December 10, 2006 - It's not enough money-yet-to stop polar ice caps from melting, but the pot has been sweet enough to lure Wall Street bankers into the fight against global warming. Nearly $23 billion will change hands this year on a new market that the European Union has created in a bid to save the planet through free enterprise. That's more than double the value in 2005, the inaugural year of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Fast Company reports that, in the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers--100 million in all--one compact fluorescent bulb. In the process, it may change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. Teaming up with General Electric, which owns about 60% of the residential lightbulb market in the United States, Wal-Mart wants to single-handedly double U.S. sales for CFLs in a year, and it wants demand to surge forward after that.