Shrinking ice caps. Vanishing species. Extreme weather patterns. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the dire evidence supporting global climate change. It leaves you wondering if an individual can have any impact at all on slowing this train.

We think so.

Later this morning, with actor Matt Dillon and Global Green USA CEO Matt Petersen in New York City’s Times Square, we will launch a national call-to-action that invites people across the country to get involved, become aware and take action. We’re calling it “Be a Better Planet,” and we’re issuing a challenge to find the greenest city in America. Not in the sense of which is most energy efficient or least polluting, but which city is filled with the most eco-minded residents. We’ll reward that city with a fleet of hybrid taxis (or cash equivalent for city greening projects with Global Green USA). And we’ll reward you with a free CFL bulb (while supplies last).

To participate, all you need to do is go here and do one or more of the following:

1. Answer a question on Yahoo! Answers (and take your shot at answering Matt Dillon’s question while you’re at it about the most effective yet simple ways people can save energy);
2. Go to Yahoo! oneSearch on your mobile phone to type in green keywords like “organic food” and “public transport” plus your zip code to find relevant local resources; and
3. Pledge to take up to about 30 different planet-protecting actions in order to reduce your personal carbon emissions and track them on an interactive U.S. map to see the collective impact of everyone else who takes part.

That last point leads me to this bit of news. Coinciding with this event, we’re giving you a sneak preview of a brand new site called Yahoo! Green that we hope will become your go-to resource for all topics green. Its anchor tenant will be the green pledge. In a matter of a week or so, the site will also be full of green news headlines; featured content from Global Green USA, Environmental Defense, NRDC and Lime; blog feeds from environmental authority Amory Lovins, Environmental Defense’s chief scientist Bill Chameides and EcoGeek; green shopping tips; the 18Seconds.org site; and relevant content from Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Groups, and the Yahoo! Autos Green Center. And it’ll evolve from there with even more content and features, all in the name of informing and empowering you to be as green as you can be. The site was designed and built by our Yahoo! For Good Scrum team, an internal sabbatical program for employees who want to use their talents to do some good for the world.

I think I speak for Yahoos around the world when I say we’re very concerned about the future of our planet. And we think it’s time to stop talking about global warming and start doing something about it. Small individual actions can add up to significant change. Tell your friends, coworkers, parents, mailman… imagine what difference it would make if 300 million Americans (and 6.2 billion non-Americans, for that matter) started thinking differently about everything they do.

Think your city is the greenest of them all? Go prove it. We’re rooting for you.

David Filo
Chief Yahoo

Jerry Yang and I just announced at our quarterly employee all-hands that Yahoo! has committed to going carbon neutral this year. Essentially, that means we’re going to invest in greenhouse gas reduction projects around the world to neutralize Yahoo!’s impact on the environment. While doing our homework on this, we measured our carbon footprint and discovered that Yahoo! going carbon neutral is equivalent to shutting off the electricity in all San Francisco homes for a month. Or, pulling nearly 25,000 cars off the road for a year.

We’ve been focused on this area for a while now. Our commute alternatives program has been recognized annually by the EPA since 2001 for incentives like Wi-Fi enabled biodiesel shuttles, bike lockers, carpool matching, and sizeable public transit subsidies. Our recycling program keeps about 180,000 pounds of materials out of landfills each year. We use renewable power, hydroelectric energy, and passive cooling at our various facilities and data centers. And green-minded Yahoos have launched sustainability-focused products like the Yahoo! Autos Green Center and 18Seconds.org to show people how they can make a difference in their own lives.

We know carbon neutrality isn’t without controversy. And it’s honestly deserved if companies and individuals don’t first make an effort to find direct ways to reduce their impact. We’ll continue to be vigilant about cutting ours, looking for creative ways to power our facilities, encourage even more employees to seek alternative commutes, and generally inspire Yahoos around the world to think differently about their energy use. (For example, in honor of Earth Day, we’re challenging Yahoos to decrease their consumption by 20% this week to help build lasting habits.) We’ll also be deliberate about investing in offset projects that can verifiably deliver their expected environmental benefits.

We think our offset program counts, but since this is a new and emerging market, we expect to learn as we go, and we’ll be transparent with you along the way. In fact, we’d like your help in all this — we want your inventive and creative ideas for potential offset projects. Please weigh in over at Yahoo! Answers. And read more about our overall approach here.

Stay tuned for more green news from Yahoo! in the near future. And an early Happy Earth Day to you.

David Filo
Chief Yahoo

Photo from razorbern (a.k.a. Bernie DeChant)

Tents are set up on the campus lawn. Several hundred pizzas have been consumed. Laptops everywhere have freshly-applied stickers. And our mysterious secret musical guest has been revealed.

Our first annual open Hack Day kicked off with an amazing 90-minute performance by Beck, who recently graced the cover of Wired Magazine for his passion for mashups and remixes. Who better to inspire cleverness and creativity among 500 developers for their all-night journey toward creating the coolest hack? Beck and his band put on quite a show.

To get everyone in the hacking mood, Beck put together this video just for the occasion. It’s too cool not to share.

Ever since Jerry and I started Yahoo! 11 years ago, we’ve made it a priority to stay loyal to our developer roots — creating useful and significant products that make the Internet more relevant to the global community. Along the way we’ve met a lot of developers with the same goals.

This loose network of “hackers” has gelled into a large connected community that takes an untraditional approach to creating new applications, products and services, much as Yahoo! has done in the last decade. For this community, hacking is a good thing — yielding ideas and innovations that are clever, creative and original.

We don’t claim to have supreme knowledge to be able to come up with the best solutions. We look to Yahoo! developers and users to contribute their ideas, and to take to the next level the enormous scale and infrastructure that Yahoo! is proud to be able to provide.

And we don’t want to hog it — the spirit of openness that is pervasive at Yahoo! will prevail this weekend as 500 developers from as far away as Australia, Canada, Florida and Chicago (and as close as the next exit down the freeway) descend on our campus tomorrow for our first Open Hack Day.

This will be the first time we’ve opened up the Yahoo! campus to developers from outside the company. We’ll give them lots of coffee and lots of space to be creative, and just under 24 hours to demonstrate their creativity and originality. At the end, hack demos will be judged by a panel of luminaries, and special awards given for the coolest hacks. And we’re really excited about the amazing musical guest performing on campus Friday night, which should be a great start to the hack-a-thon and the perfect way to get our creative juices flowing.

The biggest thing that has made Yahoo! successful has been the community we’ve been able to build, and the developer community is one of the most passionate constituents I’ve seen. I can’t wait to see what they come up with this weekend!