The Lazy Environmentalist shares his "Eco-Resolutions" for 2008 and encourages you to make some green resolutions of your own.

At the end of September, I was in San Francisco to attend West Coast Green, the largest green residential building conference and exhibition in the United States. The conference boasted authoritative speakers on topics ranging from green architecture and building to kitchen remodeling and interior decorating. It also included a stirring and fiery speech by Robert Kennedy, Jr., lambasting the Bush administration and its corporate task masters for the roll-back of environmental laws and the indefensibly weak-kneed media that has lapsed in its civic duty to inform the public about matters that greatly affect our democracy, society, and environment. Yet, while vehement in his condemnation of corporate meddling in governmental affairs, Kennedy offered the refreshing viewpoint that businesses, operating within fully functioning free markets, can and will play key roles in creating long-lasting solutions to the environmental challenges we face. A good number of those solutions were on display throughout the three day event.

In the all-American spirit of competition, Silicon Valley investors are teaming up with California energy companies and universities to reward innovative ideas in the clean-technology sector. The mission of the California Clean Tech Open is to encourage entrepreneurs to develop “technology companies that foster a healthy natural environment” in the region that gave rise to the Dot-Com Revolution not a decade ago.