The Vatican recently called pollution of the environment a modern-day sin. Kurt calls Father Jim Martin, a Jesuit priest, to ask what kind of penance polluters are in for.

Mouna Andraos is an artist and web designer who’s always been fascinated by street vendors since her childhood in Lebanon. She created a working portable generator that uses a crank and a solar cell to charge cell phones and laptops, and even run small appliances.

Frances Arnold is a biochemical engineer at Cal Tech working on one part of the energy crisis. In a process called “directed evolution,” Arnold’s team is altering the genetic codes of bacteria to evolve a strain of organisms than can digest grass and excrete biofuel. 

In Hesperia, California, architect Nader Khalili created a housing movement for the future. Khalili, who passed away in March, prototyped his dome-shaped adobes on a commission from NASA for a lunar colony. Then he realized that his “superadobes” could take root on Earth. Studio 360’s

The New York subway system has one of the best environmental designs of recent years: Coney Island's Stillwell Avenue terminal, one block from the Atlantic Ocean, is topped by a state-of-the-art photovoltaic glass roof. Kurt checked it out with architect Greg Kiss.

He's a grand old man in the young field of green architecture. In the 1970s, William McDonough built one of the first “green roofs” in America –- a corporate headquarters with a meadow on top -- and now works on projects all over the world.

Corn-based shrink wrap on the CDs, biofuel buses, organic hair spray: this is the greening of rock n’ roll. Sarah Lemanczyk talked to the indie rock band Cloud Cult, which manages its carbon footprint and has fun at the same time.

Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi,” from 1970, is the closest thing we’ve ever had to an environmental anthem. Mitchell told Reese Erlich why she’s bothered by “green” hypocrisy.

Photographer Brandon Ballengée hunts for frogs with extra legs and missing eyes. Andrea Polli translates hurricane data into soundscapes. By seeking out these (sometimes bizarre) ecological phenomena, they hope to bring environmentalism to new audiences. Produced by Studio 360’s Trey Kay