Daily Archives: December 16, 2008

Photo Caption: “Swedish for speed bump”
Credit to Goodnight London

The Old Speed Bumps
We hate them. Okay, well hate is a pretty strong word, but not strong enough for some of us. Perhaps despise, or even loath is more appropriate to express some our true feelings. But that is exactly the purpose of a speed bump. To create a rather annoying situation which is only made better by driving at reasonable speeds.

Smart Speed Bump
This is the same theory behind the Smart Speed

Receivers Called in on Pioneering EV Retailer
The problems of the big three don’t bode well for SUVs – but that’s not the only kind of automotive transport that’s in trouble. With Norwegian electric car make THINK! in dire need of its own bail out, Toyota putting its Prius plant on hold, and Tesla running into trouble, the long promised dream of a greener

:: Pink is the new green. In our Buy Green: Pink Champagne guide, that is!

:: ‘Tis the season of wasteful gift wrap–and a whole lot of it! Make a switch to more sustainable alternatives.

:: Kiss goodbye to holiday stress with a comforting home cooked dinner like Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Sage Brown Butter. Mmm

TreeHugger has shown quite a few classic posters that have relevance today, and a few humorous ones that are updates of the originals. Now ReadyMade commissioned five artists to reimagine the poster art of the GD1 (great depression one) and made them available for free downloading, just in time for the holidays.Nick Dewar writes about his bike poster:

“I hope that America is entering a post-’greed is good’ period. I can’t think of a single step that would change the nature of our society more than everyone abandoning their automobiles and cycling

Think in Big Trouble
The Norwegian government has announced that it won’t guarantee between 100 million to 200 million Norwegian crowns ($14.5 and $29 million) in short-term loans to rescue the electric car maker Think Global. The company has halted production of its City EV and laid off half its workforce. Think was rescued from bankruptcy in 2006, but will it be rescued again this time? Read on for more details

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Though proponents of carbon cap-and-trade programs are in the ascendancy over advocates of straight carbon taxes at the moment, that hasn’t stopped some eminent scientists and thinkers from coming out in favor of the latter.

Most recently, climatologist James Hanson (the first scientist to state before Congress that greenhouse gases were causing climate change, some 20 years ago, and director of the NASA Go

Toyota Not Immune from Downturn
Toyota has invested more than $300 million in the Blue Springs, Mississippi, plant that is under construction. It was supposed to start making Prius hybrid cars (check out photos of the redesigned 2010 Prius here) in 2010, but “the automaker is delaying production there indefinitely because of the industrywide downturn.” Read on for more

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photo: SunRun

Residential power purchase agreement programs for solar power (sometimes called solar-as-service) offer homeowners the benefits of solar power without having to worry about financing the installation of the panels themselves. This sort of program is hardly new—though they aren’t yet available in every state—but what is new is incorporating building-integrated solar panels into one of these programs.

That’s what’s happening with the newly announced partnership between SunRun and OCR Solar & Roofing:

Mercedes BlueZERO: One Body, Three Drivetrains
Mercedes has given us more information about its BlueZERO trio of concept cars. I’ll be able to see it in person in Detroit in January, but in the meantime, here’s what we know about it: A single architecture designed to be modular so that three different drivetrains can be used. The E-CELL version is battery-electric, the E-CELL PLUS is similar but has a small internal combustion engine to act as a range-extender (like on the BYD F3DM or <a href=”http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/gm-vo