10 Big Green Idea Make a greener burger Who knew hamburgers could wreck the planet?

That's what environmentalists say is happening, as ranchers raze the Brazilian rainforest and their methane-emitting cows foul the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. No one has been more a target of environmentalists' ire than Blairo Maggi. Though known as a soybean tycoon, Maggi became Big Beef's best friend as a two-time governor of Mato Grosso, the frontier state that boasts Brazil's largest herds and has helped make that nation the worlds No 1 beef exporter. But this "developmentalista," who on 2005 won Greenpeace's Golden Chainsaw award for the havoc he had wreaked on the Amazon, has become Brazil's latest tree hugger. The talk in Maggis corral is all about "sustainable development," "carbon credits," "avoided deforestation"- and green beef. After signing on to a 2006 moratorium on selling soybeans harvested from recently deforested lands, Maggi last year extended the ban to Amazon beef cattle. He has urged ranchers and Brazil's giant meatpackers to clean up their act, and is even using satellites to monitor illegal clearcutting and burning of forest. Why Maggi's change of heart? It's smart business. "The entire world has come to the conclusion that forests should be worth more standing than cut down," he often says." Farmers should get paid for that."

Invest in the improbable They say great risk brings great reward. Just ask Vinod Khosla, the sun Microsystems cofounder who became Silicon Valley's most vaunted venture capitalist. These days, Khosla is betting on green-tech startups, with a $1billion venture-capital fund called Khosla Ventures. "I like technologies that have a 90 percent chance of failure," he says," Because a 10 percent chance of making 100 times your money is better than 80 percent chance of doubling your money." He believes huge breakthroughs begin with highly improbable idea-"black swan technologies," he calls them ( a reference to Nassim Taleb's theory about the randomness and unpredictability of big events). Khosla's flock includes investments in battery-technology startups like Recapping and

Pellion, which he describes as "some really long-shot things on electricity storage, some of which are really not even batteries." He has also invested in a company called Solum that's developing a measuring tool to enable farmers to use less fertilizer, thus reducing harmful nitrigen runoff. These are way out there, flaky ideas" that could take 10 to 15 years to bear fruit. Luckily, he can afford to be patient.

Get out of the gulf before this year's massive oil spill, The US as getting 8 percent of its oil from the Gulf of Mexico - a number that translate to 1.6 million barrels each day. That statistic alone helped oil executives persuade President Obama last week to reopen the area. Demand, they said, is simply too high to keep the rigs dry. But is it really? Jackie Savitz, a political-policy analyst with the ocean-advocacy group Oceana, sees a fairly simple ways to get out of the gulf completely. For starters, electrify 10 percent of America's cars by 2020 (we're already at about 1 percent). Switch oil-based power plants to clean electric ones (there are only 105 of them). Update one quarter of oil-heated homes to electric power (also donate; the number has been decreasing). And phase in all available non-feedstock biofuels (much of which are going unused). Total barrels saved? Yep, 1.6 million. The Alliance for Clean Energy gave Oceana a grant this summer to implement the agenda, which could be passed in pieces. And during a debate last month a senior Interior Department official admitted the idea wasn't so farfetched."The oil companies depend on all of this stuff sounding really difficult," says Savitz. But really, it's not that hard.

Catch a wave More than 70 percent of the earth's surface is cowered by water, most of it in oceans that seethe and crash around with pent-up energy. What if you could harness that power? As many green ventures have discovered over the years, catching a wave is no easy feat because the oceans are so harsh on equipment and the energy produced is

expensive. Now, thanks (ironically) to Big Petroleum, the harvest of the seas is at hand. The quest for oil and gas buried deep beneath the ocean and the polar icecaps has yielded a new generation of materials and equipment that can withstand salt, gale-force winds, giant waves, crushing water pressure, and thermal shock. In March, 10 energy firms got the green light to set up wave and tidal farms off the coast of Scotland, with plans to generate enough electricity to power 750000 homes by 2015. Pilot plants have also been set up in Portugal, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Northeastern Seaboard of the United States (insiders speak of the "Gulf of Maine"). The Marine Board of the European Science Foundation recently concluded that Europe could draw half its power from the seas by 2050. All that's needed is for enough public and private investors to take the plunge

Hug a nuke One of the big problems with nuclear energy is that, to generate power, you first need to enrich uranium. Enrichment is inefficient -- some 92 percent of the original uranium gets cast aside as "depleted uranium." Worse, once you start enriching uranium to make fuel, you can enrich it further to make materials for bombs. But what if you could make nuclear power that didn't need enriched uranium? What about a reactor that runs on depleted uranium? That's the idea behind TerraPower. Weve shown it can work, through theoretical calculations and detailed computer simulations," says Nathan Myhrvold, CEO of Intellectual Ventures, the Bellevue, Wash., "invention lab" where the ideas behind TerraPower were hatched. Myhrvold was once chief technology officer at Microsoft , and his longtime friend, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, is among the investors in TerraPower. The company consults with a network of 120 nuclear-power experts, and the pain is to get a test reactor running by 2020. Likely countries include China, India, Russian, Japan and France."We're had talks with all of them in the last few months," Myhrcold says.

Turn smoke into rocks We talk a lot about reducing carbon dioxide, taxing it, eliminating it. But there's case to be made for keeping CO2, around. Los Gatos, Calif.-based Calera has developed a process that takes CO2 from a power plant smokestack and turns it into cement. The technology would reduce CO2 in two ways- first by slashing power-plant emissions and then by displacing the existing cement-making industry, which is one of the biggest genitors of carbon dioxide. "Thats the cool part of this," says Randy Seeker, Calera's chief technology officer." We're getting a twofer." Calera's approach was dreamed up by Brent constantz, a Stanord science professor who studied how coral reefs are formed in nature (carbon dioxide mixes with calcium to form calcium carbonate) and then found a way to mimic the process. Calera has a pilot plant running in California, and another set to start up in Wyoming next year; the goal is to have commercial plants running by 2013 or 2014. There are some big obstacles, through: if the United States doesn't impose legislation that pushes power plants to reduce carbon emissions, those plants probably won't pay someone like Calera to keep their smokestacks clean We have responsible to take care about CO2 its because its can deveplod a process that takes CO2 from a power plant smokestack and turns it into cement. Its have two ways to reduce CO2 first is by slashing power-plant emissions and then by displacing the existing cement-making industry, which is one of the biggest genitors of carbon dioxide

Drink your garbage To some, the smell of a landfill is sweet. That's because the stuff we throw away could help us save the planet and turn a profit. Plastic is made of petroleum, so finding ways to reuse it could make us less dependent on oil. And the household electronics we discard are loaded with elements like nickel, copper, and lithium, which one day could be in short supply. Why not mine our own trash? That's the plan in Belgium, where a British company, Advanced Plasma Power, plans to start digging up landfill, in part to get at buried metals as well as methane gas that could generate electrify. Axiom

International of New Providence, N.J, has found a way to craft pilings, beams, and other building components out of recycled plastic. How strong is it? At Fort Bragg, the US Army has erected a bridge for tanks out of railroad ties fashioned from Axioms beams. Singapore last year installed a system that turns sewage into drinking water. But what if this process could also make money? Mark Shannon at the University of Illinois is working on a device that can take human sewage and turn it into fresh water, methane, and minerals that could be sold on the open market.

Hire a microbe Microbes live in pigmentation vats, feed on filth, and at the end of the week you can kill them off. In short, they are the perfect employees. A raft of startups and established multinationals have woken up to the power of metabolism-the interaction that occurs when a living organism ingets food and chemically converts it into something else, It's not a new idea. For centuries, humanity has exploited yeast to produce beer and cheese. But now companies are looking to microbes to power your car. Bio Cee of Minneapolis is working on microbes that can soak up sunlight and carbon dioxide and convert into a substitute for petroleum. Stanford University has discovered a bug that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen (which could make the hydrogen economy touted in the 1990s a reality). Amyris of Emeryville, Calif, has devised genetically modified yeast that produces something close to gasoline. "We can engineer microbes to do our bidding," says Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist at Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson, which has invested in superbug startups Genomatica and synthetic Genomics. The down side? Superbugs are hard to create and hard to produce in large volume, and dont service well

Shout it out loud Never underestimate the power of protest. MA JUN, a former investigate journalist for the South China Morning Post, heads the Institute of Public and environment Affairs, a

tiny NGO run out of a Beijing apartment that has taken on some of the world's leading corporations. His NGO collects government data about local supplies that are violating environment standard, and examiners which Western multinationals they're connected with. He then works with foreign nonprofits to pressure like likes of Nike, Levi Strauss, Apple, and GE to clean up their act. In China, speaking up about sensitive issue can sometimes be more hazardous to your health than pollution. But Ma has succeeded. His group was a catalyst behind Wal-Mart's well-publicized demand that its top 1000 Chinese supplies improve their green footprint. As he points out, the Chinese version of the EPA has just 230 full-time staff looking after a country of 1.3million, which is why it's important to continue engaging the West around Chinese environmental issue. Americans should remember that we are your backyard- our polluted waterways are your mercury-laced toys. Its all connected.

Lighten up The best green ideas are ones that save our money, right away, without any kind of government subsidy or legislation. And there's no better example of that LED lighting. Sure, LED bulbs cost more than traditional ones. But they also save tons of money on electricity by sipping less juice to make the same amount of light. "If you spend $100000 to retrofit a parking garage with LED light, i can save you $ 100000 a year on electrify," says Charles Szoradi, CEO of LED Savings Solutions, in Devon, Pa. What's more, those LED bulls will last up to 10 years, so that $100000 initial investment could deliver $1 million in gross savings. No wonder big companies are jumping on the LED bandwagon, among them Wal-Mart, which announced plans to put LED lights in 650 stores. That deal and others like it are fueling a boom for Durham, N.C.-based Cree Inc., which makes the semi conducts used in LED light, as well as some LED bulls of its ownAfter several years old modest growth, Cree's revenues have exploded. Sales in the 2010 fiscal year, which ended in June, grew 53 percent to $ 867 million, and analyst expects sales to hit $1.2 billion in the current year. With number like that, no one can deny that environment is a bright idea