By CHRIS BOWMAN, Sacramento Bee

Like the first blades of grass in scorched earth, a new crop of wind turbines in Solano County, Calif. will be generating not only electricity but steady income for refugees of the ravaged housing and automotive industries.

Engineers call it "free cooling" technology.
Anyone else would call it opening the windows.
A data center under construction near Sacramento, Calif. has won the nation's highest green-building rating for its groundbreaking, energy-saving, low-carbon-emitting "air-side economizers."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants California to require full disclosure of chemicals used in consumer products to wean industry and consumers off toxic compounds.
The governor endorsed the consumer disclosure concept and five related strategies this week on the recommendation of his environmental protection secretary, Linda Adams.

California is building a second line of defense against global warming, one that will prepare the state for a harsher environment while the other continues to cut climate-changing emissions.The two-front approach acknowledges that rising sea levels, bigger floods, greater loss of species and other harsh effects of warming are inevitable, if not already occurring.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A sudden collapse in worldwide demand for recyclables, particularly from China, has California scrap dealers from Sacramento to San Diego stockpiling curbside collections as never before and charging walk-in customers for their throwaways.

Federal courts appear to have done what relentless green lobbying could not in more than seven years: rein in what critics call a de facto deregulation of the environment by President Bush's administration.The courts by and large have rejected Bush's bid to significantly rewrite America's bedrock conservation laws, particularly the Clean Air Act.

James Murray knows his experiments with human genes and goats give some people the creeps.Crossing anything human with four-legged hoofers evokes images of mythical half-man, half-animal centaurs from ancient Greece.

While California leads the nation's charge against global warming pollution, local health officials lag on preparedness for the expected fallout of more frequent and more severe heat waves, bad air days and disease epidemics.Sacramento County is an example.