This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Memorial Day is the start of the summer travel season. With gas prices approaching $4 per gallon across the country, you might want to think carefully about how you get where you're going. Should you take one, big, packed car, or two smaller, half-empty cars? How much gas can you save by driving slower and making sure your car engine is properly tuned?

For answers to all these questions and more, check out our Eight Ways to Green Your Road Trip.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

When you save water, you save energy - and vice versa. Carbon calculators can give you some idea of your carbon footprint, but most don't take into account your water usage. How much water do you use? Now you can find out.

A new Web site, H₂O Conserve, offers an H₂O Calculator. I tried it, and it said I used 479.88 gallons per day (I do?). The average American uses 1189.3 gallons of water per day, so I guess it's not as bad as it sounds.

The site also includes a comprehensive tips section for learning how to use less water.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Have you ever been on weight-loss diet, gone to a function with delicious-looking desserts, and told yourself, "One cookie isn't going to make me fat"? One cookie may not make you fat, but how many "cookie moments" occur during your day, your week? If your answer is always that this one little cookie can't hurt, you will not lose weight.

Conserving energy is sort of like going on a group diet where every person, dozens of times a day, has a "cookie moment". Does it really matter if I leave on the lights in my home when I go out? Does it really matter if I don't recycle this container? Does it really matter if I keep my chargers plugged in when not in use?

The short answer is yes, it matters. There are a myriad of things you can do to conserve energy and fight global warming. Each action by itself is small and painless, but taken together the effect can be huge. Here's a list of easy things you can do that will make a big difference.

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The author of today's post, Andy Darrell, is Regional Director for the Living Cities program at Environmental Defense.

In 1800, 3 percent of the world's people lived in urban areas. In the last year, that number is likely to have passed 50 percent [PDF]. The world is becoming urbanized at an extremely fast rate, and as the urban population increases, so does urban development.

This presents an opportunity in the fight against global warming, since energy use in buildings accounts for 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

You might think it costs a lot more to make a building energy efficient, but it doesn't have to. A building that produces half the usual emissions can cost as little as 1 percent more to build. How can that be?

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The author of today's post, Jeffery Greenblatt, Ph.D., is a scientist at Environmental Defense specializing in low-carbon energy technologies.

Consumers and businesses alike complain that it takes years for savings on energy bills to repay the up-front costs of energy efficiency. No longer. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, lenders have discovered what energy analysts have known for years: loans for energy efficiency improvements are low-risk, because borrowers can "finance" these loans through lower energy payments.

Energy-efficient mortgages have been available for some time, but lenders didn't promote them, and customers resisted the extra inspections and paperwork. Now to get home buyers interested, banks are offering incentives of $500-$1000 off closing costs. Everybody wins: consumers save money, lenders make a profit, and the atmosphere enjoys lower carbon emissions.

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The author of today's post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

They say knowledge is power. That's the idea behind an interesting innovation in the U.K. called "smart meters" which tell people in real time how much energy their appliances are using, and how much carbon is being emitted as a result. The goal is to change usage patterns by giving immediate feedback.

Energy usage feedback devices are starting to appear in the U.S., as well.

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In large cities such as New York, buildings account for most of the greenhouse gas emissions. The William J. Clinton Foundation has developed a plan to reduce energy usage in buildings, and organized an international coalition of banks and 16 of the world's largest cities to implement it. Billions of dollars have been pledged to address the problem. For details, read the story in the International Herald Tribune.