Algae is being eagerly investigated for its ability to remove vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, turning it into oxygen. It was this process that originally led to the creation of the Earth’s current atmospheric composition and allowed for life as we know it. It was also the decomposition of algae on the ocean floor that eventually led to many of today’s existing petroleum deposits.

“So we are harvesting sunshine directly using algae, then we are extracting that stored energy in the form of oil from the alga and then using that to make fuels and other non-petroleum based products,” said Steve Skill of Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

Plymouth scientists are not the only ones working on turning algae into viable fuel. Companies trying to get into the game include Sapphire Energy, Origin Oil, BioCentric Energy and PetroAlgae. Japan Airlines has already test-flown a plane fueled with a combination of biofuels (some derived from algae) and conventional jet fuel.

Part of the appeal of algae biofuel is the same as that of other biofuels — because plants absorb carbon dioxide while they grow, they are thought to make up for the carbon dioxide emissions when fuels derived from them are burned. Algae has the added benefit of growing well in places unsuitable for human food production, this making it less likely to affect food prices as corn-derived ethanol has been accused of doing. It also grows 20-30 times faster than most food crops.

Scientists from Plymouth and elsewhere are also investigating algae for its ability to absorb the carbon dioxide given off by the burning of fossil fuels. Brazilian company MPX Energia is already planning to start using algae to capture emissions from a coal plant as soon as 2011.

We’ve partnered with the Million Car Carbon Campaign to help you find ways to save energy and reduce your carbon footprint. This campaign is uniting conscious consumers around the world to prevent the emissions-equivalent of 1 million cars from entering the atmosphere each year.

Keep reading for 10 simple things you can do today to help reduce your environmental impact, save money, and live a happier, healthier life. For more advice, purchase State of the World 2010 – Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability, a report from 60 renowned researchers and practitioners on how to reorient cultures toward sustainability.

Save energy to save money.
• Set your thermostat a few degrees lower in the winter and a few degrees higher in the summer to save on heating and cooling costs.
• Install compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) when your older incandescent bulbs burn out.
• Unplug appliances when you’re not using them. Or, use a “smart” power strip that senses when appliances are off and cuts “phantom” or “vampire” energy use.
• Wash clothes in cold water whenever possible. As much as 85 percent of the energy used to machine-wash clothes goes to heating the water.
• Use a drying rack or clothesline to save the energy otherwise used during machine drying.
Save water to save money.
• Take shorter showers to reduce water use. This will lower your water and heating bills too.
• Install a low-flow showerhead. They don’t cost much, and the water and energy savings can quickly pay back your investment.
• Make sure you have a faucet aerator on each faucet. These inexpensive appliances conserve heat and water, while keeping water pressure high.
• Plant drought-tolerant native plants in your garden. Many plants need minimal watering. Find out which occur naturally in your area.
Less gas = more money (and better health!).
• Walk or bike to work. This saves on gas and parking costs while improving your cardiovascular health and reducing your risk of obesity.
• Consider telecommuting if you live far from your work. Or move closer. Even if this means paying more rent, it could save you money in the long term.
• Lobby your local government to increase spending on sidewalks and bike lanes. With little cost, these improvements can pay huge dividends in bettering your health and reducing traffic.

Eat smart.
• If you eat meat, add one meatless meal a week. Meat costs a lot at the store-and it’s even more expensive when you consider the related environmental and health costs.
• Buy locally raised, humane, and organic meat, eggs, and dairy whenever you can. Purchasing from local farmers keeps money in the local economy.
• Watch videos about why local food and sustainable seafood are so great.
• Whatever your diet, eat low on the food chain . This is especially true for seafood.
Skip the bottled water.
• Use a water filter to purify tap water instead of buying bottled water. Not only is bottled water expensive, but it generates large amounts of container waste.
• Bring a reusable water bottle, preferably aluminum rather than plastic, with you when traveling or at work.
• Check out this short article for the latest on bottled water trends.
Think before you buy.
• Go online to find new or gently used secondhand products. Whether you’ve just moved or are looking to redecorate, consider a service like craigslist or FreeSharing to track down furniture, appliances, and other items cheaply or for free.
• Check out garage sales, thrift stores, and consignment shops for clothing and other everyday items.
• When making purchases, make sure you know what’s “Good Stuff” and what isn’t.
• Watch a video about what happens when you buy things. Your purchases have a real impact, for better or worse.

Borrow instead of buying.
• Borrow from libraries instead of buying personal books and movies. This saves money, not to mention the ink and paper that goes into printing new books.
• Share power tools and other appliances. Get to know your neighbors while cutting down on the number of things cluttering your closet or garage.
Buy smart.
• Buy in bulk. Purchasing food from bulk bins can save money and packaging.
• Wear clothes that don’t need to be dry-cleaned. This saves money and cuts down on toxic chemical use.
• Invest in high-quality, long-lasting products. You might pay more now, but you’ll be happy when you don’t have to replace items as frequently (and this means less waste!).

Keep electronics out of the trash.
• Keep your cell phones, computers, and other electronics as long as possible.
• Donate or recycle them responsibly when the time comes. E-waste contains mercury and other toxics and is a growing environmental problem.
• Recycle your cell phone.
• Ask your local government to set up an electronics recycling and hazardous waste collection event.

Make your own cleaning supplies.
• The big secret: you can make very effective, non-toxic cleaning products whenever you need them. All you need are a few simple ingredients like baking soda, vinegar, lemon, and soap.
• Making your own cleaning products saves money, time, and packaging-not to mention your indoor air quality.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott is best known as head of the second expedition to reach the South Pole, and who, with his team, died on the return trip in 1912. But unlike other polar explorers, he also made a variety of high-quality scientific collections, said David Barnes, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey.

“Now that people are very interested in change in the polar regions, those specimens have become incredibly valuable as the only source of information at that time,” Barnes told LiveScience.com.
These included samples of the tiny animals, a species of bryozoan called Cellarinella nutti, collected with data on the longitude, latitude and depth, Barnes said. Like trees, these creatures produce annual growth rings, giving researchers a window into how growth rates may have changed over time.
Scott’s specimens, along with others, allowed Barnes and his collaborators to compare growth rates for the creatures living on the floor of the Ross Sea from 1890 to 2008.

Like corals, most bryozoans secrete calcium carbonate to form their hard exoskeletons as they grow. The team found that growth rates, or the calcium carbonate each specimen acquired per year, remained roughly constant from 1890 through 1970, although there was a great deal of variability in the 1950s and 1960s. The next available data, from the 1990s to 2008, showed the bryozoans’ growth rates doubled, so the animals were adding twice as much calcium carbonate per year.

The animals are most likely growing because more of their food – marine algae called phytoplankton – is available for longer periods, allowing them to consume — and grow — more, Barnes said. However, it’s not clear why phytoplankton blooms are lasting longer in the Ross Sea, he said.

“This is not an area of Antarctica that is warming, and it’s not an area that seems to be losing sea ice,” Barnes said, noting that current measurements might overlook local changes in temperature or sea ice that are relevant to the bryozoans’ growth.
Even though it appears that climate change near the South Pole may not be responsible for the recent surge in growth among these animals, their growth could have implications for climate change.

The bryozoans grow like a forest across the sea bed. Currents along the ocean bottom break them up and they become buried on the seafloor, taking the nutrients they contain, including the carbon, out of the food chain and the surrounding water. So, the more these creatures grow, the more carbon is locked away in the seafloor. This creates what is called a carbon sink.

Carbon sinks counteract the effects of humans’ greenhouse gas emissions by removing some of the carbon humans are spilling into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. (Trees also create a carbon sink by sucking up carbon dioxide and sequestering the carbon in their wood, taking it — at least temporarily — out of the atmosphere.)

In Great Britain, declines in butterflies led researchers to consider saving the butterflies by moving them to cooler areas. Researchers at Durham University caught Marbled White and Small Skipper butterflies in North Yorkshire, and transplanted them to County Durham and Northumberland where, eight years later, the species were found to be thriving. Professor Brian Huntley of Durham University hailed this experiment in “assisted colonisation” as a possible role in wildlife conservation.
This idea is also being pondered among conservation biologists in the United States. Known as “assisted migration” moving a butterfly to a more congenial place presents many problems. Will a butterfly fit in the new home? What about the plants it depends on or other aspects of its habitat? Which butterflies should be moved?

At UC Davis, California, Arthur Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology for 35 years, monitored fixed routes for butterfly populations twice a month at ten sites from Suisun Bay to the Sierra Nevada in central California, accumulating data on over 150 species of butterflies. On April 18, 2005, Shapiro counted 21 species and 378 individual butterflies in Gates Canyon near Vacaville.
On April 18 of the following year, 2006, Shapiro counted just 10 species and 43 individual butterflies. “Butterflies,” Shapiro notes in 2010, “are being hit hard by the combination of lower temperatures and habitat loss.”

“I used to be able to walk 15 minutes from my lab and find common sootywing larvae. Now I know of only one permanent colony in the whole county,” Shapiro says. “Butterflies that were once considered utterly common, including willow hairstreak, large marble and West Coast lady, are going into a tailspin.”

Shapiro reported three major findings: Butterfly diversity is being lost at sea level but is increasing at tree line as butterflies migrate to cooler areas. High elevation butterflies are being lost since they cannot move higher. When an area changes from rural to urban or suburban, the greatest butterfly losses occur.

At the University of Melbourne, Australia, butterflies are found to be emerging 10 days earlier than they did 65 years ago. This led researchers to establish, for the first time, a causal link between “increasing greenhouse gases, regional warming, and the change in timing of a natural event.” Researchers found that air temperature around the city of Melbourne has been increasing incrementally every decade, and, over the 65 year period, the Common Brown butterfly (Heteronympha merope) has shifted its emergence date 1.6 days earlier per decade.

There are two types of rainforests—temperate (found along the Pacific cost) and tropical rainforests (near the equator). The largest is in the Amazon Basin. Do you know that once rainforests covered more than 14 percent of the earth’s land surface and now they cover only two percent? Tragically, if they continued to be ravished by the current rate of indiscriminate consumption, it is estimated that all the rainforests will vanish in less than 40 years.

The one truly amazing fact is that even with their shrinking size, within the rainforests live almost 50 percent of the world’s animals and plants. And, although rainforest ingredients make up 25 percent of the cancer-fighting pharmaceuticals used today, scientists have tested less than one percent of their tropical plants and trees. Think about those yet to be discovered! Additionally, the Amazon Basin contains one-fifth of the entire planet’s fresh water. It’s not too hard to imagine what will happen if the rainforests cease to exist.

What is destroying the precious resources that can be found only in the rainforests?
The answer is quite simple and very disturbing. The industrialized countries, with only one quarter of the earth’s population, consume four fifths of all the resources of the world. In order to meet our greedy needs, the forests have been cut, the land cleared and the natural resources of the rainforests have been decimated. Even tourism, which is good in so many ways, has contributed to the devastation of the rainforests because of hap hazard road building. Unless the governments and the indigenous people of the rainforest countries are taught other ways of making the lands of the rainforests profitable to them, there is no hope.

It is the belief of many experts that the rainforests have far greater value (both economically and humanely) if they were left as is and their diversity of medicinal plants, nuts and fruits were harvested than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber. To say nothing of saving so many endangered animals.

How to Save the Rainforest
At home:
• Recycle everything that is allowed by your local recycling company. By recycling products, you’ll be helping to reduce the number of natural resources needed for the production of new products.

• Store food in containers that are reusable, instead of using plastic or aluminum foil.

• Don’t run the water needlessly.

• Replace your shower heads with water-saving ones.

• Insulate your hot water heater (some utility companies will do it at no charge).

• Turn off lights, TV and other electrical appliances when you are going to be away from home for more than one day.

• Turn off the water heater and turn down your thermostat if no one is going to be at home. Conversely, if you’re using your air conditioner, turn it up when leaving.

• Take advantage of your utility company’s free energy evaluations for your home.

• Mulch your garden plants to conserve water.

• Use plants and shrubs that are more draught resistant.

• Return to your plant store/nursery the plastic or rubber pots.

• Place bird feeders in your yard.
Vacationing:
• If you’re camping, carry reusable dishes and cups.

• Pick up all litter.

• Build small campfires and be sure to extinguish all embers before leaving the site.

• Don’t needlessly trample sensitive undergrowth; stay on the trail.

• Never buy any souvenirs made from any endangered plant species or animal.

• Be careful not to disturb your surroundings and to protect all wildlife you see.

There are many organizations that are dedicated to stopping the destruction of the rainforests. Among them is The Nature Conservatory. You can readily access their Web site to learn more about their efforts and how you can participate/contribute to their work. When it comes to doing your part at home, get the kids involved as well. Reward children for doing things that are environmentally friendly and help them learn more about the rainforest by playing trivia games to teach them about this vital region of the Earth. Only through the work of many organizations and people throughout the world can the rainforests be saved. Isn’t it time to do your part?