As we pause for our summer break, we thought it would be to see what you, the readers, have liked so far this year. Over 1.8 million of you have visited the site in the last 6 months. We compiled a list of the top 25 stories you've liked the most in 2010:

21. Living Future 2010: A Collection of Highlights from the unConference by Amanda Reed

    This year’s theme was “Building Hope: Revaluing Community.” Joel Sisolak, Washington State Director of CGBC, specified what kind of hope the conference was trying to stimulate in his opening remarks. He said it was an active hope, one that calls us to push through the grief and believe that we can do better, and said this was in contrast to the “we believe that if you wish for something it will come true” type of wishful thinking. Understanding problems, finding solutions and committing to action were the name of the game at Living Future. To that end green building professionals spent three-days sharing ideas, presenting Living Building Challenge projects, their lessons learned, and new technologies, and getting fired up from some passionate keynote speeches...While I was not able to be attend all of the presentations and educational sessions, I did get to a few, and I thought some highlights would be worth sharing with you. Additionally, former Worldchanging Editor Julia Levitt and guest writer/Worldchanging reader Gia Mugford attended the conference and have contributed their impressions. Here is our collection of thoughts (organized chronologically for ease of review)...

22. State of Green Business Forum: San Francisco by Agnes Mazur
    

    At the PG&E Auditorium in downtown San Francisco, Joel Makower presented the 2010 State of Green Business Report -- a compilation of over 1500 news stories, blogs, and media collected from all sources of Greener World Media, including GreenBiz.com, GreenerBuildings, ClimateBiz, and others. Editors ploughed through massive amounts of information to come up with 10 major trends in green business and 20 indicators of progress towards a green economy...The good news is that despite the economic challenges of 2009, sustainability has not diminished on the radars of companies looking to go green...

23. Crash State: California as the Ruins of the Unsustainable by Geoff Manaugh
    

    ...for the time being, water stills flows from California's taps, the traffic signals still work, and rural towns still have electricity—but what might happen if California really did "collapse"? What would it look like if the state actually did declare bankruptcy, defaulting on billions of dollars in public debt?

24. The 5th International Gross National Happiness Conference by John de Graaf
    

    As many Worldchanging.com readers are probably aware, there has been a boom in happiness studies recently, stirred by “positive” psychologists and sociologists, who sense that their disciplines have focused far too greatly on neuroses and social problems and not enough on what kind of activities and policies actually contribute to happier societies, and by economists who believe GDP is too limited a tool to measure the success of societies...Not surprisingly, they have found that beyond a certain minimum level of income, greater happiness comes from strong and plentiful human connections, a sense of control over one’s life and employment, meaningful work, good health, basic economic security, trust in others and in government, and other opportunities less directly connected with monetary remuneration.

25. 
    New Emissions Measurements Show "Green" Consumerism Failing by Amanda Reed
    

    According to Barrett, if we are serious about limiting climate change to two degrees, then the scale of change needed is great. It's impossible to achieve adequate reductions in global emissions through increased efficiencies in production alone. Consumer emissions must also be targeted and reduced, and the longer we delay the fewer options there will be and the harder it will be...The big question then is: How can we drive systemic lifestyle changes broadly and more effectively than by telling people to stop consuming, or to consumer "greener" products?

Thanks for continuing to be such attentive, involved and interesting readers. Tune in tomorrow for the next five on our top 25 list.