Image credit: Good

Even in a notoriously car-dominated city like Los Angeles, people are fighting for better accommodation of cyclists. In fact, as Joseph Prichard explains in GOOD, LA could be a haven for bikes….Read the full story on TreeHugger

IBM has kicked off an interesting series of short videos that show how their tactics for creating highly efficient manufacturing facilities can be a model for making cities just as efficient. Check out this video that shows how the company uses micro-forecasting – predicting the weather in one very specific location (specific, as in a six block radius kind of specific) – to cool the equipment at their facility using as little electricity as possible. IBM thinks this very same type of micro-forecasting can be used within cities, drastically reducing the carbon footprint of our metropolises. Plus you get to see them blow something up. …Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via Hammacher Schlemmer

One would think a houseplant would be good enough for purifying the air in a room. But leave it to humans to try and improve upon the process by putting said plant into a machine. Check out the Botanical Air Purifier….Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: cytoon/Flickr

Australia is no stranger to traumatic wildfires. Climate change is the likely culprit for the continent’s exceptionally severe blazes, but the indigenous people of Australia have been dealing with fire—indeed, managing it—for centuries.

Among Australia’s indigenous communities, fire is actually considered a positive thing: a force of creation, not destruction. Now, the Read the full story on TreeHugger

“Holiday Gift Lists — The Best of the Web,” a collection of short lists with your best “good” presents to keep your loved ones from rolling their eyes this gift-giving season.

Google Earth, you better get on board! The US Geological Survey has produced some images that’ll knock your socks off — and help us understand how to help protect our planet over time.

No patience for Black Friday? That’s ok — “Read the full story on TreeHugger

Incandescent light bulbs will be collectors items soon, no matter what Michele Bachmann thinks. Instead of just throwing the old ones out, perhaps something creative can be done with them. Coincidentally, both Lifehacker and BoingBoing address this problem today; Boingboing with Professor Alexander’s Botanical Vasculum – Steamed …Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via Data Protection Online

Many in the climate change denying camp are claiming that climate scientists are somehow secretive of the studies they do and the data they gather, because some private emails a few of them exchanged were hacked into and made public. This myth that climate data is secret is gaining traction, however, propagated by talk radio hosts l…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Audubon NC

When I wrote about efforts to increase access for Off Road Vehicles to beaches at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, it stirred up quite a debate. Some locals bemoaned protection of birds that “are not from this area. They show up for a few months and migrate on.” Others favored conservation, citing their own friends’ habits of “taking their huge trucks and four wheelers and doing stupid things on the beach” as reason enough. But what exactly is it that the conservationi…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Some meat fresh from the lab. Photo via the Telegraph

The prospect has always been intriguing, to say the least: producing meat without having to raise, feed, or butcher animals. It could prove to be a far less resource-intensive way to sate a meat-hungry populace and an answer to PETA‘s prayers. And it may be a mere five years away from becoming a reality: scientists in the Netherlands have for the first time successfully Read the full story on TreeHugger

The keefer before its very jazzy renovation

We spend a lot of time saying that Heritage buildings are green, but Vancouver architect Gair Williamson, who has worked on a lot of them, says only “sort of” in an interview with a construction industry newspaper.

“A building constructed in 1904 is not going to perform to modern standards. If we were to take the Keefer project and bump it up to LEED standards, it would be unrecognizable as a heritage building. If th…Read the full story on TreeHugger