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It’s a big green week for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s on the cover of Newsweek magazine’s save the planet issue, is the keynote speaker of the magazine’s global environmental leadership conference in Washington, and addresses the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. And the British Conservative Party chose the week of his Newsweek cover status to announce that he will headline their annual party conference this fall.

Panelists on the program Fox News Sunday recently discussed Al Gore's March 21 global warming "planetary emergency" address to Congress, in which Gore urged a freeze on carbon dioxide emissions. At the end of the news summary, a discussion ensued in which Fortune Magazine's Nina Easton explained that several firms in the business community are getting greener and perceive these proposals to be cost saving. She emphasized that Fortune was coming out with material elaborating that theme. Ms. Easton, and most viewers, likely fail to perceive that businesses are illustrating Nobel Prize winning economist George Stigler's 1971 theory of government...

Hydrogen just can't get a break. Once touted as the clean wonder fuel of the future, hydrogen fuel cells for cars or homes are now routinely panned as inefficient and impractical, particularly when compared to technologies like electric cars or solar thermal water heaters. Joseph Romm, a physicist, author of, among other books, Hell and High Water: Global Warming--the Solution and the Politics--or Hydrogen and editor of the respected ClimateProgress, also points out that the gas can be worse for the atmosphere than regular gas, depending on the circumstances. Hydrogen burns clean out of the car's tailpipe, but producing hydrogen...

THE Queen has appointed environmental consultants to turn the royal palaces into models of green efficiency, under pressure from her eldest son to provide a lead for the nation. Sources say that the Queen intends to emulate the Prince of Wales, who will announce in his annual review in July that he and his household at Clarence House are now “carbon neutral”. The Buckingham Palace consultants are expected to recommend significant changes in the conduct of official functions to reduce the use of helicopters and chartered planes. However, critics are likely to argue that genuine cuts in emissions can be...

Insight magazine reports that Al Gore is contemplating running for president...as the nominee of the Green Party....snip...The 2008 election could be the most fragmented since the election of 1824, in which there were four major candidates, and the winner was chosen by the House of Representatives...

Charles accused of 'green hypocrisy' By Caroline Davies Last Updated: 1:50am BST 31/03/2007 The Prince of Wales's aides have defended his decision to fly by private jet to Scotland for an Easter break with the Duchess of Cornwall yesterday, saying it was necessary because of his wife's health. The couple used a Royal Flight Hawker Siddeley 125 jet to fly to Aberdeen from RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire - risking further accusations of hypocrisy by the prince in taking the least green option for the 500-mile journey. But Clarence House maintained the decision was made because of the duchess's ongoing convalescence...

One of four U.S. soldiers accused of raping an Iraqi girl last spring and killing her and her family pleaded guilty Wednesday and will testify against the others. Spc. James P. Barker agreed to the plea deal to avoid the death penalty, said his civilian attorney, David Sheldon. The killings March 12 in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad, were among the worst in a series of alleged attacks on civilians and other abuses by military personnel in Iraq. Sgt. Paul E. Cortez and Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, both members of the 101st Airborne Division with Barker,...

Al Gore is looking to make a statement with his two new rides- one for the environment with his acquisition of the two brand new Mercury Mariner Hybrid. Before his "green move" , Gore was driving around in a you guessed it a Lexus which most likely was not in hybrid form. On a side note, the Lexus model was most likely a LS- for him to able to trade it in and get two - Mariner Hybrids.

Read the amazing comparison of Al Gore's huge mansion's energy consumption vs the "Texas White House" George Bush's "green" ranch home..

It's not easy being green. Just ask former Vice President Al Gore. While the newly anointed Oscar winner has made what Katie Couric called a "triumphant return" to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Gore was tripped up by a simple question from Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. Late into the hearing, Inhofe showed Gore a clip from his film, "An Inconvenient Truth." The clip challenged the audience with this question: "Are you ready to change the way you live?" Simple enough. But Inhofe took this question a step further, by placing it right at the foot of the former vice president. Correctly...

Silicon Valley’s technology investors have taken to the ramparts, threatening to tear down the oil and gas industries’ dominance with innovations that use ethanol, solar and wind. A chief champion of the cause has been Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the marquee venture capital firms. Its principals, John Doerr in particular, have passionately advocated development of alternative energies as a way to create energy independence and clean up the carbon-saturated atmosphere. But Kleiner has also poured millions of dollars into Terralliance, a company that makes technology to enable more efficient drilling of oil and gas. The investment underscores...

Noël Mamère and his bicycle trapped by Karl Zero When Noël Mamère claims to arrive by bicycle at the emission of Karl Zero, discoursing lengthily on the benefits of the bicycle in Paris, it sets out again… in the subway. And it actually arrived… by car!

Fresh off their discovery of Rev. Al Sharpton's slave ancestry and ties to Strom Thurmond, Ancestry.com has just announced that they have found traces of Ireland in Barack Obama's family tree. According to their research 19-year-old Falmouth Kearney, Obama's third great grandfather, sailed from Ireland, landing in New York harbor on March 20, 1850.

The EU's top political leaders meet three times a year in a rose-coloured marble building known as Justus Lipsius. EU leaders arrived in gas-guzzling cars to debate green issues It is named after a 16th-Century Dutch scholar often described, predominantly by his fans, as one of the most learned men of his day, as well as the founding father of neo-stoicism, which combined pagan materialism with Christianity. Nowadays, the new Europe under Jose Manuel Barroso could even be described as eco-stoicism, combining materialism with environmental zealotry. The new movement, though, does not have as many converts as the Portuguese...

Who says liberals lack a sense of humor? The new owner of Air America suggests that the original Air America went bankrupt because . . . it was too even-handed. Mark Green is a veteran New York pol, having served as NYC's Public Advocate and run unsuccessfuly for US senator, NYC mayor and state attorney general. His family business recently completed the acquisition of Air America out of bankruptcy. Details here. In an email distributed today [yup, I subscribe to their list], Green described what "Air America 2.0" will be like: "It'll be a business with a sharp point...

Phone chargers How much is inside a phone charger? One of the greatest dangers to society is the phone charger. The BBC news has been warning us of this since 2005: 'The nuclear power stations will all be switched off in a few years. How can we keep Britain's lights on? ... unplug your mobile-phone charger when it's not in use.' Sadly, a year later, Britain hadn't got the message. 'Britain tops energy waste league' - and how did this come about? The BBC ram the message home: '65% of UK consumers leave chargers on' From the way the BBC...

Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin isn't the only cute little girl to have made a media splash lately. Canada has seven-year-old Gillian Wiley, another adorable moppet, who is being promoted by eco-warrior David Suzuki as the star of his "If I Were Prime Minister" campaign... Mr. Suzuki's favourite candidate so far is little Gillian. She delivers the message that if she were living on Sussex Drive, she would make some big changes "so that we don't destroy the planet with fossil fuels and carbon dioxide." She castigates SUVs, wants to stop the tar sands, and tells the camera that "Kyoto...

We've seen all this talk about Al Gore's hypocrisy in preaching a green lifestyle, but not quite living up to one, himself. Well, now we see evidence that the 2000 Presidential Candidate might actually be an eccentric eco-freak. Caution, though, this source is as liberal as they come: The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude. Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such...

“We are an oil producing country and that obligates us to take even more care of the environment—on an extreme level—and to avoid contamination, and to reduce contamination in all areas: earth, water and air.” – President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, February 24, 2007. Did anyone from Greenpeace or Earth First! ever imagine that the world’s first environmental president would come from Venezuela? Many Greens might find such an idea ludicrous considering that the South American nation is one of the largest oil producing countries in the world and a major resource for heavy mineral and coal mining. However, ever...

Is it possible that George Bush is a secret Green? Evidently his Crawford Winter White House has 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling. “By marketplace standards, the house is startlingly small,” says David Heymann, the architect of the 4,000-square-foot home. "Clients of similar ilk are building 16-to-20,000-square-foot houses." Furthermore for thermal mass the walls are clad in "discards of a local stone called Leuders limestone, which is quarried in the area. The 12-to-18-inch-thick stone has a mix of colors on the top and bottom, with a...