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"Early Thursday morning, Google announced it was investing $103 million in Mount Signal Solar, a plant which claims its finished project will source enough energy for about 80,000 homes on the San Diego Gas & Electric line. In a blog post, Kojo Ako-Asare, head of corporate finance at Google, said Google was "celebrating Halloween early with [their] 'lucky thirteenth' renewable energy investment.""

Finding creative solutions to energy issues has become a major priority for Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page in recent years. For the obvious reasons -- a growing population, increasingly scarce resources, and climate change -- he believes that the corporate world needs to operate more sustainably, and he is determined to build the nation's first zero-carbon company. This means a business that ultimately is so energy efficient and uses so much clean power that it emits no greenhouse gas -- a very tall order indeed. Experts aren't sure whether it's even possible for a company to emit no carbon, but Google is trying to come as close to that goal as possible. "As we became a bigger user of energy, we wanted to make sure we were not just part of the problem, but part of the solution," says Urs Hölzle, Google's employee No. 8 and a senior vice president who oversees the company's green initiatives.

"The UN claims climate change is 'almost definitely' caused by humans, and now Google Earth users can see the impact they are supposed to have made to temperature changes in their local area. Climate researchers at the University of East Anglia have added the world's temperature records as a layer on the mapping service. It lets users zoom into 6,000 global weather stations and see monthly, seasonal and annual temperature changes dating back to 1850."

"Despite controversial funding of climate deniers and a management team with a fleet of jets, Google is leading the way on greening its energy supplies"

"For the first time, Facebook has revealed its carbon footprint, with over 900 million users. While the social network has grown rapidly, the good news is that its carbon emissions are still significantly lower than fellow internet giant, and sustainability conscious, Google. In 2011, Facebook's annual emissions were apparently 285,000 metric tonnes of CO2, compared to 1.5 million tonnes created by Google in 2010."

Each week NASA's State of Flux website features images of different locations, showing the effects of climate change, urbanization, or natural hazards such as fires and floods. If you select the 'map view' option you can view a Google Map of all the locations so far covered. If you then select a marker on the map you can view two images of the location that have been taken at different times. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you can also find a number of links to browse the images by different categories, such as 'extreme events', 'human impacts' and 'top picks'.

"The "recycling wars" between Coca-Cola and Greenpeace have spilt into cyberspace, with the beverage giant buying the top advertising slot for searches of the environmental group's name."

"Watch the world change over the course of nearly three decades of satellite photography. These Timelapse pictures tell the pretty and not-so-pretty story of a finite planet and how its residents are treating it - razing even as we build, destroying even as we preserve. It takes a certain amount of courage to look at the videos, but once you start, it's impossible to look away."

"Google it and you'll see factory farming defined as "a system of rearing livestock using intensive methods, by which poultry, pigs, or cattle are confined indoors under strictly controlled conditions." Dig just a little deeper, however, and you find some unappetizing truths: Most of the meat you eat comes from animals that were raised in horrifying conditions by large corporations seeking to maximize profits at the expense of animal welfare, the environment, and your health."

Andrew Winston - Harvard Business Review, The Top 10 Green Business Stories of 2010 - Monday December 20, 2010