Sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride. Most of the fun things in life fall under one or more of these “deadly sins,” so it’s a bit hard to stop doing them for the promise of eternal bliss. Worry no longer, you’re in luck! The Vatican has made a new list of seven modern sins that will send you to hell. Genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy and taking drugs are the new ones. These are so much easier to follow!

Genetic modification: who has the money for that? Experimenting on humans: it’s illegal so that one’s easy. But what about the animals? It’s ok to experiment on them? Polluting the environment: a bit harder to not do, but we’re trying our best here. That’s what we’re all about. Oo, do we get brownie points for that? Causing social injustice: most of us don’t really have the power to do this one so again, easy. Causing poverty: who does that? Besides politicians I mean. Becoming obscenely wealthy: again, pretty hard to do. What about being born obscenely wealthy? Is that ok? Taking drugs: That’s going be a toughie for the young people. And for old people if that includes prescription drugs and the like. I think we could use some clarification on this one.

All in all, I think I like these mortal sins better than the old ones. If I were a Catholic and believed this sort of thing, I might actually follow them.

It makes sense that a state would want to set its own tailpipe emissions standard to reduce global warming. It also makes sense that they would want to pass a state law that would force automakers to reduce emissions by making cars achieve higher gas mileage. Right? That’s what 19 states, including California, want to do. Administrator Stephen Johnson, of the Environmental Protection Agency, disagrees and is clearly insane. “While I find that the conditions related to global climate change in California are substantial, they are not sufficiently different from conditions in the nation as a whole to justify separate state standards.” I’m sorry, what? Even if that were true, and it’s not, why not make a national law to do the same thing? Surely he can see that we’re a pretty disgusting nation that needs desperately to clean up its act.

“Johnson’s excuse that global warming is not unique to California is both factually and legally wrong,” said David Doniger, policy director for the National Resources Defense Council. Doniger said no other state can claim the same “severe impacts” from smog, wildfires, water supply problems, and agricultural losses. “The combination and severity of these impacts makes California’s conditions compelling and extraordinary,” he said.

But Johnson doesn’t care. Ah well, California is suing and no one thinks that they’ll lose. California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer said the EPA decision would not stand up in court but would result in “more delay in cleaning up our air and tackling the challenge of global warming.” Thanks a lot Johnson.

What about the automakers? Struggling U.S. auto manufacturers and overseas car companies have fought the California proposal, saying it would hurt their business, especially if adopted by other states. They say that trying to meet both federal efficiency standards and another, stricter standard adopted by states would add huge production costs and increases prices. Aww, suck it up. People are still going to buy cars.

Paint: it’s on your walls, on your ceiling, in the air, in your lungs. Because of the negative impact on human health and our environment, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Each year, VOC laws become more restrictive and traditional paint companies are forced to change their formulations.

Most of the solvents used in the paint industry are classified VOCs. By definition, a VOC is any compound of carbon (excluding carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, metallic carbides or carbonates, and ammonium carbonate) which participates in atmospheric photochemical reactions. VOCs react with nitrous oxides in the air to create ground level ozone (smog). And everyone knows how long it takes for the paint smell to leave a house. Forever.

Luckily, Mythic^TM paints meet and exceed the most stringent environmental and performance testing standards including those by Green Seal® and Master Painters Institute.

The paint is non-toxic, ultra low odor and provides the durability and coverage you expect from a premium paint without the off-gassing VOC’s and cancer-causing toxins that emit years after drying. You will also find no lead, mercury, formaldehyde, formaldehyde precursors, crystalline silica or other known toxic materials or suspected carcinogens in their paints.

They offer 1232 standard palette colors and can also match virtually any other company’s color.

Finally! An answer to unsightly solar panels for residential homes! SRS energy has designed solar roof tiles that cost, look, last, and install like traditional premium roofing. Now we don’t have to worry about the neighbors calling us hippies. Not that we care.

SRS roofs allow homeowners to decrease their energy bill, and relieve the utility of supply needs during peak demand hours. The patented SRS connection system eliminates the complex system wiring normally found on solar roofs, making the tiles easy to install. The energy created on the roof is inverted to AC energy and fed into the electric grid or stored in batteries for use during non peak hours.

As solar technology continues to improve, SRS’s roofing systems will remain on the cutting-edge by integrating the very latest and greatest. Groovy.

Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco and other city officials announced in 2006 that they wanted to build turbines under the Golden Gate Bridge to harness energy from the tidal currents, expecting up to 38 megawatts (enough for approx. 38,000 homes). But a new study by URS, an engineering firm, says that there would actually only be just 1 or 2 megawatts produced at a cost of tens of millions to build, and high yearly maintenance expenses. Though the taxpayers’ money would clearly be better spent elsewhere, Mayor Newsom doesn’t seem to care. “I don’t care about the arguments against it. I care about the arguments for it. I am going to find a way to make it happen.”

I’m all for clean energy, but it has to make sense. This is a waste of money and resources for something that isn’t even worth it.

Everyone’s doing it. Look around. See how many people have one in their hand right now? They take them everywhere; buy them in packs at the store, heedless of the danger every time they put it to their mouths. Bottled water, it’s not as healthy as you think it is.

Sure some of it comes from bubbling springs way up on some mountain, but more than 25 percent of it comes from a municipal supply. They dress it up, make it smell nice and then sell it to us for a price higher per gallon than gasoline. The bottlers aren’t required to tell us that it’s glorified tap water, so they don’t.

They also don’t have to let consumers know if their product becomes contaminated even though recalls happen. “Between 1990 and 2007, this happened about 100 times,” says Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. Some of the reasons for recall: contamination with mold, benzene, coliform, microbes, and even crickets. Ew.

Bottled water is hardly regulated for safety. The EPA regulates tap water, while the FDA oversees bottled. Yet FDA doesn’t regulate water packaged and sold within the same state, leaving some 60 to 70 percent of bottled water, free of FDA regulation. That leaves testing to be done by states themselves, but the NRDC found that they often don’t have enough resources to oversee bottled water, and in some cases lack even one full-time person for an entire state.

So what if you make sure and buy really clean spring water in a bottle, is it safe then? That depends on you. Most bottled water comes in polyethylene terephthalate bottles which are generally safe. But when stored in hot or warm temperatures (like your car), the plastic may leach chemicals into the water. Antimony is a potentially toxic material used in making PET. Last year, scientists in Germany found that the longer a bottle of water sits around (in a store, in your home), the more antimony it develops. High concentrations of antimony can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. I just want some water!

Oh, and let’s not forget the environmental impact here. Virgin petroleum is used to make PET, and the more bottles we use, the more virgin petroleum will be needed to create new bottles. Fossil fuels are burned to fill the bottles and distribute them. And let me point out that it’s not just bottled water, but juices, soda and other beverages packed in plastic that add to this waste.

Then there’s the waste of the bottles themselves. Less than 20% of them get recycled. The rest are just sitting around in landfills, where they will wait for thousands of years to decompose.

So what’s a person to do? Filter your tap if you want that clean taste and carry it around in a stainless steel bottle (which can be down right neat). If you must have bottled, look for brands that are NSF certified or belong to IBWA, and store in in a cool place. And don’t forget to recycle, not reuse.

Saul Griffith of Makani Power and Squid Labs presented on Energy Literacy to open this morning’s ETech 2008 events. Saul provided interesting data on how we could replace existing fossil fuel energy with things like solar power and wind energy. He even made it sound doable. Most interesting was a walk through Saul Griffith’s current energy consumption, how that fits into the global energy consumption, and how much energy he needs to cut in order to bring his overall energy consumption in check. He’s proposing decreasing his energy consumption from an estimated 25,000 Watts per year down to about 2,300 Watts. One of the biggest factors seems to be eating more vegetables and less meat, as meat is one of the biggest consumers of power in all our lives.

If we all want to reduce personal energy consumption over time, here are 7 ways to do it that go far beyond replacing bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and driving hybrid cars. Most of them are things we all say we want to do anyway.

Eat less and more healthily – If you currently live in the Western world, you likely eat too much. You also likely don’t eat healthy food regularly. Changing your diet to reduce intake of industrially produced meats and mass produced goods to locally grown organic foods makes a big impact on

Exercise more – This doesn’t mean getting on an electric treadmill and racking up the miles. You get more exercise by walking places or bicycling. The net win is this also drops your overall annual energy consumption.

Spend more time with your family – We all want to spend more time with family. By eating as a family unit at home, riding places in the same car instead of driving separate ways, and generally finding more common activities, you reduce the energy consumption of your waking hours.

Live closer together – Living closer together doesn’t mean opening a commune. Living near your family and friends actually has the benefit of reducing energy consumption because you’re not driving or flying.

Spend less time commuting – As a stay at home worker, I dread any morning where events in my life throw me into the morning commute. I don’t know how people face it on a daily basis. Finding ways to spend less time commuting, like convincing your boss to let you work from home, can have a huge impact on your personal energy consumption.

Less business travel – Unless you’re one of those rare people that enjoy living in hotels, you’d likely love the opportunity to travel less for your job. Use the technology we have available to replace face-to-face meetings with video conferencing, chatting, and other social tools for communication.

Purchase Higher Quality Products – Spending a few extra dollars for higher quality products can make a big difference in how long things last. The cost of manufacturing higher quality goods from an energy perspective is not dramatically higher than the cost to produce cheap goods. Extending product lifespan does make a huge impact, because it reduces total consumption.

Cleaner Air and Water – This is more of a byproduct of reduced energy consumption. Cleaner air and water improve quality of life, theoretically reduce CO2 in the air, reduce disease, and should net lower energy consumption.

How would you go about incorporating these 7 things in your daily life? Or are you already doing it?

We all want skin that is soft, well moisturized and free of blemishes. That’s why we spend so much money on lotions, creams, cleansers and scrubs. We rub gallons of the stuff into our skin each year trying to turn back the hands of time without wondering what it is that’s really in those bottles.

There are plenty of products that say “Made With Natural Plant Extracts!” on the label so we assume it’s better than the rest because after all, Mother Nature loves us. The plant extracts are in there alright, and they would be great for your skin, except so are a whole mess of 15 syllabic chemicals that came out of a laboratory, not the earth. Most of these chemicals do more harm than good. They can irritate your skin, affect your central nervous system or increase your risk for breast cancer. That’s hardly conducive to gorgeous skin.

Finding all natural skin care products is fairly hard to do in your local drug store, but they’re just a click away. The people at Pangea Organics are so dedicated to bringing you the best for your body and the earth that their products are synthetic free and come in seed embedded boxes (basil or amaranth) that you can plant in your garden. Cargo has gotten in on the action and has wildflower seeds in their Plant Love lipstick boxes as well as having the lipstick tubes be made entirely out of corn. Plus, they’re donating two dollars from the sale of every shade to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. For your make up needs, Afterglow Cosmetics brings you a natural blend of pure mineral make-up, organic lipsticks and organic liners containing no bismuth oxychloride, parabens, cornstarch or talc, no fd&c or lake dyes, petro-chemicals and no mineral oil.

While most schools are hoping on the healthy food band wagon, some just don’t cut it. So you’ve decided to pack your child’s lunch for them. You can control what they eat and it saves you money. Save the environment while you’re at it.

We rely too much on the plethora of individually wrapped foods and single-use plastic bags, aluminum foil, and wax paper. Admittedly, these products are extremely convenient, but are you willing to allow new landfills and incinerators to be built in your own backyards as the old ones overflow and wreak havoc on our air? It has been estimated that 67 pounds of waste is generated per school-age child using a disposable lunch per school year. That equates to 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for just one average-size elementary school. The switch to a waste free lunch is simple.

Buy a lunchbox Lunch boxes are way cooler than boring brown paper bags and they allow your child another way to express themselves. Just be sure to stick with healthy plastics #1, 2, 4 or 5. Some plastics, like PVC (#3), polystyrene (#6) and polycarbonate (#7) contain hormone disruptors or lead that can leach into food.

Contain the food Buy reusable containers for food once, instead of plastic baggies over and over. This also allows you to buy your lunch food items in bulk to be stored properly at home and portioned out daily.

Stainless steel utensils A no-brainer.

Thermoses make a comeback! Or you could get a sealable cup…if that’s what you’re into

Cloth napkins Wrap a sandwich in it for double duty

Go Bento! Japanese bento boxed lunches are rapidly gaining popularity in the US with both children and adults. JBox has just about everything Bento that you could ever want.

Don’t limit your children to all of the lunch box fun. Buy a “sophisticated” one for yourself and be the envy of the office.

Laptops are great. You can take them pretty much anywhere and be connected to the world…as long as there’s wi-fi…and as long as your battery doesn’t die; which wouldn’t be so bad if you could find an outlet to plug it into…if you remembered to bring the charging cord in the first place. Ok, so maybe laptops can be a pain sometimes.

An ingenious concept by Nikola Knezevic may give us a laptop with complete power independence. The notebook comes with two batteries, one smaller internal one and a larger one that is part of a detachable solar panel. You can detach the panel to recharge the big battery while running the notebook off of the smaller battery. When you get low, just pop the panel back on. The smaller battery is also recharged when the the solar panel is connected.

The notebook is also equipped with satellite link, GPS, internet access and satellite telephone making it a universal tool to connect and communicate from literally anywhere in the world.