The billionaire oilman and onetime corporate raider says the U.S. must wean itself from foreign oil, and he's betting some of his fortune on harnessing domestic energy alternatives.

In the vast exhibition halls in southern Paris one color dominates: green. From the carpeting and lighting to the artificial lawn trimming and acid-green cocktail dresses worn by countless exhibition assistants, the message is hammered home that the industry has staked its economic future on the green revolution.

Before being selected as John McCain's running mate, Palin took a stronger stance against the notion that humans are to blame for global warming. When Newsmax asked for the Alaska governor's "take on global warming" this summer, she said, "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade." According to the Associated Press, in December 2007, Palin said to the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, "I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity."

Clean coal: Never was there an oxymoron more insidious, or more dangerous to our public health. Invoked as often by the Democratic presidential candidates as by the Republicans and by liberals and conservatives alike, this slogan has blindsided any meaningful progress toward a sustainable energy policy.

Wind power is, of course, controversial. A big knock is that until power-storage technology evolves, wind farms will work only when the wind blows. Wind energy proponents counter that the sites picked for wind farms are predictably gusty, though they acknowledge wind turbines will never be a complete answer to the nation's energy issues. But they say they can be a significant part of the our energy future when intelligently integrated with traditional power plants that have the ability to pick up the slack when wind doesn't deliver.

A clean-energy economy will require lots of new hardware-sleeker wind turbines, more efficient solar panels, recharging stations for electric vehicles. It'll also require smarter software, to efficiently guide energy to where it's most needed. Always ambitious, Google hopes to be the architect of this software. Heading up its effort is Dan Reicher, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Energy who now serves as director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm.

It's gone before you even knew it was there: As energy is unlocked from fuels at power plants, two-thirds of the energy consumed to create electricity is lost. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that conversion efficiency will never be 100 percent, because heat is lost at every step of the conversion process. But new technologies may be able to greatly increase conversion efficiency, moving from an overall rate of 36 percent to closer to 50 percent. At present, coal - in all its carbon-belching inefficiency - is king because it's cheap. Still, the use of natural gas to create electricity has been rising rapidly, in part because of more-efficient gas turbines. Natural gas prices have been climbing, however, and coal prices could rise as well.

Genetically engineered bacteria could make cellulosic ethanol cheaper to manufacture, researchers report. The finding could unlock more energy from the waste products of farming and forestry. Ethanol from cellulose, the kind of sugar in cornstalks and sawdust, is being promoted as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels, with the advantage that it does not use food crops such as corn as raw materials.

Are you wasting energy? The average American releases about 50,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year - and most of this waste comes from our homes. There are easy steps you can take to alter your lifestyle and reduce your carbon footprint.

Honeywell (NYSE: HON) today announced it has developed a first-of-its-kind selection tool that quickly provides customers with the data to make an informed buying decision. Unveiled at the annual Honeywell Users Group for Buildings conference, the Renewable Energy Scorecard™ analyzes the variables for any given location to pinpoint the technology with the most significant environmental and economic drivers.

The Department of Energy estimates that it would take more than 20 years for either production levels or prices to be affected by a repeal of the ban on offshore drilling. Because the amount of oil at stake is so tiny (about 19 billion barrels, equivalent to around seven months of global consumption), it won't do much at all to ease jitters or help deflate a bubble in oil markets.

Despite what marketers of products such as bamboo cutting boards and vegan silk gowns would have us believe, helping the planet doesn't require forking over your paycheck. It's really about conserving, not consuming -- so going green should also save you some.

What if cutting greenhouse emissions could also save the lives of soldiers in Iraq, where fuel-laden convoys make them targets? The U.S. Army says it is happening now in a push to reduce its carbon "bootprint." From forward areas like Iraq and Afghanistan to training ranges in the United States, the Army has been working to limit its use of fossil fuels and make its operations more environmentally sustainable.

The national push to wean the country from imported fuel by adding American-brewed ethanol to gasoline has come at a cost: The flammable liquid is being transported through residential neighborhoods, catching off guard many communities that are unprepared to fight potential fires. Some are having to piece together emergency plans after the shipments have begun passing through their cities and towns, officials say.

In last Thursday's vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin seemed to be falling over themselves to demonstrate their support of "clean coal." What is clean coal, anyway, and should I be in favor of it?

Given the steady drumbeat of news about climate change, water shortages, food riots and high oil prices, many of us are pretty well-versed in the basics of protecting the environment. What's lacking, particularly for us tech-lovers, are the tools to help us live our on-grid, totally Wired lives with the smallest possible impact. And we do need some help. If everyone lived like North Americans, we'd need at least five planets to support our lifestyles. Here are some online actions you can take to "plug in greener." This article is a wiki. Got extra advice? Log in and add it.

Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves. Just ask Glenda Hoffman, whose fury has not abated since 16 solar panels vanished from her roof in this sun-baked town in three separate burglaries in May, sometimes as she slept. She is ready if the criminals turn up again.

Spain is one of the world's hottest markets for solar panels and Sebastian said he expected capacity by the end of this year to be five times a target of 371 MW that the government had originally set for 2010 in a renewable energy plan.

Ford's Fiesta ECOnetic gets an astonishing 65 mpg, but the carmaker can't afford to sell it in the U.S.