Two disturbing news items recently crossed my desk. The first reports that LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification -- the gold standard for green buildings -- has been given to buildings that are not in fact energy efficient.

A building can be designed on paper to be LEED-certified, but the way it's actually constructed and operated can strip from it any sort of genuine environmental credibility. Some experts propose giving LEED certification only after a building has been occupied for some years, as a way of proving its energy efficiency.

In other bad news, an internal audit by the U.S. Department of Energy discovered that the coveted Energy Star label has been bestowed upon appliances that aren't really energy efficient.

The Energy Star program is in the spotlight now because the Obama administration has earmarked $300 million in rebates to consumers who buy Energy Star products.

What the hell is going on here? The LEED program has come under fire for years by architects and contractors as a rather cumbersome process bedeviled by bureaucratic ineptitude. And kudos to the Energy Department for discovering this reality gap on their own.

But certifications like these need to be trustworthy, or consumers will lose faith in the programs, the government, and soon the whole fabric of Western civilization will unravel. Or something like that.

Let's tighten up our game, folks, or we'll all lose the race to true energy independence.

When I was a kid, I used to play with the shiny little balls of mercury in our bathroom drawer. A thermometer must have broken in there, and all that was left were these goofy little balls that moved when you squished them with your finger. Then the little liquid balls would regroup into a larger ball, and you could squish it again and again and again.

Neurotoxins are fun, mommy!

The thought of playing with mercury as a young child reminds me of something you'd see on a Saturday Night Live skit (remember the kid's toy named "Bag o' Glass"?). So why then are smart, conscientious people filling their homes with mercury?

Mercury comes in the Trojan horse of compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs. Sure, they're great if you swear to never, EVER throw one away. Instead, old CFLs must be recycled at a facility that handles hazardous wastes. (Quick -- where is your nearest haz-mat facility? I don't know either.)

Also, if one breaks, the clean-up procedures are ridiculous: Ventilate the room, wear heavy rubber gloves, a face mask, etc.

Though I love the concept of a highly efficient CFL, the reality of mercury contamination is a deal-breaker. Instead, look into these safe, energy-saving alternatives.

Love him or hate him, it's hard to argue with the influence that Al Gore has had over the green movement. From his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth to his Nobel Peace Prize, Gore has become the poster boy for all things green.

And it's paying off in spades, according to a recent New York Times article. His savvy investments in alternative energy, bio-fuels, sustainable fish farming and electric vehicles have helped the former senator and vice-president to amass a immense personal fortune.

Who knew that putting your money where your mouth is could be so profitable?

What will happen to you when you die? Not in a metaphysical sense, but in a practical, earthly way. Will you be embalmed with chemicals and buried in a bulletproof metal casket? There are other options, you know.

Green burials are attracting attention from folks worldwide, and a few truly adventurous souls are opting for promession, a new procedure from Sweden that basically freeze-dries a human body. The remaining pink, crumbly pieces can be buried as a nutrient-rich fertilizer, over which a tree or shrub is planted. (Now you know the origin of the old phrase "feed the tree.")

Happy Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, everyone!

Imagine, if you will, an ancient European city where thousands of people commute on bicycles. The trilling chimes of cute little bike bells -- prring! prrring! -- fills the air as smiling multitudes pedal past graceful monuments and towering cathedrals.

Such were the utopian visions that danced through the heads of Parisian city planners when in 2007 they launched the Vélib' public bike rental system, the largest of its kind in the world. But like many utopias, the ugly realities of life have squashed the dreams of a bike-friendly urban paradise.

Some 80 percent of the Vélib' bicycle fleet has been stolen or damaged. Some are showing up on black markets in Africa and Eastern Europe, while others are just pummeled and vandalized into twisted heaps of scrap metal. Sacre bleu!

Give up and abandon the program? Not so fast -- the French have some history of resistance, and city officials and the program's management company have announced they will carry on in the grand European tradition. Bonne chance!

Look, folks. I'll admit that all this talk about Kyoto and Copenhagen and greenhouse asses is confusing, but it's come to my attention that some of you don't know your carbon footprint from a hole in the ground.

Well, perhaps it's time we had a brief chat about climate change. Or global warming. Or whatever they're calling it these days. (Jeez Louise, maybe I need to catch up on this stuff, too, before I make a greenhouse ass out of myself.)

Bats, as everyone knows, eat 45 billion tons of insects every 10 minutes. (And, as everyone who reads my blog knows, I'm suspicious of statistics that lean toward hyperbole.)

But even if they only eat one or two mosquitoes a week, they're still welcome at my place. The photo above shows my newly installed bat house. It's hard to say whether bats will move in anytime soon, because in this real estate market, they have plenty of options.

That's why I painted a red bat symbol on the front. If that doesn't say, "Welcome, Bats!" I don't know what does. I'll keep an eye on the place and let you know if I have any new neighbors soon.

Cat owners of the world can breathe a little easier -- literally. That smell from your cat's litter box is now manageable in a greener way.

Many cat litters aren't biodegradable, and some contain clays and other ingredients that come from strip mining, a horribly destructive kind of mining. But there are now greener litters that can biodegrade and are made of ingredients that don't destroy the environment.

How effective are they? Read this review and find one that works for you and your kitty.

One of my local grocery stores accepts recycling, including plastic bags, so I started saving all my plastic bags last year. Since they're just wispy little things, I thought at the end of a month I'd have a handful or two of plastic bags.

After just a few weeks, I had to use both arms to cart a hefty load of plastic bags out to the car -- amazingly, the mass took up the entire passenger seat. Now, multiply that times 300 million Americans, and you'll know why people are fuming over the raw tonnage of plastic bags we throw away every year. The EPA estimates we use some 90 billion bags a year, and only a tiny fraction get recycled. Sadly, many end up in the sea, choking marine animals to death.

Fortunately, some retailers are getting ahead of the problem and offering incentives to folks who bring reusable bags to the store. Starting November 1, Target stores nationwide will give customers a 5-cent discount for each reusable bag they bring in for their purchases. And CVS drug stores just announced a program providing shoppers a $1 refund on their CVS customer card every 4 times they shop without asking for a bag.

All good news -- because nobody has ever seen a good reusable bag flapping in a tree.

Images of the future usually make me laugh. Men with jetpacks zipping around skyscrapers seem so -- retro.

But the folks at the U.S. Department of Energy have given us a glimpse of the future of green home design, and it's rather elegant. The winners of their 2009 Solar Decathlon have been announced, and students from Darmstadt, Germany took top honors by designing, building, and operating the most attractive and efficient solar-powered home. Even during three days of rain, their house produced a surplus of electrical energy.

If you think you have a winning solar home design, the application process for the fall 2011 Solar Decathlon is starting now.