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This weekend marks the twentieth annual occurrence of a vaunted celebration you’ve quite possibly never heard of: the Environmental Media Association awards. The EMAs actually do a pretty good job of attracting A-list stars, or at least A-minus, and are the original “green-carpet” event. Each year, there are a handful of honorary awards (this year’s recipients include Richard Branson and Jason Mraz) and several others given in various film and TV categories. Sometimes it can feel like a stretch: for instance, while the nominating committee must have been thrilled with the documentary selections available to them this year—Fuel, Food, Inc., The Cove, No Impact Man—when it came to TV, they were reduced to choosing episodes of such knock-your-socks-off shows as Better Off Ted and ‘Til Death.

Yeah.

But it’s fun to add some glitz to green, and I tip my newsgirl cap to the EMA for the work it’s done on that front through all its efforts, including these awards. Apparently for twenty years! Who knew.

In search of a little context, I thought I’d see who else is celebrating a “platinum” anniversary this year—since Grist has made it to ten years (tin/aluminum!), why not look to our elders for wisdom. Turns out those commemorating their twentieth include such international heavyweights as the Goldman Prize and the U.N. Environment Program’s information office, known fondly as GRID-Arendal. They also include slightly lesser, but no less fascinating, eco-lights: the National Wetlands Awards, New York City environmental-justice and health organization WE-Act, NRDC’s Southern California office, Canadian grocery company Loblaw’s PC Green product line, and ... Turtle Independence Day!

Which can mean only one thing—it’s time to raise a glass, and it’s time to vote:

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There was unfortunate news from PEER recently that the Obamans/NOAA Chief Jane Lubchenco have no plans to consider new marine protected areas. She cited lack of funds as the reason. Hum.

In an era where oceans are under so much pressure, we need to prioritize efforts proven to bring life back to the seas, like MPAs. They work. As Jennifer Jacquet points out at the Guilty Planet blog:

Research by Callum Roberts et al. (2001) published in Science found:

a network of five small reserves in St. Lucia increased adjacent catches of artisanal fishers by between 46 and 90%, depending on the type of gear the fishers used. In Florida, reserve zones in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge have supplied increasing numbers of world record-sized fish to adjacent recreational fisheries since the 1970s.

But try to tell that to lobby groups like the Recreational Fishing Alliance. The RFA and their allies (marina owners, charter captains, and, ironically enough for them, commercial fishermen) fight MPAs tooth and nail, even though the reserves work to increase the size and probably the numbers of their favored species. They've got a case that MPAs should be based on sound science, of course, but the rhetoric often gets so overblown that it just starts to sound like their being told that they can't fish a certain area is far worse than catching more and bigger fish, elsewhere. Go figure.

Not waiting for the feds or fishermen to come to their senses, an alliance of ocean groups has just released an ad spot (an MPA PSA!) calling for establishment of marine reserves along the Southern California coast. MPAs here would benefit all sorts of marine life from octopus to seals, abalone to otters.

Heal the Bay, Surfrider Foundation, Save Our Coast and Shifting Baselines all had a hand in producing it, and it's got some star power: Bond sexy-man Pierce Brosnan, a guy from Scrubs I like, and some other people. It's for a campaign simply titled MPAs Work. 'Nuff said.

If the spot makes Joe Television stop and watch, it's a great message to get into the collective earhole:

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Here at Grist, we like to think of ourselves as trendspotters. And this is one trend we didn’t mind spotting: hot actresses are starting green websites left and right. With the launch of the most recent addition from Alicia Silverstone, we thought we’d take a peek at what lies beneath the glitz and glamour. Oh, and we figured we’d check out the websites, too.

Alicia Silverstone, thekindlife.com
Motto: “Sign up and spread the kind”
Mood: A chat with your spacy childhood friend
Worth a damn?: Too soon to tell

thekindlife.comSilverstone’s site, a cross-promotion for her book The Kind Diet, kicked off this week with a welcome video in which she describes her vision for a “blog-community thing” where she’ll give advice on the health and environmental considerations behind consumer choices. “I’m just trying to fill a need ... and I’m hoping that you’ll help me do that,” she says in this stoner-in-the-desert style confessional. Silverstone has made her eco-leanings public before, most notably through a naked PETA ad. And contrived as it may be, her presence here somehow feels authentic, as if you could write her a note (which people are starting to do) and she’d get right back to you (um, so far she’s not).

Gwyneth Paltrow, goop.com
Motto: “Nourish the inner aspect”
Mood: Spare and elegant, bordering on insufferable
Worth a damn?: Sure as Margo Tenenbaum smokes

Dominique Charriau/WireImage.comMuch has been made of this vanity website, in which Paltrow introduces marvelous, wonderful things into the lives of mere mortals. How you feel about it depends largely on how you feel about her, but we give props for the fact that it weaves in sustainability—almost naturally. Vegan recipes and recyclable socks nestle alongside accounts of taking weekend jaunts to London and getting fashion advice from Vanity Fair—you know, the stuff we all do when no one’s looking.

Tricia Helfer, triciagreen.com
Motto: “Chronicling the adventure of building a green, off-the-grid house”
Mood: Clouds and prairies and legs that go on forever
Worth a damn?: Good for a Cylon or solar fix

triciagreen.comUnlike the others on this list, Helfer—who’s either pervaded your every dream after her star turn in Battlestar Galactica or never blipped across your radar—hasn’t created a glitzy consumer site. Hers is actually an account of investigating the green options for a vacation home in her native Alberta, Canada. The quest may not garner many real-person points, but Helfer and her husband, a showbiz lawyer, manage to sound legitimately inquisitive and down to earth.

Rachel McAdams, greenissexy.org
Motto: “Tiny changes, big impact”
Mood: Bright and fun ... until you start reading
Worth a damn?: Eh, it’s a fine place to poke around for a while

Attit PatelThe Notebook beauty downplays her celebrity on this site, which she started with two friends when they realized that they were exchanging green “quips and tips” on a daily basis (and which now boasts a small slate of contributors). Her modesty is appealing, as is the green-lipstick kiss that graces every entry—but the writing is downright dull: “Hair dryers can really suck. Energy, that is.” A guide to taking action exhibits signs of life, and offers templates for writing to companies about their good (and bad) behavior, but to be true to its name, this site needs a little spark.

Julia Stiles, juliastilesstyles.com
Motto: “Helping the environment. You’re welcome.”
Mood: In your face, eco-poseurs
Worth a damn?: If you’re in a meta-mood

juliastilesstyles.comWe love a celebrity with a sense of humor, especially when it’s least expected. Which is why the eco-knockoff site created by Julia Stiles makes us just a little bit happy. The lippy actress deadpans her way through a video featuring her fashions, including a tie made from Swiffers and a shirt that doubles as pants, and then offers a “purchase” link that actually encourages visitors to donate to a food-rescue organization. Snark for a good cause? For some reason, that really resonates.

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Djimon Hounsou at the U.N. Climate SummitPhoto: United NationsActor Djimon Hounsou is just as snacky in real life as he was on the big screen in Blood Diamond, The Island, and Gladiator.  Better yet, he's also a climate activist and humanitarian.

As a global ambassador for the aid and development group Oxfam, Hounsou has traveled in sub-Saharan Africa and seen the direct links between climate change and human suffering.  "I've witnessed firsthand devastation with drought," the Benin-born actor told reporters after he helped to kick off the U.N. Summit on Climate Change.  "Year after year, [local farmers are] still expecting the rain to come pretty much as it used to.  It's not coming.  So they have to adapt, with their crops and plantings." 

Not an easy proposition in a country like Mali, which Hounsou visited on a humanitarian mission.  The average income in this Western African nation is about $3.29 a day.

Often the communities Hounsou travels to know that something has gone wrong, says Oxfam America President Ray Offenheiser.  "We held a climate hearing in Ethiopia a week or so ago.  One comment was ... 'For many many years, there were all varieties of birds here.  And now the birds are gone.'"

Signs like this are signals of a "profound change" for these communities, Offenheiser says, even if "they don't have all the information about what's happening, why it's happening, and what it means." 

"This is where the climate change story and the adaptation story become the human story," he continued. "It's about people, their lives, their livelihoods, and how they are going to change."

One of the major points of gridlock in this year's international climate-treaty negotiations is how the rich, industrialized nations are going to help the poorer developing nations adapt to and mitigate climate change -- while also continuing to send over the aid and development dollars they already provide for a host of other reasons. 

It is widely accepted now that the wealthy countries bear this responsibility; after all, they got fat and happy by creating the greenhouse-gas pollution that's now slow-cooking the Earth. But how much help should developed nations offer?  This is just one of the many contentious open questions to be addressed at December's climate-treaty talks in Copenhagen.

Oxfam estimates that wealthy nations need to come up with around $50 billion a year to help poorer nations adapt to global warming, and about another $100 billion a year to finance low-carbon development, so that these countries can ameliorate poverty without taking a coal-and-oil-fueled path to prosperity.

Hounsou hopes that if the citizens of wealthy nations better grasp the human costs of climate change, they will pressure their leaders to ante up. 

"We haven't engaged the world population into this issue yet," Hounsou says, noting that Western media in particular have not paid attention to the human component of global warming. 

Still, "no matter how you look at it, developing nations have to initiate the discussion at Copenhagen," he said.

Watch Hounsou at the U.N. Climate Summit: 

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What do Stephen Baldwin, the Pope, and the Environment Minister of the Netherlands have in common? They're all getting hot and bothered about climate change, and they were all at the premiere of Age of Stupid. (OK, the Pope sent a lackey, but he totally would have been there if he could.) Umbra Fisk surveys the scene, talking with Heather Graham, Moby, and others about the future of the planet.

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Ford custom built two battery-powered Ford Focus cars for Jay Leno, who will put celebrities behind the wheel for a segment on his new primetime NBC show.Courtesy Ford / Jay Leno ShowHollywood has is green crusaders. But Jay Leno, whose garage in Los Angeles (despite solar paneling, a steam engine and wind turbine power) is a veritable shrine to the internal combustion engine, has never been considered one.

But now, as part of his new show on NBC, Leno might just have come up with a concept that will strike an eco chord in Hollywood, and then on Main Street USA. Mr. Petrolhead could just have become Mr. Electric Car.

The new Jay Leno Show features one of the most high-profile green initiatives to date. On average, twice a week, Leno will ask his A-list guests to take part in a segment on the show called the Green Car Challenge.

"We will be asking guests to set a time round a track in the NBC parking lot in an electric Ford Focus and seeing who the fastest green celebrity is. Being a green car, celebrities can save the world and race at the same time," Leno explains out on his Burbank lot.

By marrying a zero-emission Ford with the most famous names on the planet (Drew Barrymore was the first victim on Friday), Leno has concocted a formula that has the capability of changing America's perception of eco cars.

"We wanted to show that electric cars can be fun and something you can race," says Leno. "In America, electric cars have the same cache as gold carts. To see an electric car skidding around a track, I think it has the scope to change people perceptions of eco cars."

Until now, Hollywood's greatest impact on green transportation has been its adoption of the Prius as its transport of choice -- at least to and from private jets. But with the Focus about to earn as much airtime on prime time TV as Starsky and Hutch's Gran Torino or the Dukes of Hazzard's Dodge, few in America will not experience green motoring right in their living rooms in a entertaining way.

Leno is also pleased that he has been able to wave the Stars and Stripes on this crusade. When creating the concept, he was adamant that the feature should support and promote American automotive engineering and ingenuity.

"I wanted an American manufacturer and the only one with anything ready to go and viable was Ford. GM is like a government company now. It's a little tricky to get anything done," Leno explains as he walks me round the car."

As part of a significant financial commitment, Ford has hand-built two cars in Detroit for the show. They are an amalgam of European-shaped Focus body and chassis and U.S.-developed Battery Electric Vehicle technology likely to be seen in production with 18 months.

Ford this week unveiled a Focus prototype with a 23kWh lithium-ion battery pack and a chassis-mounted 100-kilowatt permanent-magnet electric traction motor. Ford claim a range of up to 75 miles and a top speed of up to 85 mph.

Under the hood of the custom built Focus is a 23kWh lithium-ion battery pack and a chassis-mounted 100-kilowatt permanent-magnet electric traction motor.Courtesy Ford / Jay Leno ShowOut of the tight L.A. track, Leno is impressed with the punch the electric car packs. "I think this electric Focus is a fast as the petrol version of the car would be. It doesn't have the top end speed but with all that torque and on a short track I think it will be almost as quick," he reckons. "It also shows that Ford are in the game, on the cutting edge. American cars have this reputation for being great for big horsepower, gas guzzling and fast but not necessarily being fuel efficient. By doing this, Ford can change their image a bit."

Leno has a number of electric vehicles as part of his motorized menagerie. One, a Baker Electric, is a century old. It comes from an era when steam, electricity and the internal combustion engine all had a fair chance at being chosen for mainstream motoring. Gas won, of course, but now electricity is back in the running and is even a favorite of enviro hot-rodders.

"I meet guys who are hyper-miling their Prius' and getting 100 mpg or adding extra batteries, increasing tire pressure...doing whatever they can," beams an impressed Leno. "Miles per gallon is the new horsepower."

--

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The past few months have taken a mind-boggling assortment of icons, pop and otherwise, from our midst. As a green media outlet, we face a challenge on these somber occasions: How to pay tribute to people whose departure is felt by so many, but who might not have strong environmental connections. We don’t want to be in the business of creating artificial “ecobits” in which we glom onto some one-off quote from five years ago and use it to claim that, say, Patrick Swayze was a conservationist. It also doesn’t feel quite right to fall back on our usual schtick, ridiculous humor. After all, a man has died, and in a most painful and public way.

On the other hand, we do want to pay tribute to people whose work has left an imprint on American culture. In this case, in the right crowd, you can say, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” and everyone will know exactly what you mean. And has a pottery wheel ever looked the same?

Patrick Swayze was an actor, a dancer, and sometimes even a singer. (Go ahead, indulge in the 3:51 of “She’s Like the Wind.” It’s so worth it.) He was a man’s man and a ladies’ man, all at once. He and his wife, dancer Lisa Niemi, owned two ranches, one in New Mexico and one in California, and according to various co-stars he was “an amazing horseman” and “a real cowboy with a tender heart.” He toyed with the idea of making wildlife documentaries. He supported Oceana and animal rescue organizations. And according to one rabid fan site, one of his goals beyond filmmaking was “to protect as much land as possible from being destroyed.”

But those are just tenuous ties to our green beat—not unlike the ones we affectionately floated in our department meeting this morning: “Um, well, Point Break was about oceans ... Dirty Dancing had a lot of trees ... ‘She’s Like the Wind—wind power?”

What it really comes down to is that a handsome, amiable, self-effacing, studly actor has died. Not the world’s best actor, and not an actor who was trying to save the world. But a guy who made his mark, whether he was rescuing Baby from the corner or pounding the shit out of some guy on a truck. This inappropriate but loving tribute from one film blog seems to sum it up nicely: “Has anyone else ever been in so many bad movies that everyone loves?”

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Jay Leno's electric slide began long before the "Green Car Challenge."Photo: Alan Light via FlickrOn his new show, which launched Monday night, Jay Leno will flaunt to the world his crush on electric cars.

Leno's show will feature the "Green Car Challenge," wherein celeb guests race against each other in specially built Ford electric cars for the best lap times on a specially built race track. The first guest in the hot seat will be Drew Barrymore (an obvious guest to kick things off, since we all know she likes riding in cars with boys), when she appears on the show Friday, Sept. 18.

Ford is pumped about this primetime opportunity to plug its Focus BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle), which is due out in 2011, and is eager to show that unlike some Detroit automakers, it didn't kill the electric car. Instead, Ford wants the public to know how fun! fun! fun! it is to drive electric cars and dispel any myths that they'll leave you and your family stranded in a bad part of town at night far, far away from any recharging stations. These all-electric cars, unlike hybrids, will be totally reliant on lithium-ion batteries and will be able to zoom around for 100 miles on a single charge.

No word yet on whether NASCAR driver and all-around-badass-green Leilani Munter will be invited by Leno for an electrifying spin around the track this season.

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We know. There's nothing green about owning a 20,000-square foot house, or flying in a private jet, or stocking a wardrobe the size of a studio apartment. Famous actors indisputably leave a much larger carbon footprint than the average citizen. But their celebrity gives them a far greater ability to influence others, so their efforts toward eco-consciousness can make a difference. Two years ago Grist published a list of green actors. Now we give you an updated version: some younger, fresher faces whose greenness may not be as dark or deep as that of Robert Redford and Ed Begley Jr., but who could be on their way to becoming Hollywood's next green dream team.

Photo: Hengist Decius

He drives a hybrid, has a solar-powered house in London, works with Global Green U.S.A., and helped launch Global Cool, a campaign to fight climate change and encourage people to take small eco-friendly steps. "I'm very passionate about the environment, he told Elle magazine, going on to say he thinks it's "terrifying" that the icebergs he witnessed on a Pirates shoot near Antarctica could be gone within a few years.

Photo: Attit Patel

A mean girl on the screen, a green girl in real life, McAdams embodies the title of her eco-blog, Green Is Sexy. She declares that "her bike is still her vehicle of choice," and that she's "switching her house to green power and developing an OCD for unplugging anything with a plug." McAdams lives a relatively low-profile life in her native Canada and dreams of one day raising a family on a farm and growing her own food.

The Entourage star has a green-themed renovation TV series, Alter Eco, that follows the eco-makeover of his own home and offers tips for others aiming to green their lifestyles. He drives a Prius, of course, and has been known to tote a sign declaring "green is gold." In 2008 he was awarded the Blue Sky Award for Environmental Activism at the Vail Film Festival.

Photo: Jim Spellman / WireImage

"I cannot not be green," Watson told a French magazine. "I did my end-of-school project on global warming and Hurricane Katrina. ... My car is electric, I recycle, I take public transportation, I try not to buy and drink bottled water. I'm not perfect, but it's something I feel strongly about." The interview inspired Greenpeace to ask her to serve as a global ambassador (no word yet on her response). She even donated to the Wild Trout Trust. Witch enviro cause will be next?

Emily (left) and Zooey DeschanelPhoto: Jeff Vespa / WireImage

These sisters' greenness only increases their dreaminess. Emily's been vegan for at least 15 years and is involved with the farm-animal protection group Farm Sanctuary. Zooey appeared in the environmental-disaster-themed but critically panned flick The Happening and helped kick off a national T-shirt recycling program last year. Both sisters regularly participate in the Humane Society's Genesis Awards. And apparently Emily convinced former Fox Chairman Peter Ligouri to try going vegan. Badass!

Jake Gyllenhaal (right) at a Global Green USA event.Photo: John Shearer / WireImage

A truly manic organic, Gyllenhaal wears organic Loomstate jeans, buys organic puppy chow, and even hatched plans to open an organic restaurant, though the project appears not to have come to fruition yet. He's worked with Global Green USA to raise awareness about climate change and launch a Green Schools initiative that promotes energy efficiency and organic gardening in schools. Wonder what he thinks about his sister's fur flop.

Photo: Paul Morigi / WireImage

The vegetarian Heroes star figures as something of an eco-action hero in the new documentary The Cove, about the secret slaughter of 20,000 dolphins a year in a small cove in Japan. She received a "Compassion in Action" award from PETA in 2007 for her work saving the dolphins. A lot of celebrities donate money to worthy causes, but not many don a wetsuit and paddle into dolphin-hunter-infested waters to defend their beliefs.

Photo: Michael Bezjian / WireImage

It's hard not to be into Johansson, who helped design T-shirts to benefit the Rainforest Foundation, starred in a PSA encouraging cell phone recycling, and auctioned herself to raise money for Oxfam. Does it count as recycling that a used tissue of hers sold for $5,300 on eBay, with proceeds going to USA Harvest?

Photo: John Mira

A vegan (and vegetarian since childhood), Portman had her own vegan shoe line until the end of last year. She teamed up with Jack Hanna for an Animal Planet documentary about endangered gorillas. Even as a tween she was green, singing backup in a recycling video for World Patrol Kids.

Photo: Chris Weeks / WireImage

Besides auctioning herself as a lunch date to benefit farm-animal protection group Farm Sanctuary, and being named a Sexiest Vegetarian by PETA, Bell starred in this almost-too-cute-to-be-true GAP ad encouraging people to vote on behalf of "those who can't talk and those who can't write" (birds, bees, flowers, trees, icebergs, seas, etc.). We won't be forgetting her anytime soon.

Photo: Anita Bugge / WireImage

She did a spot for The CW's "Free 2 Be Green" campaign with Gossip Girl co-stars Leighton Meester and Penn Badgley on simple energy conservation (like snuggling up to your hot co-stars instead of turning up the thermostat). Tries to buy "green everything" at the grocery store and apparently helped convince the Gossip Girl crew to favor reusable mugs and cut down on bottled water.

Photo: Volker Neumann

Though he's earned critical acclaim for his acting in recent years, Mos Def is more famous for his musical career, and that's also where his green sympathies shine through. Last fall he headlined the Living Word Festival in Oakland, an event with an "eco-equity" theme that included bamboo-building activities and a green-themed graffiti battle in addition to musical performances, and he tackled water issues in his 1999 tune "New World Water."

Photo: Mark O'Donald

Okay, don't judge. Even though she loves country fried steak too much to be a vegetarian, Cyrus gets serious props for trading in her Porsche SUV for a hybrid, finding good homes for the chickens featured in Hannah Montana: The Movie (for which PETA gave her a Compassionate Citizen Award), recording a global warming song for her latest album, and being one of the faces of Disney's new Friends for Change environmental campaign. She may be jailbait, but she's probably the most influential person on this list.

Photo: Mark Sebastian

Although she's had some transgressions over the years -- like allegedly taking a private jet to Obama's inauguration -- Alba deserves cred for the green nursery she built for daughter Honor Marie. In fact, her whole home is pretty green, outfitted with used furniture and accessories, non-toxic paint, and a saltwater pool. She shops at the farmers market, drives a Prius, bikes around Paris, bakes vegan cupcakes for her kid, and lends her support to a ton of worthy causes, like Johnson's Clean Water Initiative. And did we mention she chose an all-natural hypnobirth?

He's been lost on a jungle island, and in Middle Earth, for years, so it's no surprise that he has some respect for the planet. Monaghan filmed a spot for PETA and even bought a forest in India to save it from destruction.

Thank God for Disney Channel child stars. Without Gomez and Kermit the Frog's PSA, how would today's tweens have known that half the world's frogs are endangered? Gomez sets an example for her impressionable fans by rocking T-shirts with enviro messages, taking out her family's recycling bin, and shopping at the farmers market. For paparazzi eagerly awaiting a who's-greener cat fight between Gomez and Cyrus, the opposite seems to be coming true: the starlets have teamed up with Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers in Send it On, a cheesy (but hopefully inspirational?) protect-the-planet pop song for Disney's Friends for Change campaign.

Another vegan, Phoenix doesn't walk the line when it comes to environmentalism. He got attention for narrating the brutal 2005 documentary Earthlings, which Ellen DeGeneres says inspired her to go vegan. In addition to being a PETA member, he supports the environmental education organization HEART (and his sister has an eco-friendly building supply store in Florida).

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Photo: Mark O'DonaldWake up, America!
Miley Cyrus, the JoBros, and other Disney mouseketeers tweensters want you to "send it on" -- your love for the earth, that is. However, when it comes to this sugar-pop single, we suggest you only send it on to your worst enemies.

Bagging climate change
It's Jack Handey meets eco-advert ... but we're pretty sure it's just a bunch of hot air.

Photo: Ricardo FariaSpooning
What happens to all those ice-cream taster spoons once you've slurped off the chunky monkey? They become the light of your life!

Onion rings true
PETA: "We have no intention of changing our tactics until every last animal on the planet is given more respect than women."

Heard it through the grapevine
EPA admin Lisa Jackson on Obama: "I haven't seen a brother take on so many issues at once since Marvin Gaye put 'What's Going On,' 'Mercy Mercy Me,' and 'Inner City Blues' all on the same album." How sweet it is, indeed.

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Show them all the Jonas they possess inside.

It’s easy to smirk at Selena and Miley
They don’t seem to work, and they’re far too smiley.
And when they record a new eco-song,
Who can afford to listen for long?

But here is the thing us fogeys must know:
When tween angels sing, even if the songs blow,
The messages hurled in each sappy chorus
Will help save the world—for the next ones, not for us.

Hat tip to Ecorazzi—if you give hat tips to people who make bad songs burrow into your brain.

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Photo: Yuriy via PicasaDive into the NRDC's new documentary Acid Test and you're immediately immersed in a beautiful undersea world complete with vibrant coral reefs, graceful kelp beds, and rhythmic schools of fish.

But Acid Test is no Blue Planet, thanks to heavy use of green-screen technology. And what's in front of those screens is a lot less pleasant than the fish porn projected onto them. (No offense to the scientists, commercial fisherfolk, and other experts who are doing the talking, of course -- it's more about what they're saying.)

The 30 minute film, part of Discovery Planet Green's "Blue August" month of online and onscreen ocean coverage, is about the threat of ocean acidification, the gradual chemical changes in our waters linked to increased levels of carbon dioxide. Just how much CO2? Turns out that since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has absorbed about one quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels.

But don't go celebrating all the sequestered CO2 that's been kept from contributing to global warming, because it's beginning to cause more problems than it's solving, increasing the acidity of the water by 30 percent. And that acidity is starting to dissolve seashells in areas as close to home as the California coast, meaning tragic consequences for many organisms -- and the millions more who count on them for food, including us.

It's a scary phenomenon that scientists are only just coming to understand, and it's only going to get worse -- leaving us with "an urgent choice," as narrator Sigourney Weaver puts it, "to move beyond fossil fuels or to risk turning the ocean into a sea of weeds."

As you watch Acid Test, keep an eye on the beauty projected onto the green screen and the choice seems pretty obvious.

Acid Test premieres tonight on Planet Green and continues to air throughout the month. Catch the trailer below:

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A Penny Saved Is…

So long and thanks for all the fish

Photo: Howie Berlin via FlickrNo joker
Oscar-worthy performances and a waltzing Matilda definitely make the list of 10 things we love about you, Heath Ledger. Now we're adding your grimm music video and devotion to animal rights.

Photo: .imelda via FlickrBreaking wind news
To protest the closure of a Vestas turbine plant, seven activists glued themselves together. We think it'd have been funnier more effective if they'd glued themselves to the actual turbine blades … but that's just us.

Shower curtain call
Ways to save the Brazilian rainforest: peeing in the shower! Also, not clearcutting.

Photo: bhsher via FlickrAha!
Source of man-made global warming traced to devout alpine community.

Photo: Genosfear via FlickrBlow by blow
Wind Turbine Syndrome may be just a bunch of hot air, but that doesn't mean that renewable energy isn't hazardous to your health. See: Solar Panel Syndrome (aka sunburn) and Hydropower Syndrome (aka drowning).

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Freeing the grid

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

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Friday music blogging: Harper Simon

Climate Citizen: Mary Stuart Masterson

Friday music blogging: Phosphorescent