Americans drive an average of 10,000 miles per year, per person, which includes non-drivers, as well. We do a lot of that driving during the summer on family vacations, and chauffeuring kids from place to place. Here are a few simple tips to save you gas and money this summer, as well as reducing carbon emissions. Read more

Cooling our homes in the summer can account for 45 percent of our home energy use, yet it could be reduced to 10 percent or less with a few thoughtful changes. Incorporating natural ventilation into your home will help you slash your energy use and carbon emissions drastically.

Become aware of the seasonal wind patterns and the airflow around your home. Most areas have gentle breezes in the summer that can be directed into your house through landscaping and opening certain windows. Read more

About 1.3 percent fewer Americans are expected to fly this summer than last summer, according to the Air Transport Association. Which may be good news for the environment, since a single transatlantic flight for a family of four creates more carbon emissions than that family will generate domestically for an entire year. Read more

Millions of college graduates are about to ask this question: Was it worth it? And it's a question that students just entering college should be asking as they start looking at taking out student loans to finance their college degree.

It's not the education or the college experience that's the issue. It's how you will repay those student loans.

Today's college graduates enter a job market that has few jobs available. Read more

With the month of May honoring moms, it is a great opportunity for moms to take a break and be appreciated for all their hard work. Moms keep busy trying to maintain a healthy work/life balance. And the economic downturn has made it even more difficult to keep this balance.

Twelve percent of working moms say their spouse or significant other has lost their job in the past year, according to a CareerBuilder.com survey that questioned 604 working moms. These job losses have taken a toll on home life — 67 percent of respondents say it has caused more stress at home. Read more

One father's tragic loss of a son sparked another father's message to his own son that made for the best Father's Day gift I ever have gotten.

Ted Koppel's 40-year-old son, Andrew, was found dead in a New York apartment earlier this month. He had been drinking too much, and his death ended what was probably a long struggle with alcoholism.

I tried to help his family about a decade ago, after his father called mine seeking guidance. Read more

The oil spill along our Gulf Coast highlights the fact that we must transition our nation away from fossil fuels. As millions of gallons of oil ruin ecosystems and people's livelihoods, millions of taxpayer dollars are being used to mop up the mess. The answer to our higher energy costs, flagging economy and loss of local industry is to transition now to renewable energy sources. Could there be a more potent exclamation point? Read more

For Father's Day, how about giving Dad a belt? A belt of cake, that is.

Sean Allen is the bartender/baker behind Cake Buzz, a Los Angeles cakery that makes pound cakes based on cocktails. From coladas to cosmos, Cake Buzz offers up to 500 hooch-drenched flavors that are as moist as they are rich and tasty. (The divine Godiva Dark Chocolate Liqueur and Vincent Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka Cake can be wrung out like a bar towel it is so "wet.") Read more

The economic downturn has left many communities looking decimated, with empty lots, vacant stores, and unemployed people with too much time and too little money.

Many of these people have started a positive trend across the country by taking over vacant lots, empty rooftops and unused parks to create community gardens. Read more

Summer is almost here. That means teens will be out of school and looking to make money. Will summer jobs be available to them? Last year proved to be difficult with a low percentage of open summer positions. Older and more experienced job-seekers took the traditional summer jobs at malls, restaurants and movie theaters.

It is still a tough market for summer jobs, but this year should be better than the last few years, according to an outlook by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a global outplacement agency. Read more

Lawns are big business in our country, with homeowners spending millions of dollars and many hours manicuring the lawn. But are these showcase thatched patches an environmental hazard?

Water is in short supply, yet 30 percent of East Coast water usage and 60 percent of West Coast water usage goes to watering our lawns. We pour 10 times more chemicals on our lawns than farmers use in their fields, making lawns toxic for wildlife, soil microorganisms and earthworms, and polluting local water supplies. Up to a third of bagged household waste going to our landfills is lawn trimmings and leaves raked from our yards. Read more

Spring is sprung, and summer isn't far behind. So what happens to vacation celebrations when addiction gets in the way?

Dear Mr. Moyers: For our son's high-school graduation, we've planned all year to celebrate with a family trip to Disney World. The problem is my husband. He is a Vietnam vet with post-traumatic stress disorder whose drinking is really starting to take a toll on us now. He needs help; he wants help. We want him to get help. He's actually set to go into treatment, but we just learned from the rehab center that it won't be complete before we are scheduled to go on this vacation. What comes first, treatment or this long-awaited (and expensive) family vacation? — Marjorie L., Silver Spring, Md. Read more

I was driving west on Ridgewood Road approaching the intersection of Pascack Rd. I was singing along with the group Santana, which isn’t that easy since a lot of their stuff is in Spanish and I, well, "No hablo Espanol". I saw that I had a red light ahead of me and I thought: "Oh not again!" What I saw next caused me reflexively to utter "Oh no!" There were three maybe four of them with those little yellow aprons, each holding a little bucket-the volunteers! Read more

Flowers are big business. The U.S. floral market is a $20 billion-a-year industry, yet the vast majority of the 4 billion flower stems sold here every year come from Latin America. Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have been exporting flowers to us duty-free since the 1980s. As part of the "War on Drugs," import taxes on South American flowers were eliminated to give farmers a profitable crop to replace cocaine. Read more

We Americans eat almost as much fossil fuels as we burn in automobiles. American agriculture directly accounts for 17 percent of our energy use, or the equivalent of 400 gallons of oil consumed by every man, woman and child per year, according to 1994 statistics.

We have seen a major leap in farm productivity in the last 50 years, with food production doubling and even tripling in the case of cereal grains. This amazing leap did not come from new farms or farmlands, since we have lost more than half our small farms in that same period. Farmlands are also in decline and being gobbled up by urban sprawl. Read more