Come on, you have to admit that is a brilliant title! Tonight, my current stomping ground, New York City, is celebrating one of it’s most famous Times Square traditions-the New Year’s Eve ball drop. This year however, NYC will also be starting a new tradition. The famous ball is officially going green, baby!!
The 1,415-pound ball will be covered in more than 9,500 energy-efficient light-emitting diodes that will illuminate the ball’s over 600 crystals and set the sky a blazin’. Officials (whatever that means) say that the LEDs are estimated to use the same amount of electricity as about 10 toasters, which is like the craziest, most super cool thing I’ve ever heard.
As always, my precious little city will rock New Years eve celebrity style with musical performances by Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers, Kid Rock, Lenny Kravitz, Lifehouse, The Bravery, and alums from Fox TV’s American Idol, Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis.
So take that N train downtown and come celebrate the end of 2007 with the lot of us. Did I mention Hannah Montana will be there?
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Word on the street is that Entourage star Adrian Grenier has closed negotiations on a 13-episode series for a new eco-show on Discovery Channel’s upcoming network Planet Green. 
Larry Hagman, who rocketed to fame as J.R. Ewing in the hit television show Dallas, briefly visited the Hollywood Goes Green conference today and spoke a bit about his passions for renewable energy. While the 76-year-old actor played an oil tycoon on TV, his personal home doesn’t use a drop of it. In fact, it produces enough energy to power a dozen or more average households. Unbelievably, Larry Hagman has the largest residential solar-power system in the United States — a 102.7KW array that produces 150,000 kilowatt-hours per year!
“I duck and jive (from the press). Keep moving. Keep my head down. That’s been my modus operandus. But for something like this, I feel very fortunate to have it and I can direct it this way. It’s just not part of my makeup (to manipulate the media). I’m not good at it. There’s other people who are. But for something like this, I feel very fortunate to be able to do it. It (the media) uses me and I use it”
Even though U2 may be the darling of the humanitarian scene, they’re still not immune to criticism from other groups. Currently, the legendary band is under fire for submitting plans to create the largest skyscraper in Ireland without first conducting an environmental review of the development’s impact. U2 intends to partly demolish and redevelop a hotel they own by the River Liffey in Dublin. The new hot spot will be 32 stories high; which has some worried that it will “blight the Georgian cityscape.” 
A 4,000 home eco village, designed in part by Prince Charles, has started development with the clearing of land on the site of a former BP oil refinery in the UK. According to new info, the site will be based on the Prince of Wales’s model village Poundbury in Dorset and will emphasize priority for pedestrians, local shopping and as many trees, shrubs and other greenery as possible. The project is a working partnership between The Prince’s Foundation, BP, Neath Port Talbot Council and the National Assembly. It is expected to take almost 20 years to complete and will be named the Coed Darcy village.
For a guy pulling in $25 million a year, $500K for a sweet, green setup certainly isn’t going to hurt. But damn! Comedian Jay Leno certainly has been throwing some green at making his personal garage as eco-friendly as possible.
Recycling wood from old structures and giving it new life as beautiful furniture is a growing industry these days. Not only is it a waste diversion from landfills, but it also allows companies to source quality materials (and old-growth hardwoods) for a fraction of the cost of traditional sources.
After picking up a 
A year and a half ago Ian McKellen appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher and said, “I just put solar panels on my house in London. You wouldn’t think there was enough sunshine would you? But there is enough sunshine to provide my house with electricity. I sell electricity back to the national grid that I get for free from my roof. Now shouldn’t everybody be doing that?” This statement, combined with seeing An Inconvenient Truth, inspired Tom Schley to create 
You’ll need to be quick, though. The tour dates run Thursday through Sunday for the next 3 weekends. Then, the house will be put up for sale. Some proceeds of the sale will go to 
Brad Pitt took advantage of a meeting of the 
Sure, the morgue may be the last place you think of in terms of eco-friendly construction, but no building should be built these days without taking into account some sustainable features. The morgue in Orange County, Florida will take things one step further by building to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification standards; a rigorous and thorough measure of how green a development truly is.
While the last the thing the world needs is another resort development, you would find little argument that the environmental stewardship and vision of director Francis Ford Coppola makes such endeavors bearable. The eco-resort mogul, best known for his Godfather movies, has invested in the creation of several green tourist accommodations around the world and now has his sights set on the rainforests of Brazil for his next project. 
Just before leaving in 2001, outgoing Mayor of New York City Rudy Guliani signed papers to demolish a 22-block-long, 30-feet-high green space on top of the former High Line train track. The move was made to appease developers anxious to build upon the former industrial area but came in opposition to environmental groups and residents fighting to keep the space alive and turned into a park. Thankfully, newly-elected Mayor Bloomberg saved the project from the wrecking ball and with a group called 
When he’s not spending 
A little more digging and this isn’t as horribly bad as it seems. Actress/singer Bette Midler has been fined by the Board of Land and Natural Resources on the island of Kauai in Hawaii for felling 230 trees without a permit. The $6,500 bill also included fines for the construction of a graded road in a conservation area.
Sure, we talk about the homes that celebrities live in — how eco-friendly they are (or not) — and what new additions they’ve made to reduce their footprints. Talking and seeing, however, are two different things; and using the wonders of Google Satellite we can come to our own conclusions.