For six days and counting now, hundreds of protesters have gathered outside the White House to demand President Obama intervene and stop the construction of an oil pipeline that will span the breadth of the United States — from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico. Over 300 of them have been arrested — and not just wild-eyed idealistic college students, but high-profile advocates including environmental leader Bill McKibben. Despite all this, the administration says this is a question for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The bad news: just because those American Spirit cigarettes you're smoking are self-proclaimed "eco-friendly" does not mean that they won't turn your alveoli into tiny tar-filled tunnels of death. The worse news: cigarettes could be as bad for you as hot dogs. Damn.

Despite the fact that our entire global ecosystem is set to collapse into one big festering pool of chlorine at 6 p.m. on August 12, 2018, American are not in any "rush" to let it affect our spending habits. The latest "earth-friendly" product we're telling to fuck off and die: anything refillable. That's not American.

Often, kids these days are pessimistic; they don't think they have the power to change anything. But one plucky group of teens is standing up for themselves, by suing the U.S. government for not protecting the earth. Whoa, citizens!

Not too many years ago, the American economy was booming, and a population engorged with internet-stock money began moving to Berkeley, buying solar panels, and proclaiming that its consumer products needed to be "green," for the sake of saving the earth. "Money is no object!" proclaimed the typical American consumer, circa 2007. "My household cleaner must be 'green' certified, for what price is too high to pay to save the earth, while cleaning? That is a silly, rhetorical question."

If there's one issue related to factory farming that our nation's legislators need to address, it's the extreme perils of... people filming what's going on at factory farms, and showing the public. Iowa will put a stop to this!

An Ecuadorean judge yesterday ordered Chevron to pay—wait for it—$8.6 billion, for polluting the Amazon region. It's one of the biggest environmental judgments ever, if not the biggest. It comes after the case had dragged on for 17 years.

Fox News science columnist Gene Koprowski has a long history of standing up against this "global warming" foolishness. Today, he's seeking sources to to explain the "ridiculousness" of the idea of global warming causing snow. Can you imagine?

[One of the suites at the new Beach Garbage Hotel in Madrid, Spain, which was made entirely out of trash and constructed to draw attention to pollution in the world's oceans. A picture of the hotel's exterior below.]

In three more years, you literally will not be able to purchase a good old-fashioned light bulb any more. It'll be 100% twisty, pale CFL bulbs. Which, they now tell us, aren't as amazing as promised.

Italy is the latest place to ban plastic bags. Why visit, now?

Parents: Did you already get Junior that $0.99 lead-enriched plastic coal lump for this year's Christmas present during the maniacal "Black Friday" stampede? Morons! You should've ponied up for "Resisting the Green Dragon," the Religious Right's anti-environmentalist DVD series.

L.A. County has banned plastic grocery bags. That's six billion bags a year, unrealized.

First they did away with the biodegradable (but loud) Sun Chips bag. Then we found out that most "green" product labels are full of lies. And now, even faux-concerned Americans appear to be tiring of buying environmentally friendly crap.

Guilty Americans enjoy nothing more than assuaging our collective guilt over raping the earth by purchasing "green" products, with labels helpfully telling us how these "green" products are saving the planet. Too bad they're almost all fake, somehow.

Bans on plastic bags: now spreading to non-hippie environs. Beware.

Good or bad news, depending on whether you assign more moral weight to preserving our planet's environment or to quiet snacking technology: Sun Chips is retiring its incredibly-loud-when-crinkling biodegradable bag. The environment's nice and everything, but...loud crinkling sounds. Priorities. [USAT]

Inspired by his concern for the future of our planet, Akinori Ito of the Blest Corporation has invented something truly amazing and potentially game-changing for all of us: a machine that converts plastic garbage into oil. It's truly incredible.

I'm no "LEED certified environmental consultant" or "person with a grasp of basic science," but it seems to me that brewing coffee one cup at a time via disposable plastic "K-cups" is a mite wasteful. Well, that's just "consumer perception."

Peter Bethune, a Sea Shepherd boat captain, was arrested in March for illegally boarding a Japanese whaling ship in the Pacific. He has admitted to some charges, but says he had "good reason" to board the vessel. [Guardian, pic]