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1. New Orleans Musician Fears Hurricane Gustav Aiming for Gulf Wetlands Destroyed By Katrina
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2. Big Oil and Other Interest Groups Join McCain VP Palin's Lawsuit to Reverse Polar Bear Listing
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3. Solar Decthalon House Adopted by Texas Astronomical Observatory
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4. Biking Across America with WE ADD UP - Day 26: Storms
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5. Oslo Beefs Up Electric Car Charging Stations, But Buyers Experience A Backlog
New Orleans Musician Fears Hurricane Gustav Aiming for Gulf Wetlands...
2008-08-31 23:15
news
Interview with New Orleans Musician Amanda Shaw With Hurricane Gustav threatening the Gulf Coast, TreeHugger's meeting with Cajun-pop prodigy Amanda Shaw takes on a certain urgency. A shadow of concern for her family, friends and home hangs over the interview about her wetlands activism, her part in the IMAX film Hurricane on the Bayou, and her memories of Katrina. Amanda Shaw and her band, the Cute Boys, are in Minnesota to play the 17th annual Grand Portage Bayou Boogie festival and the potentially hurrica... Big Oil and Other Interest Groups Join McCain VP Palin's Lawsuit to...
2008-08-31 18:35
Business & Politics
Image from mape_s After getting past the initial shock of hearing about John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, I quickly honed in on two particularly salient aspects of her environmental views: her belief that climate change is not man-made and her opposition to the polar bear's listing as a threatened species. Now while I may not yet know much about Palin's overall record in offic... Solar Decthalon House Adopted by Texas Astronomical Observatory
2008-08-31 18:10
Design & Architecture
While astronomers at the Macdonald Observatory in Fort Davis, TX are studying the solar system, the BLOOMhouse has one of its own. Nestled high up on a mountaintop outside of Fort Davis, TX is where the solar powered BLOOMhouse now resides. The BLOOMhouse was one of the entries in the biennial Solar Decathlon that was held in Washington D.C. last year to demonstrate the power of the sun to our governing bodies and public. The competition challenge... Biking Across America with WE ADD UP - Day 26: Storms
2008-08-31 15:37
Travel & Nature
This post is one in a series of video blogs about biking across America with WE ADD UP to raise awareness about how to stop global warming. Check out more posts in this series here. Truth be known, by the time we had biked to Wyoming, there were several times along the way where Carson was on the verge of pressing the bike trip's red abort bu... 
Oslo Beefs Up Electric Car Charging Stations, But Buyers Experience A...
2008-08-31 14:49
news
Oslo's city government has promised to install 400 electric car charging/parking places over the next four years. Meanwhile Norway's electric car manufacturer THINK is turning out its THINK city cars at the rate of just three per day, which has created a local waiting list 700 customers long. U.S.$10 gallon gas makes 'el-bil' look good High prices for jet fuel may have made rap star Diddy ground his private jet for the moment, but Europeans and especially Norwegians are finding it 
When TreeHugger featured Robert "Chip" Beaman's 
How Biden's Foreign Policy Experience Supplements Obama's Climate Policy While the traditional media has largely focused on touting Biden's long tenure in the Senate and foreign policy expertise as key assets that will add gravitas to the Democratic campaign, it has spent little time examining how the Delaware senator's experience could supplement Obama's policies in other areas (the obvious ones being national security and foreign affairs, of course). Though it may not seem obvious at first blush, Biden may end up proving most valuable to Obama in lending his foreign policy chops to tackle climate change.
Image from 
Born in Iran, raised in Germany and educated in the USA, Mona Miri's life has been defined by a constant state of change and development. No wonder, then, that "Modified Landscapes," Miri's first solo exhibition, sets out to explore this theme as it relates to the built environment. Focusing her lense on a fast-changing neighborhood in San Francisco, the young environmental photographer's work comments on "environmental stress and the constant progression of city life." This week, TreeHugger sat down with Miri to talk about "Modified Landscapes," the urban environment and the philosophy behind her work. Mona Miri: "All of the photographs in... 
Photo credit: Getty Images Sony Bank has become Japan's first carbon-neutral bank, thanks to its purchase of 
While their brethren, the dreaded chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), may be on the wane, fluorocarbons -- a class of equally dangerous industrial gases -- are still wreaking havoc. As the name implies, the main distinguishing characteristic between CFCs and fluorocarbons is that the latter lacks chlorine; that is, unfortunately, one of the few meaningful differences, as both are extremely destructive in their own respects. Unlike CFCs, which were banned from use because of their harmful impact on the ozone layer, fluorocarbons remain widely in use: found in everything from clothing, blood substitutes and lubricants to refrigerants. The strength ... 
Image source: Planet Green Focus Earth with Bob Woodruff looks at US environmental challenges of the past and what we can hope for in the future. With tropical storm Gustav on a collision course for the Gulf of Mexico, is New Orleans ready for another Katrina? On the third anniversary of Katrina, and after watching Gustav rip through Haiti, leaving casualties in its wake and head for Cuba and ultimately the Gulf Coast, Bob Woodruff takes a closer look at how far New Orleans has come in the last three years. Also, lots of promises were made this week in Denver as the Democrats nominated their candidate for President, bu... 
The ubiquitous green and white 
Not that the principle of this is new, but in an effort to push forward a new global treaty on greenhouse gas emission reduction, the Stockholm Environment Institute has said that the United States, China, and other wealthy nations should be responsible for the majority of the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, 
Michael Braungart is co-author with William McDonough of Cradle to Cradle. He writes a very strange article in
Image source: Rishi Tea Its no surprise that 
From tiny apartment to big front porch Buffalo has everything going for it; green hydropower, water, railways, canals, a temperate climate; it should be a hot spot. Instead it has a smaller population than it did in 1907 and acres of empty houses. Adam Sternbergh writes in New York magazine about how New Yorkers are taking notice and moving there- mostly the creative types that can work anywhere (and don't have a lot of money) It is "a story about choices. It's a story about reaching that pivotal moment when the dream life you imagined for yourself in New York no longer seems attainable or attractive, or simply no longer seems worth the wearying chase." I hope it is the ... 
I'm a bit late on this, but it's still worth mentioning. 
Image source: Getty Images So eating local and the 100-mile diet sounds good to you, but you're a college kid on a meal-plan. You don't get to choose your food any more than you got to choose that night-owl roomate of yours. Well help is on the way thanks to the 
:: Make baby happy with homemade 
A teacher-student team makes a breakthrough in 
Image source: 
This week is Carnival of the Green # 142 and it's being hosted by 
photo: 
This past weekend, around 150,000 happy people danced and swayed to sixty four bands ranging in style from rap to indie rock in the first ever Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco. Outside Lands not only blessed the hallowed stomping ground of the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin with Golden Gate Park's first night concert in history (environmentally conscious 
Too small?
We Did Not Expect That One After the 
Next Stop: Rap Video On the lighter side... This video from Street Extreme (embedded below in this post) must be seen to be believed. Who knew the quiet little 
We've covered gyms that harvest power from human exertion in 
The Garmin 705 Mounted to my Touring Bike GPS Units Are Useful Affordable GPS units are tremendously useful, 
photo by Laura via 
If you are thinking that a pair of recycled-paper board games called 
TreeHugger has covered resource theft before, but now organized criminals in Canada are turning to environmental crime, according to a new report from Criminal Intelligence Service Canada. "Criminal networks can profit by collecting e-waste in developed countries such as Canada and selling it to 'recyclers' in developing nations," the service reports. According to Jonathan Montpetit of the Canadian Press, The report does not put a dollar figure on illegal trafficking and disposal of computers, televisions and cellphones but warns such activity will peak, starting next year, as digital broadcast norms take effect in Canada and the United States, making millions of TVs obsolete. "On... 
(Picture: Juana de Arco's show at the Buenos Aires fashion week. Via event's website.) The latest edition of the Buenos Aires Fashion Week (which took place from August 20 to 21) showed more environmental awareness than its predecessor, the winter edition (which we covered in the post 
Willis Carrier with his first air conditioner We have written often how electricity-sucking air conditioners caused the massive post-war transfer of people and votes to the sunbelt; Edward McClelland of Salon thinks that air conditioners make people vote Republican. "Air conditioning offends my sense of Northern pride. They have a saying in Maine: "If you can't stand the winters, you don't deserve the summers." But the air conditioner allows Arizonans to enjoy a cool, lakelike breeze in the comfort of their living rooms, without ever having to buy snow tires. As one who has seen firsthand how the Sun Belt created a poor Yankee cousin called th... 
Illegal Ivory Smuggling The black-market value of elephant tusks has quadrupled since 2004. Even if over 68 tons of ivory have been confiscated over the past decade, poachers and smugglers are still doing good business and killing many elephants, including in countries where they are endangered. New Weapon to Fight Poaching But anti-poaching investigators have a new tool at their disposal. It's not a cure for the problem, but it should help them be more effective and target their resources better. DNA forensics can allow them to know from where the illegal elephant tusks are coming from. For example, 605 elephant tusks valued at ... 
Back in the day before notebook computers could compete with desktops for price or power, a home office looked pretty ugly, particularly when dealing with big CRT monitors. Now it is so much easier, and the furniture is being designed to accommodate home office setups that really do go away when you finish your work. With more people living and working in smaller spaces, the market has grown as well, so that where a few years ago, designs like this were produced in small quantities and cost thousands, now you can pick them up at Crate and Barrel for five hundred bucks.... 
Photo credit: Getty Images Naughty, naughty: The Bush administration has launched what Salon calls a "stealth attack" on U.S. endangered species, couched among glory shots of Michael Phelps' Olympic-history-making victory, the runup to the presidential conventions and the hotly anticipated Obama vs. McCain showdown, and the whirl of last-minute summer vacays. "I have been working on the Endangered Species Act for 15 years and have never seen such a sneaky attack," John Kostyack, executive director of wildlife conservation and global warming at the National Wildlife Federation, tells the online rag. ... 
OLED Screens are Coming After spending about $140 million on production lines and unknown amounts of cash on R&D, TMDislplay, a joint venture between Toshiba (60%) and Matsushita (40%), has announced that it has developed a 2.2 inch OLED display that is the most power efficient and longest lasting in the world. The company plans to commercialize it in 2.5 inch format in 2009, for cell phones and small electronics. Not doubt the technology will eventually make its way to bigger screens. TMDisplay OLED Technical Details Lifetime is 60,000 hours, compared to 30,000 hours for a Sony OLED TV. That's good because initially one of the drawbac... 
New Sustain 12-wide 
Photo credit: Getty Images Cleo, spokescat for the Environmental Working Group's 
A big basket down low and over the rear axel means reduced chance of a spill when you've done some serious grocery shopping. Much safer, and more convenient, for the big hauls. Sure, a bike trailer is an option for bicyclists. But, for the elderly an electrical/pedal powered tricycle like this one from iZip (pictured) may be more practical. And if its; hilly, distant, or you're winded, the electric propulsion aspect has some serious appeal. Price ranges from 
We 
Image source:
Proving that Big Coal's nefarious influence knows no bounds, a new study published in the 
When By Kids For Kids (BKFK) and The Weather Channel launched the Going Green Challenge to inspire kids to come up with neat inventions to help make an eco-difference there's little doubt that the field was an open one. With a myriad of issues in need of resolution, the grand prize winner, Elizabeth Rintels, 12, of Keswick, Virginia, came up with a "Water Watcher" invention that helps monitor water usage in an ingenious way.... 
:: Beat the back to school blues with a splash of green! Consult our 
photo by Theirry via 
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photo by tokyofortwo via 
