fur has yet to debut on the catwalk.

And how ’bout this: did you know that cheetahs aren’t doing so well-there are fewer and fewer of them. In fact, Scientists estimate that there are between 12,000 and 15,000 cheetahs in Africa today-that’s down from 100,000 across Asia and Africa just a hundred years ago.

This isn’t the first time cheetahs have gone through tough times. At the end of the last Ice Age-close to 10,000 years ago-three quarters of all mammals in North America died off (similar extinctions happened in Europe and Australia close to 40,000 years ago). This is called the Pleistocene-Holocene Extinction event, and researchers believe that cheetahs barely survived (unlike woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers that went extinct).

At one point in time, cheetahs ranged across North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. After the P-H Extinction event, the only ones left were in Africa and parts of Asia. Because so many cheetahs died off, the genetic diversity of cheetahs worldwide was reduced to the genes of only a few. This is referred to as a “genetic bottleneck,” where only the genes of a small number of individuals are passed on to the next generation. (Think of a big bottle filled with marbles. When the bottle is turned upside-down, only a few marbles make it out of the narrow neck.)

What is genetic diversity? It is a measure of how many different versions of the same gene exist in a population (just think of hair color and skin color for example). Not only can these different versions result in dramatically different physical appearance (like in the case of albinos), but they can account for differences between fast and slow metabolisms or even resistance to certain diseases as well. For instance, humans with two normal copies of the hemoglobin (red blood cell) gene are susceptible to malaria, whereas those with one normal copy and one “sickle” version of the gene are immune to the disease. Those unfortunate enough to have two copies of the “sickle” version of the gene often die of another disease called Sickle Cell Anemia.

A healthy population includes many versions of different genes (high diversity), which helps to ensure that some individuals of the species can adapt to new conditions. If a particular version imparts a benefit to an individual, he or she will have a better chance of surviving than other individuals with other versions of the gene. They will then be more likely to pass on that version to future generations. That’s how evolution works.

So when a population loses its genetic diversity it becomes increasingly vulnerable to change because all of the individuals have the same versions of genes. If a new disease crops up in a population with low genetic diversity, the chances that a particular version will be able to save the day are not good. So while modern-day cheetahs aren’t facing immediate threats (other than the standard habitat loss and random poaching events), they are one bad disease or one climate shift away from extinction, thanks to their low genetic diversity.

The Earth is warming, our air and water are becoming increasingly polluted and hundreds of species hover on the brink of extinction, BUT WAIT, there’s still some good news out there: Divers off Ambon Island in Indonesia recently found a new fish.

And we’re not talking about a cute little Nemo-like fish. This one’s weird. The fist-sized fish has a flat face with eyes pointing forward, rippling folds of skin that hide its fins and pectoral fins that look (and possibly act) like legs. It’s these leg-like appendages that made University of Washington professor Ted Pietsch—the world’s leading authority on anglerfishes—say that this new-found fish is, without a doubt, an anglerfish.

Anglerfish (named for the lure-like appendage that protrudes from the head to attract prey–see the Finding Nemo version here) are found worldwide. Of the 18 families of anglerfish, this new fish (unnamed so far) is most similar to the frogfish, which crawls along the sea floor using leg-like fins. But frogfish have lures and the new fish does not—Dr. Pietsch suspects that it may represent an entirely new family of anglerfish.

Beyond its bizarre appearance, the fish is even more unique. Without a lure to attract prey, how does it find food? Divers have seen the fish squeeze itself into tiny cracks, most likely in search of food. But what it does within those cracks is anybody’s guess. Most fish have an eye on each side of the head to see threats, obstacles and prey on both sides of the body. But this fish’s eyes both face forward, like a human’s, so both eyes can see the same thing. This trait, called binocular vision, allows the fish to judge distance. Why does this fish need to judge distance? Who knows.

We don’t know much about this weird little fish, but if this post has whet your appetite for crazy fish facts, check out the mating strategy of another species of anglerfish:

In some ceratioids (known as deep-sea anglerfishes, devilfishes and seadevils), males are totally dependent on females for survival. As the male matures, his digestive system degenerates to the point that he can no longer feed himself. He uses his well-developed olfactory organs to detect the pheromones of a female anglerfish and, when he finds himself a lady anglerfish, he bites her skin. With the bite, he releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and the female’s body so that the two fish become fused–even sharing the same blood vessels. Once the male is sufficiently fused with the female, his body atrophies leaving only a pair of gonads. The gonads are inactive until the female is ready to spawn. The female releases eggs and the male gonads respond to the accompanying shift in hormones by releasing sperm. Essentially, the male becomes a parasite and the female, a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite. In some species, only one male attaches to each female, but in others up to eight male parasites have been found on a single female.      

Tomorrow, March 29, from 8-9pm is Earth Hour (aptly named because Earth Day was already taken and the holiday only lasts 60 minutes).  

The event-intended to draw attention to climate change and energy conservation–started last year in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million people and 2,100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour. That hour of darkness resulted in a reduction of 24.86 tons of CO2 (the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off the road for one hour). This year, Earth Hour is going global; hundreds of cities around the world from Aaegina, Greece to Yass Valley, Australia have signed on to participate. There are 35 flagship cities in the US, including Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco. Toronto is taking the lead in Canada. 

Ready to celebrate, but not sure how? Turn off your lights. What if you’re not at home? Don’t worry, plenty of restaurants will be participating and lots of cities will hold special events (like the free Nelly Furtado concert in Toronto). And what if you’re home, but don’t feel that candlelight provides an appropriate ambiance for your evening activities? Then turn every hour into Earth Hour:

  · switch to CFLs

  · unplug chargers and appliances like toasters and electric toothbrushes when not in use 

  · plug your tv and computer into power strips that you can switch off (so you avoid the hassle of unplugging them every time you turn them off) 

But is that truly celebrating Earth Hour? Is Earth Hour about darkness or is it about reducing our global carbon footprint? Is it a statement of global awareness of climate change? A worldwide (lazy) protest of our massive carbon footprint? Or is it an attempt to make a giant reduction in our global carbon footprint? 

That Nelly Furtado concert in Toronto requires electricity, but the organizers promise to power the show with renewable energy. So if we buy green power, does that mean we get to keep our lights on during Earth Hour?

 Buildings across the globe will turn off “non-essential lighting.” Assuming “non-essential lighting” is not essential, why is it on anyway? 

In Phoenix, Chase Field (home of the Arizona Diamondbacks) will power down for Earth Hour, but the D-backs’ opening day isn’t until April 1 so why would the lights be on in the first place? 

There’s a lot to discuss so let’s discuss. Please add your comments to the discussion–and feel free to comment before or after Earth Hour (just not during… at least not online anyway). 

A few weeks ago (Feb 29 to be exact) The Wall Street Journal published a story in its Home Front section titled “The Price of Going Green”.

The author, June Fletcher, reached the conclusion that the benefits of going green rarely outweigh the costs. And she was right, based on many of the examples that she used, but she was wrong in thinking that the only reason for “going green” was to save money.

There are really two types of green improvements: things that save you money and things that are good for the environment. I mean, all green improvements are geared towards reducing our impact on the environment (otherwise they couldn’t really be called green now, could they?), but some include a financial incentive in the form of increased energy efficiency. June’s mistake–which is a pretty common one–was to judge the usefulness of the “good for the environment” group with the economic benefits one can expect from the “efficiency” group.

Energy Star appliances and CFLs are more efficient than older appliances and incandescent bulbs, respectively; as June notes, they also save you money. But June suggests that bigger investments in efficiency, like upgrading to solar water heaters and super-efficient furnaces, are not worth the added investment, even though they do reduce your utility bill. According to the article, the average homeowner moves every 7 years, but it may take up to 10 years for the savings garnered from a solar water heater to outweigh the cost of the purchase. While June is right to make a financial argument in this case, she’s missing a few points. These days, many home buyers are willing to pay a premium for green homes. Also, if you have an oil furnace that chugs through  more than 1000 gallons of oil per year (as is common in the northeast US), it will likely take less than 10 years to pay off the premium on a super-efficient furnace (or geothermal heat pump for that matter). 

Green building isn’t all about efficiency, it’s also about using eco-friendly materials. This is where June’s comment that “some green products, such as bamboo floors, don’t save you money” isn’t really a dirty little secret. No one ever claimed that buying bamboo flooring would save you money. Bamboo flooring, like other alternative/sustainable products are ways in which we can use natural resources in a sustainable manner. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) wood (from sustainable logging practices) is no different from the wood produced by clear-cut logging, except that the environment suffers a lot more from clear cutting practices and FSC wood is a little more expensive. For those who can afford it, and are looking to decrease their impact on the environment, building with eco-friendly materials will make our environment a little bit healthier–regardless of the lack of “savings.”  

Unfortunately June never mentions the greenest option of all when it comes to green improvements: the three R’s of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Habitat for Humanity runs a number of ReStores located all across the States and Canada. These stores sell used and surplus building materials at a fraction of the original price. This is the ultimate in green building on a budget. (On a similar note, if you are demolishing part of your home, consider reducing your waste by saving the original building materials either to reuse in your own renovation, donate to a ReStore, sell on CraigsList, or give away for free on Freecycle.)

June (and perhaps her editors too) are really asking the wrong question with “Can a Home be too Eco?” A better question to ask is whether people are making decisions about green improvements for the wrong reasons. Do you want to limit your impact on the environment or do you just want to conserve energy? Some improvements do both, but others are just a more sustainable way of doing business. As long as you think going green is worth the extra money, it’s hard to make your home “too Eco.” 

Disclaimer: the author of this post is completely aware–and a little bit ashamed–of the cheesy title.

Here’s some news you may have missed: North Pacific right whales are now the most endangered large whales.

It’s not that the whales suddenly became endangered. Not quite; they’re so rare that scientists once thought they were extinct.  It’s that the  

North Pacific right whale became a recognized species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Before then, the North Pacific right whale shared a spot atop the endangered species list with its cousin, the North Atlantic right whale. (The two were listed as Northern right whales.)  

Right whales have always had it rough. They’re slow swimmers who float when they die, making them the “right” whales to hunt. Whalers targeted the sluggish animals for decades, decimating all three populations of right whales (North Atlantic, North Pacific and southern). Right whale populations haven’t returned to their pre-whaling numbers, but southern right whales–found throughout the southern hemisphere–are recovering nicely. The northern populations continue to struggle.

North Atlantic right whales are the media darling of the bunch. Found along the east coast of North America, these guys are common victims of ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear. There are only about 350 North Atlantic right whales alive today.

There are even fewer North Pacific right whales. Scientists rarely reported seeing more than one whale at a time–until 2004. That year, observers spotted 23 right whales, including two with calves, in the Bering Sea. This was a big deal for a species many had come to think of as extinct, but it wasn’t exactly a resurrection. The right whale remains elusive. Last August, scientists devoted a month-long Bering Sea survey to finding the animals–and came up empty. Current estimates put the eastern population (the group that summers in the Bering Sea) at between 50 and 100 animals. The western Pacific population, found mainly in the Sea of Okhotsk (north of Japan), is just barely larger at no more than 200 whales.

And so last week, the North Pacific right whale received its very own spot on the endangered species list. This recognition not only earns the North Pacific right whale the dubious honor of being the most endangered large whale, but also earns it a little more government protection and its very own recovery plan.

Last week, the Frontier Café in Brunswick, Maine hosted a viewing of Kilowatt Ours–a short film about different ways we can all improve our energy efficiency. The slightly kitschy film starring Jeff Barrie (the filmmaker) and his wife explores the impacts of our large appetite for energy and the importance of finding alternatives to our current reliance on coal.     

Barrie sets the stage with footage of coal mining practices in Appalachia–namely mountain top removal coal mining which literally involves blasting away whole mountains to get at the coal underneath. The most compelling footage, however, is of a coal slurry spill in Appalachia. In October 2000, a total of 300 million gallons of coal slurry (a toxic mix of carcinogens and heavy metals that is a by-product of “cleaning” the coal after it comes out of the ground) poured into a fork of the Big Sandy River when a containment pond failed. The slurry buried over 75 miles of waterway, effectively killing the river. It flooded houses and yards, contaminated the drinking water of countless communities and disrupted or killed tons of wildlife. 

So, how do we reduce our reliance on coal?  

By increasing our efficiency and tapping into alternative energies. There are a bunch of ways to do this and some of them will save you a chunk of change in the long run. (The Barrie’s cut their power bill in half by changing to CFLs and upgrading their fridge.)  

•      You’ve heard it before, but replacing your regular incandescent light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (or CFLs) is a quick way to save money and use less energy. Although CFLs cost a little more than regular lightbulbs, they last way longer and use three quarters less energy. One warning: they’ve got mercury in them so make sure you follow the specific guidelines for recycling and cleaning up broken bulbs.
•      When it comes time to replace your appliances, make sure you buy Energy Star certified ones. Energy Star is a certification program that rates appliances on how much energy they use–or more appropriately, how much energy they save. New models are constantly improving their efficiency–today’s fridges are 20% more efficient than the ones built just 2 years ago–so even if you could squeeze another year or so out of an old clunker, it may save you more money to replace it with a more efficient model.
•      If your furnace dates back to the original Star Wars movie you’ll probably need an upgrade sometime soon. Rather than just replacing your HVAC system (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) with a newer model, consider installing a geothermal heat pump. Geothermal pumps tap into the stable temperature of the ground in order to provide heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. It can be expensive to install, but the savings more than make up for it over the life of the system–especially considering the rising cost of oil. 
•      Installing solar panels or a wind turbine can also save you money. And if you generate more power than you need, the excess electricity gets put back into the system and your power meter spins backwards. Solar panels are becoming increasingly more affordable, even on par with coal (see Nanosolar ). And the technology is getting way cooler. Now you can get roof shingles that double as solar panels and soon hybrid drivers will be able to buy aluminum solar panels for the roofs of their cars. 
•      If you can’t afford to generate your own “green energy,” you can always switch to buying green electricity from your local utilities. Most suppliers offer green alternatives–electricity generated from solar arrays, wind turbines and low-impact hydro electric dams–at just a slight premium. This won’t save you any money, but it reduces our dependance on fossil fuels. Here’s the deal: the more alternative energy we ask for, the less electricity will come from coal–that means more solar arrays and less coal-fired power plants.

 There’s lots of information on energy efficiency / alternative energy out there, but if you have a question, please post a comment. And if we can answer it, we will.