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It may sound weird, but Lego is quietly trying to ditch plastics.

For the past 59 years, we've all been building spaceships and castles, experimenting with what head goes on what body, and arguing with our siblings about where the grey 2-by-5 brick went — thanks to Lego.

[rebelmouse-image 19530378 dam="1" original_size="750x600" caption=""The S.S. Awesome can't have any holes in it, Amanda. I know you have that 1-by-8 somewhere." Photo by Kent Gavin/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images, circa 1962." expand=1]"The S.S. Awesome can't have any holes in it, Amanda. I know you have that 1-by-8 somewhere." Photo by Kent Gavin/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images, circa 1962.

Though nearly indestructible, Legos aren't eternal. The bricks your kids or grandkids play with probably won't be the ones you remember.

Beyond grocery bags and Barbie dolls, Legos might be the most iconic plastic object ever, but making things out of plastic can be problematic.

It's not just that plastic doesn't break down, though that's a major issue with some plastic products. It's also about the carbon footprint to make them. To make a conventional plastic, you have to pump petroleum or natural gas out of the ground, refine it, and mold it. All of these steps take energy and can produce carbon dioxide.

For the last couple of years, Lego has been experimenting with making their iconic bricks from eco-friendly sources.

In 2015, Lego announced it would invest the equivalent of $155 million into finding a non-oil, smaller-footprint source for the various plastic they need to make all those tires, trees, and movie stars.

[rebelmouse-image 19530379 dam="1" original_size="750x499" caption="Fun fact: Lego's apparently one of the world's largest tire manufacturers. Photo from Lego Media Library." expand=1]Fun fact: Lego's apparently one of the world's largest tire manufacturers. Photo from Lego Media Library.

Since then, they have been experimenting with different types of bio-plastics, which can be made from plants like corn or wheat and produce less emissions than conventional plastic.

The goal is to find alternatives for 20 types of plastic by the year 2030.

There are hurdles to making something as durable, flexible, and iconic as a Lego, and the company is still experimenting. Whatever they choose, it'll need to snap together with existing Legos, last just as long, and preserve the aesthetic. Their latest experiment with wheat sugar, for example, failed because it couldn't hold the right shine, as Quartz reported.

This change won't eliminate the carbon cost of manufacturing, nor will it address other carbon costs like shipping, but little changes add up. After all, 19 billion new Lego pieces are produced each year. Furthermore, the Lego company has also been reducing its carbon footprint through other means as well, including investing in an offshore wind farm. In fact, it recently met a 100% renewable energy milestone.

I assume the real wind farm contains a bit more, you know, metal and concrete and stuff. Photo from Lego Media Library.

Playing with Legos has been a nearly universal part of childhood for almost 60 years. Our kids will likely continue to build castles and spaceships, but their future creations — and their building blocks — won't be exactly the same as ours were. And that's a wonderful, necessary step of progress.

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Heroes

A new report says the U.S. might meet its Paris goal no matter what Trump says or does.

Here's some less-bad-than-it-could-be news for coral reefs, polar bears, and humans in coastal cities who don't want to drown.

It turns out that President Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Accord (you know, that giant agreement that 195 countries signed promising to reduce carbon emissions and limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius) might end up being kind of an empty gesture in the long run.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

That's according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley, which found that the economic benefit of going all-in on renewable energy is becoming too large to ignore and the U.S. will most likely meet its goals under the agreement after all:

"By our forecasts, in most cases favorable renewables economics rather than government policy will be the primary driver of changes to utilities’ carbon emissions levels. For example, notwithstanding president Trump’s stated intention to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, we expect the US to exceed the Paris commitment of a 26-28% reduction in its 2005-level carbon emissions by 2020."

Basically, it doesn't matter that President Trump agrees with the terms of the Paris Accord or not. As long as building solar and wind plants is better for the bottom line than burning coal, oil, and natural gas, power companies in the U.S. (and around the world) will naturally gravitate toward those clean energy sources anyway.

The analysis predicts that renewables will be the "cheapest form of new power generation by 2020," Business Insider reports.

Solar panel prices fell 50% between 2016 and 2017 thanks to a global oversupply, and wind turbines continue to become more cost effective and efficient to build.

Workers install solar panels in D.C. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Does that mean we can kick back, crack open a beer, and enjoy the deliberate-yet-inevitable march of progress?

No. Climate change is still a huge deal.

Even hitting those Paris targets might not be enough to stop really bad things from happening. Didn't you read that New York Magazine article?

You didn't? Well, here's what the world could look like in a century or two, even if we do meet our Paris goals:

"Cities like Karachi and Kolkata will become close to uninhabitable, annually encountering deadly heat waves like those that crippled them in 2015. At four degrees, the deadly European heat wave of 2003, which killed as many as 2,000 people a day, will be a normal summer. At six, according to an assessment focused only on effects within the U.S. from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, summer labor of any kind would become impossible in the lower Mississippi Valley, and everybody in the country east of the Rockies would be under more heat stress than anyone, anywhere, in the world today."

So ... like, call your senator.

What it does mean is that climate change deniers and skeptics have less power than they used to.

Regardless of how many of the rich and powerful refuse to believe the Earth is warming, as long as the price of clean energy keeps falling, the argument for burning more fossil fuels is weakening.

Meanwhile, 70% of Americans support the Paris Agreement.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Back in June, the Trump administration touted its withdrawal from the accord as good for American business.

By following the money, American business might just prove him wrong.

For once, thank goodness, that's what they're good at.

Heroes

Solar power is mindblowingly cheaper than just a few years ago. That's fantastic news for the Earth.

The sun.

Photo by NASA/Flickr.

Bringer of day. Giver of life. Causer of that squinty face you're making in your Christmas card photo.

Just TAKE THE PICTURE! Photo via iStock.

And now, perhaps, also the unlikely savior of our climate and planet.

Thanks largely to a major decline in the cost of equipment, solar power has become the cheapest new energy source on the market.

"Unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects," Bloomberg's Tom Randall reports, summarizing a series of new data released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which surveyed 58 emerging economies in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America.

The fact that this is taking place in the developing world is a big deal, as it could potentially allow some countries to skip dirty, costly fossil fuels altogether — or at least mostly.

A gigantic solar farm in Morocco. Photo by Fadel Senna/Getty Images.

Back in the '90s, much of Africa couldn't reliably talk to each other on the phone. Even in 2015, only 2% of African households had landline connections. But the advent of mobile phones allowed many countries to rapidly build communication infrastructure without having to install costly, resource-and-labor-intensive telephone lines. Today, nearly 90% of Nigerian and South African adults own mobile phones — about the same as the United States.

Similarly, falling costs could allow many of these countries to install cheap solar farms without having to first build big expensive coal and natural gas plants, giving them an edge over countries like the United States, which have to weigh the cost of building new, clean energy plants with the cost of tearing down old ones and deal with heavy resistance from the industries that operate them.

Of course, there are still some roadblocks to a full-on, balls-to-the-wall solar building bonanza.

Despite falling costs, installing solar panels across dozens of countries on multiple continents is time consuming.

Also, in areas that are less reliably sunny, fossil fuel sources can still be cheaper and more effective.

Nonetheless, it's an encouraging sign — and not just for those hoping to slow or reverse climate change.

"For populations still relying on expensive kerosene generators," Randall wrote, "or who have no electricity at all, and for those living in the dangerous smog of thickly populated cities, the shift to renewables and increasingly to solar can’t come soon enough."

When that day comes, we Earthlings could owe the sun big time.

Photo by NASA.

At least until it swallows us all whole in a few billion years.

Heroes

Elon Musk's energy company is making glass shingles that double as solar panels.

We all know the feeling. Looking at your energy bill can be a lot like this:

How the heck did I use $30,000 worth of electricity? Was it all my Tesla coils? Photo from iStock.

Electricity is expensive. Renewable energy could help, but the technology has its hurdles to overcome, including cost, availability, and infrastructure.

There's also another psychological barb: A lot of renewable energy tech is kind of goofy-looking.

So Elon Musk has a new plan. He wants to make solar power super pretty.

Image from Tesla.

On Friday, Elon Musk announced that his company would make glass roofing shingles that double as solar panels.

There have been solar shingles before, but what makes Tesla's different is they're incredibly pretty. Compared to those big, bulky, blue ping-pong tables we probably normally think of, these are downright artistic. Musk hopes by making the panels visually attractive, they'll entice more homeowners to add them to their roofs.

They showed off four different types of tiles: terra cotta, slate, textured glass, and smooth glass.

They work like thousands of little solar panels all hooked together.

Image from Tesla.

They're basically mini-solar cells covered in a durable glass coating that will protect them from the elements. They can be designed to match different shapes and styles to fit the house.

The shingles will likely be out of reach for most homeowners at first. Tesla hasn't announced a price, but a similar product by Dow costs about $20,000 for a small patch of 350 shingles. Tesla's websitedoes suggest that with the lower utility bills they'd end up paying for themselves, however, and government incentives could help too.

All that said, for now, they'll probably be similar to Tesla's first electric cars — a cool device for people who are really into new technology. But they could end up becoming more popular: Think of all the people driving electric cars now. And we have seen solar power in general get massively cheaper in the last few years, a trend that is likely to continue.

This is a neat example of how renewables could end up integrated into everyday life.

Right now we depend on just a few huge power plants, but in the future inventions like this — combined with more affordable energy storage options — could turn our homes, offices, and garages into mini power plants.

This could not only help us transition away from fossil fuels and toward more green energy, it could also be a lot cheaper and make the market more dynamic.

Which would probably make everyone more like this:

FEED ME ELECTRICITY, SUN, MNOM MNOM MNOM MNOM MNOM. Photo from iStock.

Heroes

How Hawaii turned its amazing surfing into renewable energy.

Hawaii is basically where good little surfers get to go when they die.

I mean, can you ask for a more picturesque location? Warm weather, sandy beaches, the majesty of the Pacific Ocean right in front of your face. Imagining standing there, watching those beautiful, aquamarine waves roll in … man, you can’t help but feel a little amped up, right?

But now, those waves are electrifying more than just surfers. They're also powering homes.

Photo by Northwest Energy Innovations.

In Kaneohe Bay, barely noticeable from shore, two wave turbine machines bob in the surf. Since this summer, they’ve steadily been producing electricity, funneling it back through undersea cables to a nearby military base and onto the Oahu power grid.

These are the United States’ first grid-connected wave energy generators. They were set up by the Navy, which is interested in testing them as power sources for refueling stations and remote communities.

"More power from more places translates to a more agile, more flexible, more capable force," the AP quoted Joseph Bryan, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, as saying. "So we're always looking for new ways to power the mission."

If they work, communities all across America’s coastlines could use them, not just the Navy.

The Hawaii site is testing two different designs of wave energy makers.

An expert shows off a model of the devices. Photo from Cathy Bussewitz/AP.

The first is called Azura, and it looks kind of like a hefty version of a football goalpost. The other’s called Lifesaver, and it looks, well, kind of like a huge lifesaver. The researchers are putting the devices through the gauntlet to see which design will most reliably put out power and withstand the ocean’s tremendous forces and corrosive salt spray.

Between the two, they’re producing about enough energy to power just over a dozen homes right now. But later versions might be able to juice up hundreds of homes at a time, and they could be set up in big groups as well.

Imagine if these generators were set up on every coastline.

"When you think about all of the states that have water along their coasts ... there's quite a bit of wave energy potential," the AP quoted Jose Zayas, a director of the Wind and Water Power Technologies Office at the U.S. Energy Department, as saying. He also suggested that if we were to really get our heads in the game, 20% to 28% of all of our electricity could eventually come from the ocean.

Other researchers are currently planning on building test sites in Oregon and California, too.

That said, wave power is one area of renewable energy where we’ve been lagging behind in the U.S. We’ll need to build a more large-scale infrastructure — something other countries are already doing — if we actually want to make this work. In Scotland, for example, they have been experimenting with wave and tidal energy for more than a decade.

A wave energy device in Scotland. Photo from P123/Wikimedia Commons.

The good news, though, is that we can learn from other countries’ experiences and use them as a guide as we try to get in the game.

Hawaii has given itself a mandate to be completely powered by renewables by 2045, which is a huge goal.

It's a smart plan for the collection of islands because otherwise they have to rely on giant, expensive container ships to deliver fossil fuels.

The ocean is one of the greatest natural wonders on our planet, and it has given us so much — food, transportation, and, yes, totally amazing surfing spots. And if we keep focusing on the ocean, maybe it can give us renewable energy, too.

Heroes

How Costa Rica went without fossil fuels for 76 days and what we can learn from it.

While we were all playing Pokémon Go, Costa Rica helped save the planet.

If Costa Rica were a kid going back to school, it would have a pretty awesome story to tell when asked what it did over its summer vacation.

Image via iStock.

"Oh nothing. I just ran entirely on renewable energy for 76 days. BOOYAH!" Costa Rica would say proudly.

OK, so this is the Costa Rican women's volleyball team celebrating their own victory at the Rio Olympics, but they'd probably be pretty pumped about renewable energy too. Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/Getty Images.

According to the Costa Rica Electricity Institute (ICE), from June 17 through Aug. 31, 100% of Costa Rica's energy needs were met by renewable energy, predominantly from hydropower.

Cayuita, Costa Rica. Photo by Armando Maynez/Flickr.

This makes considering the small country is overflowing with various bodies of water.

Costa Rican waterfall. Photo by Luke H. Gordon/Flickr.

Hydropower supplied 80% of the country's energy requirements, followed by geothermal at 12%, and wind at 7%. Solar only contributed 0.01%, but that was to be expected considering how often it rains there.

As exciting as this news is, it's only about half of Costa Rica's environmentally conscious accomplishments concerning energy production over the past year.

Even more impressive, the country has accumulated over 150 days of 100% clean electricity this year to date, according to the National Center of Energy Control.

One of Costa Rica's hydroelectric dams. Photo by Ezequiel Becerra/Getty Images.

"We are a small country with great goals!" ICE wrote on its Facebook page. "We remain committed to the goal of carbon neutrality by 2021."

They're well on their way, too. In 2015, the country managed to produce 99% of its energy through renewables.

It should be noted, of course, that Costa Rica is a small country and therefore doesn't need to generate as much power as, say, America.

And, as mentioned, Costa Rica has a ton of water power from which to pull energy.

Hydroelectric power plant. Photo by Ezequiel Becerra/Getty Images.

But that doesn't mean its achievement should be discounted. If anything, it's a shining example of what a country can do with the natural resources it has.

Costa Rica joins a number of other smaller countries making the deliberate shift toward complete reliance on renewable energy.

On Aug. 7, 2016, Scotland, which boasts the largest oil reserve in the European Union, produced enough energy from wind turbines to power the country for an entire day.

Wind turbines in Scotland. Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images.

While that may not sound like a lot compared to Costa Rica's two-month renewable power feat, when you consider that Scotland is one-third larger than Costa Rica and that wind power typically produces less energy than hydropower, it's still a pretty impressive achievement.

Meanwhile, Germany is sprinting ahead when it comes to production of solar energy. On June 25, 2015, 78% of the country's electricity demands were met by solar power.

Electrician at Gehrlicher Solar company checking panels. Photo via AFP/Getty Images.

These countries' renewable energy models may be difficult for larger countries to emulate exactly, but their efforts are inspiring nonetheless.

In order for renewable energy to really make an impact worldwide, there's a lot that will need to be done in terms of city planning, allocating costs, etc. But these small models prove it can be done with a little ingenuity and concerted effort.

In fact the United States, Mexico, and Canada are taking a lesson from these star student countries and have already pledged to have 50% of their power come from renewable energy by 2025.

Renewable energy classes are officially in session. Take a seat, rest of the world.

Heroes

Scotland has the largest oil reserve in the E.U. They just proved they don't need it.

What were you doing on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2016?

I cleaned my apartment and made some amazing curry. Meanwhile, the world was pretty active too. Thailand approved a new constitution, for instance. And down in Rio, it was day two of the Olympics, featuring archery, diving, and weightlifting.

If you were in Scotland, however, you might have been distracted from the Olympics by the gigantic winds. Aug. 7 was a very blustery day for Scotland. The winds reached 115 mph in some places!

For many people, the high winds were problematic. Some bridges had to be closed, for example, and ferry and train services were affected.

But the winds also contributed something awesome for Scotland:

The wind on Sunday produced enough electricity to completely power Scotland. All of it. With zero fossil fuels.

Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

An analysis of WeatherEnergy data by WWF Scotland suggested that wind power produced 106% of Scotland's energy needs. That's enough to not only run the country, but to power over 75,000 homes as well!*

It's worth noting that this was kind of a magical confluence of factors: The extreme wind certainly helped, but energy demands are typically lower during the weekend. Still, it's a huge milestone for a seriously cool country.

Scotland's got some serious renewable chops going on.

Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

Though Scotland is estimated to have the largest oil reserves in the E.U., they're seriously dedicated to renewables. In fact, renewables contribute about half of Scotland's electricity — dwarfing both nuclear (33%) and fossil fuels (28%)!

Scotland's government plans to generate the equivalent of 100% of its electricity needs through renewables by 2020.

Wind makes up most of Scotland's renewables, but they're also using wave and tidal energy, as well as hydroelectric.

When they were unveiled in 2010, Scotland's AK-1000 turbines were thought to be the largest tidal generators in the world. Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

We still need better infrastructure for renewable energy as a whole, but Scotland's epic day shows the power of renewables.

One of the things keeping solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy from completely taking over the grid in many places is the lack of infrastructure. We need to build up our grid to take better advantage of peaks like these while also buffering it for the low days.

But on Aug. 7, 2016, Scotland proved that renewables can provide more than enough electricity. Now we just need the will and infrastructure to bring it everywhere.