Lust, greed, and murder, it seems, are a thing of the past, according to the Vatican. Drug use and life-saving genetic experimentation are what's hot, at least according to the updated thou-shall-not list, which Pope Benedict XVI has modernized for today's lifestyle. The Associated Press tells us that among this season's newest sins, environmental sustainability, or lack thereof, made the list. On the environment, both Pope Benedict XVI and the late Pope John Paul......

Mere days after the head of the environmental department broke with Aaron Peskin and other city leaders on a Public Utilities Commission policy, this week Peskin introduced a wee bit of legislation that would obliterated said department. Yoinks....

Photo of a large bird doing its best to survive in a somewhat polluted environment. ...

Wired Magazine has an interesting feature piece on what we believe to be one of those "only in San Francisco" kinda businesses: a mechanic who not only specializes in hybrids, but attempts to run a green garage. ...

Today's the day! They've finally restarted Southwest service out of SFO, so those of you who hate to schlep all the way to Oakland so you can stand in line for a non-guaranteed seat assignment can rejoice. Gavin Newsom said it was good for the environment to have Southwest at all three Bay Area airports so people can go to the airport closest to their house. We hope Gavin's taking BART or Caltrain to his......

Last week's winner, the San Jose Metro: Gary Singh wants the San Jose flea market to move to City Hall. Folks moving from city to city to run for office -- hey, at least they actually move into the city they want to represent down in the South Bay. Ed Jew, take a note! Cover: yay the environment, reduce your carbon footprint by buying a Prius. There's a gymnastics meet on the Olympics circuit this......

Whoa! Check out the SF Solar Map! Using Googlemap tech, SF Environment and CH2MHill have teamed up to show you where the solar installations are throughout the city. And if you plug in your address, it'll give you approximate numbers on how much energy you could generate with solar, how much dough you'd save, and how much carbon you'd save the environment....

Green Wombat was at the Bank of America / Redwood Forest Foundation announcement yesterday, which took place at the "urban redwoods" next to the Transamerica Pyramid. As part of the bank's $20 billion "green lending initiative," it's providing 100 percent financing to the non-profit for the acquisition of 50,635 acres of redwood timberlands in Northern California....

"Low carb diet" had a lot of buzz in the past few years. Perhaps "low carbon diet" is next. A while ago we wrote about the possibility of saving the world through cuisine. We were being a little hyperbolic, of course. But a new diet, written by two Bay Area residents, quite literally aims to save the environment via your food consumption....

Toss out your gaslamps, San Francisco, because Gavin wants you to get a FREE LIGHT BULB! WOW! In his latest newsletter, he's tipped us off to Yahoo's Be A Better Planet contest. The idea is that by clattering around on the internet talking about the color green, we can save the whales or something! Whatever, all's we know is that you get a free light bulb for signing up. As an added bonus, the......

Our friends to the south have come under some uncomfortable scrutiny lately for all the toxic junk they dump into landfills. Greenpeace in particular has been pretty critical of Apple's use of mercury and poisonous fire retardants -- substances from which other computer companies have been moving away. Well, good news, greenies: Apple is oh so gradually cleaning up its act. Goodbye, lead! Goodbye, arsenic! Goodbye, decabromodiphenyl ether (coincidentally, our drag name)! In a......

Now that going green is the AIDS ribbon of the aughts, it only seemed like matter of time before a green taxicab company would be unleashed before the unsuspecting masses. And it is-- ladies and gentlemen, may we introduce to you, the one and only Billy Shears. No wait, Green Cab. ...

The Governator continues to go where no Governor has gone before and will go on MTV's "Pimp My Ride" to pimp his ride. Actually, several other Governors have appeared on reality shows before. Michigan's Governor Jennifer Granholm tried out for "America's Next Top Model" and former Governor George Allen is all set to appear on the new reality show "I Swear I'm Not a Racist" along with Don Imus and Michael Richards. ...

The SFPUC has a nifty little idea to help the city go green and that is to turn all the leftover grease from city restaurant's into biodiesel fuel for diesel buses. It’s the proverbial killing two birds with one stone proposal as it will prevent grease from making a mess in the sewage system while helping the environment. All of this is part of what's called a B20 plan which states that it would be super swell if we use a formula of 80% gas and 20% biodiesel. ...

Here's todays wrap up of the news...

Noted wit and CNN's suck up to conservatives, Glenn Beck is highly amused by our paper bag ban. Because making fun of helping the environment is funny, see. Maybe not Karl Rove dancing funny (have you seen the video yet? The whole thing is so scary we wished we were blind), but almost as funny. So he's got something going on to punk us here in San Francisco for being nothing but a bunch of smelly, tree hugging hippies who want to help baby seals from choking on plastic bags. ...

Hey, don't you hate how expensive it is to replace inkjet and laser printer cartridges? Well, guess what, you can have them refilled with new ink that's mixed on site at Cartridge World for about half the price of new ones! How cool is that? They have one location in downtown San Francisco at Steuart and Mission and several locations throughout the Bay Area. Refilling printer cartridges and keeping them out of landfills is one example of how a company can reduce office waste and increase their bottom line while helping the environment. Businesses are catching onto the benefits of going green, and there are many resources out there to help get them started. Presidio School of Management has created a useful Sustainability Dictionary, and large corporations can consult Environmental Defense, a nonprofit that has helped Wal-Mart, McDonald's, DuPont and Fed Ex "do well by doing good."...

There are not many words that scares us more than the words "interpretive dance." And there are not many phrases that scare us more than "examines modern man’s increasing disconnection from community, ritual and the environment." Throw both of them together and you got something that makes us want to run to VH-1 as fast as possible. So we went to see Loose Change's recent show, "Human Nature" at the Yerba Buena Center for the......

We'll get to L'Affaire Newsom in a bit.... -Teacher in library stand off says she wanted to do something about bullying-- by keeping kids in a library and using one as a shield...

So San Francisco's Department of the Environment-- you know we had one didn't you?-- has come out with their plans to make this city go green. Or more like cutting down on those nasty, nasty greenhouse gases so we can cut emissions to pre-1990 levels. The report was called for by Gavin as part of his Climate Action Plan, which he introduced in 2004. ...

So here's the deal: over a year ago, the Board of Supes passed a measure that would cut down on the amount of plastic bags supermarkets and other big sized stores hand out to customers. Gotta save the environment. Now, according to that measure, stores were supposed to check in with the Board to let them know how everything was going. They haven't done it. And not only have they not done it, they got the state legislature to give them a few loopholes to not have to do it....

Hey, here's an idea for a reality TV game show: your a municipal department in a big-ish city and you're about 15 million dollars in debt and have only six months to find the money. What do you? Raise parking fees? Increase parking tickets? Try and win it all at Cash Creek? And you know who would be eligible to play? The Municipal Transit Agency as they're $15 million dollars in debt and have till July 1 to do something about it. ...

Last night, Arnie wheeled himself out on his crutches to give everyone the State of the State speech. How is the state doing? Fabulous, as always. Why? Because we're all working together. And because we, not the children, are the future. In fact, he said California could be the shining example to the rest of the country on how to move forward on everything from health care to the environment. In his speech, he called us the "modern equivalent of the ancient city states of Athens and Sparta" which is high praise indeed. But who is Sparta and who is Athens? We think we're more Athens than Sparta but would that mean LA is Sparta? San Diego? Bakersfield? Or maybe we're Sparta and LA is Athens. We always preferred Athens over Sparta, but then again, if we were Sparta we could go up to some interloper and kick them into a giant hole while yelling "We are Sparta!!!!" at the top of our lungs like in that scene from the trailer for 300. Man, that movie looks awesome. ...

With it being 2007, there's a whole bunch of new laws that are either to start right now or will be slowly phased in. Some of them are big deals, some of them seem fairly obvious, and some of them make you wonder what the hell. ...

-The Sierra's finally say hello to snow. -2007 is going to be the Health Care-iffic. -The San Francisco Transportation Authority is all set to begin an environmental review for a rapid transit bus line on Van Ness. How much difference in the environment could a MUNI bus being on time be?...

Have you been following the drama with the city's bike plan? It's BANANAS, and there's no end in sight. Basically: the city wants to paint bike lanes and allow bikes on trains and so on. But someone sued the city, saying that bicycles might hurt the environment. So, now the city has to do an environmental review in order to prove that the lawsuit is bats**t insane. For now, the city can still PLAN......

Now that summer's sun has given way to winter's gloom, the concerns of our air have moved from day to night. What does this mean other than a lousy attempt at being poetic? We're moving into "Spare the Night" nights. Like the one called last night....

He's in New York! Tuesday he took off to the Big Apple to attend a three day event for the Clinton Global Initiative conference. That's Clinton as in Bill Clinton, not George Clinton. The Clinton Global Initiative is some big huge three day conference in which various political and governmental big wigs gather to discuss the environment and helping the poor people and Africa and all that stuff that George Clooney and Angelina Jolie talk about. ...

It has been decided that the Governator and Phil Angelides are going to have an actual real live debate on October 7. But instead of a bunch of boring reporters asking boring questions that nobody cares about, they're going to do it all interactive like and are soliciting questions from us, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Smith-Public. So if you want to ask a question, just go to this here site and ask away. The California Broadcasting Association will then go through them and decide which questions will be asked with cash prizes being given out to the winning questions! No, we're just joking about that. ...

For those rooting for the Bay Area's 2016 Olympic bid, today is a big day as the Bay Area Olympic committee, or BAOC ("Didn't get to bed last night/Oh, the way the paper bag was on my knee/Man, I had a dreadful flight..."), will present to the US Olympic Committee their bid to host the Olympics. And leading the charge in today's meeting will be Gavin His Ownself, hoping that just his meer aura will see us through. ...