When the Army announced they were going to build a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant in the California desert, it was hard to believe they were just trying to help the environment. And with good reason.  As altruistic as the Army is, it usually isn’t well known for its philanthropy. But if it helps the planet, I won’t stop them from building it.

As it turns out, sustainable energy is safer, suggests Dr. Kevin Geiss, the program director for the project. The Army hired private developers, Clark Enterprises and a Spanish company called Acciona, that will build this massive solar plant at Ft. Irwin, California.

Right now, like many military bases, most of its energy comes from diesel generators—with long, vulnerable lines back to the fuel source. Screw the green movement, solar just makes sense.

The solar plant at Ft. Irwin will require at least 1.5 billion dollars total, and should be ready to crank electrons by 2022. A hefty price, yes, but there is the potential to earn much of it back. Located conveniently right next to high capacity transmission lines, the army can then sell most of the excess energy to southern California; and since Ft. Irwin only needs 35 megawatts at its peak, that leaves 465 to shed.

So what could be next on the irony scale? The CEO of GM driving to work in a Prius?

Read more from Wired Magazine.

While global warming is causing panic in the United States, the rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in one of the driest places in the world.

This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.

Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.

The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.

“The transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain,” said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany.

Read more from National Geographic.