Hybrid Living

Well, Earth Day 2008 has come and gone. How did you celebrate? We marked the occasion by handing out the first EnviroWonk "Earth Day Hypocrisy Awards." You can check out the full list of award winners here.

We're really not total Earth Day cynics, and if you don't believe us, then take a look at some of the other fantastic posts we brought you this week. Perhaps we shouldn't be shocked that most involve California:

• Air quality regulators in the San Francisco Bay Area are expected to approve a new fee for businesses next month that is tied to greenhouse gas emissions.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger and 17 other governors signed a Declaration on Climate Change last Friday that is aimed at strengthening federal-state partnerships. A nice symbolic gesture, but a few specific targets would have been nice.
• In our favorite bit of news from this week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said he wants to make it a crime in his city not to recycle.
• A new report by the Environmental Defense Fund suggests that reducing global carbon emissions will cost just 1 percent of our GDP in 2030.
• Finally, a new study confirms what we already knew: EPA employees are subject to lots of political pressure. We just didn't realize how bad it really was.