It's been 40 years since activists got together to set aside a special day to encourage people to think about our environment. Denis Hayes, the principal organizer of the first Earth Day back in 1970, says this day wove together some of the disparate agendas within the fractious environmental movement. But Heather Rogers, journalist and author of the new book "Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution," says that while Earth Day was originally a good idea, a new tension exists today in how the movement should move forward.

When it comes to environmentally responsible eating, we’re often told what not to eat: Don’t eat tuna because it’s overfished. Don’t eat Chilean sea bass because it’s bottom-trawled. Don’t eat beef because of carbon dioxide emissions from cows.

But what we’re not often told is that putting jellyfish on the menu will help save the world.

 

We talk this morning with Hilda Solis, the United States Secretary of Labor. Solis will announce later today that some states will be given federal grant money to help create more training for green jobs.

The climate talks in Copenhagen will finish later today, with last minute appeals from major world leaders, including President Barack Obama. Obama has singled out one American town for praise regarding the work they have done in becoming more energy efficient and self sufficient.  Bob Dixon is the mayor of that small Kansas town, Greensburg, which was ravaged by a tornado in 2007 and rebuilt itself as a green town.  Matt Dellinger is a journalist who specializes in urban planning and believes that focusing overmuch on Greensburg as a model could be a mistake.

Some businesses go green by having bicycle-operated blenders. Others do it by redefining what "acceptable packaging" is for an entire category of retail products. We talk with Sean Meenan, owner of New York's first solar-powered restaurant, Habana Outpost, along with Candace Taylor, director of sustainability for the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart. They share with us the unique challenges and opportunities they each face – as a small business and an enormous one – in staying green, staying afloat, and setting an example for businesses and consumers.

Most of us know that environmental change is an issue and that our choices affect it... so why aren't we doing all we should to fix things? David Biello, associate online editor for Scientific American, and Benjamin Ho, behavioral economist at Cornell University, discuss why humans aren't more ecologically responsible, and how we can convince (or trick, even) ourselves to change our behaviors for the common good.

President Obama's "green-energy czar," Van Jones, has resigned unexpectedly. To understand the strange road that led to his resignation late Saturday night, we need to look back a couple of weeks, to when Glenn Beck appeared on Fox and Friends and said that President Obama "has a deep-seated hatred of white people." (Click through for Van Jones' previous appearances on The Takeaway.) For a closer look at the resignation and how this effects President Obama's favorability, we talk to Julie Mason. She covers the White House for the Washington Examiner.

While we are on our Power Trip exploring new energy sources, we asked our listeners what they do to conserve energy. We've gotten a lot of responses. Add yours below!

President Barack Obama has pledged to reduce our carbon emissions by 80 percent come 2050, and that means saying goodbye to carbon-spewing coal and oil plants. But we can't wave a magic, rhetoric wand to change from black energy to green. So how do we move forward in establishing a new, clean power economy? To launch our Power Trip energy series, The Takeaway is joined by Garry Golden, a futurist and energy blogger who lays out the yellow brick road toward green energy.

Listen to more from Garry Golden in The Takeaway's Power Trip series:
More on the future of energy from Garry Golden and Introducing the new energy economy.