Photo: Audrey Penven, CC Is This the Beginning of a New Meme? Swings in Trains? Somebody decided to make the world just a little bit more interesting, and three red swings appeared on the BART Public Transit System in San Francisco for the public to enjoy. You really need to check out the photos below, they're great....

The international debate over what sort of post-Kyoto climate change agreement emerges often gets characterized as having China and the United States continually butting heads over who's going to go first and actually commit to reducing emissions significant amounts. There's also the impression (borne out by act...

Photos: Courtesy of Juan Solari Howard. So after a lot of thought, we've come to the conclusion that using the dishwasher can be greener than hand wash, but we've also found that the manual work can be done a lot more efficiently. How can we achieve that? Juan Solari Howard is a young Argentine designer that has come up with a clever (and sleek) sink design especially developed to save water, time, and energy (yours) when doing the dishes manually. Check the extended for a full display of photos showing how!...

Photo: Daimler Much Needed Cash and Expertise for Tesla Tesla had already announced a deal with Daimler at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, but this is bigger. The first deal involved supplying battery packs for the Smart Electric Drive, but this new deal, which involves a 10% equity buy by Daimler, makes for a much closer partnership. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said: "Where I see the significant value, the mutually beneficial partnership, is that Tesla brings expertise on the battery electric front, Daimler brings expertise associated with ...

The winners of this year's Next Generation design competition have unearthed an idea that's brilliant in its simplicity: adding wind turbines to already existing electrical towers. The project, aptly called Wind-It, would have wind turbines built on pylons and towers along high voltage lines across the US, sparing the need to build entirely new structures on private or government land--and they'd generate as much as a megawatt of power per tower. Has this concept solved one of the biggest problems with wind power?...

That's fog, not pollution... photo: Ingrid Taylar via flickr Compared to sending goods long distances by truck or airplane is far less efficient than sending them by ship, and on the level of an individual product the emissions not that great, in the aggregate shipping is a major source of emissions—about 3% of global emissions in fact. A new report though shows that the...

Susan Szenasy and James Ludwig The program said "the key to success-now more than ever- is INNOVATION. How are designers, architects businesses and schools reinventing themselves to fit 21st century models?" Susan Szenasy of Metropolis hosted, shown above with James Ludwig, Vice President of Design for the office furniture company Steelcase, not a company with a reputation for being cutting edge. That is going to change. Ludwig made some interesting predictions about the future of the office:...

photo: Tim via flickr. They say “a week is a long time in politics.” And this was my first thought when Matthew asked me, a month ago, to consider a round-up of business and politics events from Australia. It may be a large sunburnt land blessed with many natural assets, but the so called Lucky Country might be using up some of its nine lives, if recent events are anything to go by. Some of the worst weather since records began suggest the climate is a changing. And not just atmospherically, politically as well. Not ...

Whether for enhancing crop yields or storing massive amounts of carbon in the soil as part of a geoengineering plan, biochar certa...

The Greener By Design conference kicks off today in San Francisco, but couldn't wait to get designers thinking about the cradle-to-cradle way of working. Yesterday a workshop was held that offered some incredible inspiration for the 36 designers in attendance, including designers from major companies like Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett Packard, and more. They learned how to make their designs not only do no harm, but do 100% good. ...

One of the trends we see at ICFF is the continuing dance between craft and tech, as the computer driven technologies become more affordable. For example, TreeHugger favourite Michael Iannone is standing next to a console that he built out of wheatboard and bamboo, but then photoshopped an image into dots that are translated by a computer controlled drill into 3,500 holes of various depths, creating the image on the face of the unit. I asked Michael to show us what's new....

Video highlights from the 2009 Heart of Green Awards ceremony.

From chocolate to sawdust, these fuels have the potential to get us off oil. Also see the hottest new small cars.

By 2016, the average vehicle will get 35.5 mpg -- a 40% improvement over today's fuel economy.

Images via Hay Festival The Hay Festival, taking place this weekend, is one of the most respected literary and ideas festival in the world. Each year it plays host to great minds, writers, poets, and musicians who are creating inspiring work. Think of it as a low key version of TED in the green Welsh countryside rather than on the golden Californian coast. This year for the second year running, alongside it's usual programme, the Hay Festival is hosting Hay on Earth, a programm...

Image credit: The Guardian Virgin Galactic President on Space Tourism's "Very Low Impact" Last week Lloyd reported on Leo Hickman's attack on the Branson space-tourism venture Virgin Galactic. Hickman argued that it was "one of the most extravagant and self-centred uses of a fossil fuel imaginable." Lloyd has also had a good chuckle at the concept of a LEED-certified space ...

Image credit:Wikimedia. PJM Interconnection is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 US states and the District of Columbia. The amount of renewable energy proposed changes throughout the year as new projects are added and some are withdrawn from the process, and PJM aims to track it all. With so much at stake in energy legislation currently being put together by the US Congress, I thought it would be helpful to get an industry prespective on Cap & Trade proposals and renewable energ...

Photo via Intel Intel International Science and Engineering Fair had a lot of cool entries, as we mentioned last week. They've announced the three top projects. Not only were all three finalists young women - go science savvy girls! - but one of them was an eco-inspired project to help with water pollution issues. Li Boynton, a high school student from Houston, TX, developed a biosensor from bioluminescent bacteria (a living organism that gives off light) to detect the presence of contaminants in public water. Li’s biosensor is cheaper and easier to use than current biosensors and she hopes it can be u...

Recognizing a pioneering oceanographer, the president of REI, the founder of the Student Conservation Association and the team behind NBC's Green is Universal campaign.

A video advertisement seeks to inspire action at the upcoming U.N. Copenhagen climate talks.