Photo: National Post (Dario Ayala/Canwest News Service)

It’s been a hot, dry start to summer – and Quebec is burning. A blanket of smoke descended on Montreal early Monday morning, blown in from forest fires raging in the northwest region of Quebec. The effects of the blaze were seen today as far south as Boston, Cape Cod and other parts of New England, reducing visibility to only three miles in some places….Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via The Sydney Morning Herald

In 2007, villagers captured a mysterious young woman in a remote region of Cambodia who, by all accounts, was completely isolated from human society, a feral child living in the forests. News of her discovery circulated quickly as authorities attempted to identify the girl, dubbed “Jungle Girl” by the press. Soon, a f…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Video still from Bill Rankin via Nicola Twilley @ Edible Geography

The intensity of agricultural land use has exploded over the past 300 years. Bill Rankin at Radical Cartography synthesized data from an expansive historical land-use survey to give us a telling visual overview. …Read the full story on TreeHugger

Steve Mouzon has been a fixture on TreeHugger since I first read his thoughts on the original green, on how people designed before the the Thermostat age, and how buildings kept people warm in an era before oil, or cool before air conditioning was invented. I have come to base much of my thoughts on the sustainability of heritage buildings (I am a volunteer at a heritage preservation org) on what I have learned from Steve, much of which is summarized in the points made above in the illustration; that good buildings (old or new) are lovable, durable, flexible and frugal.

I looked forward to his new book, Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo via ted

On Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show, GPS, Bill Gates gave a gloomy answer when asked about the prospects of the U.S. creating renewable energy projects at such a large scale that they will replace dirty fuel sources like coal and oil in the coming decade. Gates, normally sanguine on the power of technology and market forces to cause transformative change at a rapid pace, said that the technology to store energy f…Read the full story on TreeHugger

All photos by Javier Callegras from CG Architectes

Mocoloco shows us the CrossBox by CG Architectes, built from four shipping containers….Read the full story on TreeHugger

In January I visited Toronto’s Urban Mode for the opening of their new Blu Dot showroom, which I thought was very attractive. What I didn’t know until I was researching the new Sustain Trio MiniHome was that it was a green prefab! Blu Dot co-founder Charlie Lazor would be so proud. I visited it this weekend to catch some pictures.

…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Greenpeace in the UK started a wonderfully clever competition to create a new logo for BP in protest of their investment in the Alberta tar sands; events overtook them as the gulf spill became the poster child. And this is the company that was once going “beyond petroleum.”…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Ultra Motor

Last year The Guardian’s Helen Pridd reviewed the GoCycle electric bike, and she was impressed. At the time she promised a comparison of different e-bikes was in the works. It may have taken them a while, but the Guardian bike blog have made good on their promise. But what were the results? Are e-bikes a viable alternative to regular cycles, or do they just make us lazy?…Read the full story on TreeHugger

We keep saying that green roofs are changing architecture and planning, and here is another example, where the green roof turns into green walls and comes down to grade. Actually not to grade, but to some form of podium.

Dezeen shows us La Maison-vague by Patrick Nadeau, is being built in Reimes, France, as part of an affordable housing project….Read the full story on TreeHugger