Looking to buy a home and engage in some socially responsible investing? Look no further than the environmentally enlightened communities of coastal South Carolina.

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It's not easy being green for the man of means. With Al Gore polishing his Nobel Prize and his Oscar, and Connecticut-sized ice shelves doing cannonballs into the ocean, the need for reducing one's carbon footprint should, by now, be well-established. It's just that some of us start out with bigger feet than others.

Let's assume you already own a Prius and have installed ­solar panels on the roof of your home, your garage and your doghouse. Good start. But what about that second home, the one you financed by flipping that oil-­pipeline firm in Riyadh? The one with the heating system that runs on bituminous coal? ­Perhaps it's time to consider swapping that dinosaur of a domicile for one in an environmentally responsible community.

If so, look no lower than the Low Country of coastal South Carolina, which -- for reasons possibly having to do with its precarious position on the rim of our rising oceans -- is suddenly rich with an ­abundance of eco-friendly homes. Case in point: the following four communities, each built to exacting environmental standards, and offering enough luxury to keep you from feeling like you're suffering for the cause. Indeed, if saving the planet were always this comfortable, it would surely already be saved.

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