Depending on where you live, your entire home may be heated with natural gas.  But even though you pay for it on your energy bill, do you know what it is?

Natural gas is called the cleanest fossil fuel becuase it produces far less emissions when burned that other fossil fuels does - it's "clean burning" so to speak.  That's really good, but what sucks is that we use so much natural gas that it still contributes a lot to global emissions!

Natural gas is equivalent to fermeted cow farts.  It's methane derived from rotting crud, oil field production, swamps, etc. - the same stuff as cow farts.  It gets pumped out of the ground, is exposed to some processing and it's ready to burn.  It's called 'natural' because it can occur naturally, but it still emits pollution like other fossil fuels.

I'd say that drawing a 'green' verdict on natural gas is easy: it's not a long term solution by any stretch of the imagination, but switching to natural gas is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint in the short run.

» Natural Gas (Wikipedia)