Image from londoncyclist Today is the big day: London's new bicycle rental system is being launched. Called Barclays Cycle Hire, after the bank which is a corporate sponsor to the tune of £25M, the system is high in Canadian content. Modelled after Montreal's Bixi, the 6,000 bicycles have been built at Devinci Cycles in Batgotville Quebec. Many have bemoaned the...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Tom Nord The planet is short one centenarian this week after Hector, the world's oldest condor, passed away in Algeria at the ripe old age of 100. Experts say Hector's long life was quite a feat considering that the scavenging birds generally don't live past 50. But as impressive as his longevity was, Hector's entire species of condor has a place in the record books, too, for having the longest wingspan of any land bird on the planet. Perhaps those magnificent wings came in...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Youtube Something's Not Right With This Campaign Not long ago, many celebrities got together to make a PSA for the "Be The One" campaign, urging people to sign a petition to save the Gulf of Mexico on the website RestoreTheGulf.com (very similar to the government's website at RestoreTheGulf.gov, which might have caused confusion). This all seems good, until you look at the fine print and dig below the surface... Which is what Read the full story on TreeHugger

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The Galapagos Islands are among the most stunning places on earth. The unparalleled biodiversity and spectacular wildlife makes it a travel destination the world over. But it's also in big trouble. When I traveled there two years ago, I saw firsthand how a number of factors are putting the islands' delicate ecosystems in danger: invasive species threaten the local animal populations, more and more tourists are tromping through, and a burgeoning immigration from the mainland is straining the natural resources there and producing unmanageable waste. The islands w...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: CoolClimate Art Contest The Earth may be our home but disasters like oil spills and threats like deforestation and global warming mean that it might not be such a hospitable place for much longer. Still, in the face of these obvious problems, many people refuse to recognize the need for immediate action. the CoolClimate Art Contest is an opportunity to reach out to those who ignore the problem or Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photos: Weitzner Limited From papier mache beads to your own homemade kitty litter, there's reams of clever ways to reuse that huge pile of old newspapers, but what about wallpaper? "Newsworthy" is this upcycled newspaper wallcovering from New York-based company Weitzner Limited - made from 100 percent recycled newsprint....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Celsias A total of 10 petitions, including one from the US Chamber of Commerce, were sent to the EPA challenging its 2009 ruling that it can regulate greenhouse gases as a harmful pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Today, those 10 petitions were denied on grounds that its finding is still supported conclusively by sound science. The EPA's endangerment finding, which is backed by a landmark Supreme...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via a Green Living You'd be forgiven for thinking that AB 32, California's climate change law, was truly controversial. Republican candidates running for office this year have taken to publicly bashing it, calling it a job killer and worse. And given that the effort to reign in carbon emissions on a national level just deflated because it was viewed by senators as too controversial as well, you might think that fighting climate change is a contentious issue across the board. Well, it's not. No matter how badly California's GOP hopefuls batter the law, the public st...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Adam Joseph Lewis Center, William McDonough + Partners Voted Greenest Building since 1980 When covering Vanity Fair's World Architecture Survey I asked "Where's The Green?" and wrote that there was a "profound disconnect between the architecture shown and the problems that architects have to solve today." Lance Hosey, formerly a partner at William McDonough+ Partners and now a writer at Architect magazine, thought the same but didn't just whine, he organized his own survey, the G-list. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: White rhinoceros (Digital Vision) How far would you go to stop rhino poaching? Constantly outgunned by poachers' high-tech helicopters, machine guns, night-vision binoculars, bullet-proof vests and insane arsenal in the illegal trade of "medicinal" rhino horns that are worth more than gold, one pissed-off game manager outside of Johannesburg, South Africa wants to do the unthinkable: inject poison into horns as a deadly warning to would-be poachers and the consumers who would buy them....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Nissan Leaf battery. Photo: Nissan Matching the Chevy Volt As predicted here, Nissan has decided to match GM and offer a 8-year/100k miles warranty on the battery pack of its LEAF electric car. It will be great for early adopters who will have one less thing to worry about (at least for the first 8 years or 100k miles), and it will be great for the transition to electrified transportation....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Jamie Hinton, Chief of the Magnolia Springs Volunteer Fire Dept, considers the barges. Image courtesy of Philippe Cousteau. With the well capped and BP's promise of a "static kill" in the coming days, a sense of optimism, while tempered, seems to be rising in some of the communities of the Gulf. But there is something else simmering amongst the people and communities here, a desire to do something, to take control and positively impact this tragedy. In the case of Jamie Hinton, Chief of the Magn...Read the full story on TreeHugger

The Asiatic cheetah once ruled that plains in India and the Middle East, but now its population is estimated to be 100 individuals or less. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons Pursued by trophy hunters and herdsman, the Asiatic cheetah was brought to brink of extinction under the rule of the Raj and finally disappeared from India in the 1940s. Today, the species survives only in the remote grasslands of Iran but, if a conservation plan already in progress is a success, that may change....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Ryan Lingard Design Ryan Lingard designed and built this lovely litte cabin near Joseph, Oregon in a couple of weeks for under $10,000. Preston at Jetson Green tells us that it has a wood stove, metal roof, cedar rainscreen, reused windows, portable toilet, and operable shutters....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Boston In 1969, an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California released a few million gallons of oil into marine ecosystems -- eight months later, it was among the primary catalysts for the biggest pro-environmental movement in the nation's history, starting with the first Earth Day. That 'national teach-in' day in turn lead to some of the strongest and most effective environmental laws and regulations ever created, it yielded the founding of the EPA. Fast forward to 2010, where we're still in the midst of the Read the full story on TreeHugger

Soot from vehicle exhaust, power generation and burning biomass is the second most important contributor to global warming. Photo: euthophication & hypoxia via flickr. More on the high, but heretofore largely neglected, role that soot plays in increasing global warming: Research from Stanford University shows that soot is...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Planet Green Babies babies babies. Looks like this episode of The Fabulous Beekman Boys is all about babies. I love babies. Doesn't everybody love babies? How can you not love a baby? Even a goat baby. Looks like this is going to be fun. As usual, I will rank the events depicted on the show using a scale of goats. Five goats is good. One goat is bad. At the end, the number of goats will indicate whether I am more or less likely to follo...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: The Sierra Club/Flickr This guest post was contributed by Robert Redford. A small minority of Senators robbed America of a cleaner, more prosperous future last week. In the middle of the biggest oil disaster in American history, the hottest summer on record, and a war with an oil-rich nation, this group of cynics blocked efforts to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation. This was the moment brimming with potential for new jobs, a more robust economy and cleaner environment...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: kevindooley/Flickr There are enormous opportunities to use energy more efficiently. Investing in energy efficiency is often far cheaper than expanding the energy supply to meet growing demand. Efficiency investments typically yield a high rate of return, saving consumers money, and can help fight climate change by avoiding carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning additional fossil fuels. Just as compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) offer great elec...Read the full story on TreeHugger