Photo via USA Today Volkswagen has recently announced some pretty ambitious goals: it's looking to have 300,000 of the cars it sells yearly--3% of global deliveries--be electric by 2018. It's seeking to surpass Toyota as the world's largest automaker by the same time. Recently, while covering the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, I had the opportunity to sit down w...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Grist After months of debate, Lindsey Graham is reportedly set to unveil a climate bill to the Senate. That bill, he has said, will be a moderate one. But what ever happened to the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACES), better known as the Waxman-Markey bill?...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Good Is you mailbox stuffed with sales fliers, misdirected mail, and catalogs you never flip through? We have been talking about it for years, but eliminating the waste that can collect in your mailbox can still be a challenge. Once you stem the tide of postal refuse, it seems, you move and the whole process starts again....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Pininfarina A Proving Ground for Lithium-Metal-Polymer Batteries? After some delays and problems, it looks like the Bluecar EV by Pininfarina and Bolloré is going to launch in the fall of 2010 if crash tests are successful and the car meets safety regulations. the fall target is for rental only, though. The Bluecar will go on sale at a later, yet unknown date....Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo via flickr Sarah Palin went to heart of Canada's oil and gas development sector this past week to congratulate Canada on finding the right balance between economic growth and energy security. She also touted her peculiar recipe for energy independence, which is, of course, Drill, Baby, Drill....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: tibchris/Flickr Two tiger cubs were found dead in the Ranthambhore national park in India this weekend. Though an investigation is still under way, officials reported that early evidence suggests the cubs were poisoned....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via Porsche Most of the excitement at Geneva this year didn't come from the announcement of new production model cars. No, the task of riling up the auto press was left to the hyper-fuel efficient vehicle concepts trotted out by carmakers that represent the best prospects for the cars of the future. Thankfully, there were a slew of them. And most of these aren't pie-in-the-sky dream cars--many are models the automakers say they'll bring to production. From exciting ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Nissan And That's Just for the United States... Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan and Renault, isn't the kind of guy who just dips his toe in the water. He jumps straight in. That's what he's doing with the Nissan LEAF; his goal is to take Nissan from basically a laggard when it comes to hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric cars, to a leader. At the Geneva Auto Show, Mr. Ghosn said that he currently had "no competition" and that he already had 56,000 preorders just from the U.S., and public orders aren't even open in Japan and Europe....Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Photo via Flickr Since 2000, China has reportedly purchased 141 rare white rhinos from South Africa--an amount that has drawn the suspicion from conservationists that the animals aren't being used for friendly purposes. Instead, it is believed that the rhinos are being farmed on wildlife reserves for the sole purpose of Read the full story on TreeHugger

The eVolo Skyscraper competition is always one of the most spectacular speculative ideafests of architecture, with entries from all over the world, this year from 42 different countries. There are always some entries that just pop out, that demonstrate a different way of looking at buildings. They are rarely the winners though; the jury usually is as eccentric as the entries. This year is no different, giving first prize to a design for a vertical prison "where the criminals are taken off the street to a place within that community and while serving their sentences, they continuously contribute to that particular community yet remain separated; a vertic...Read the full story on TreeHugger

We have noted that UltraTouch insulation from recycled cotton is great stuff, but I still get upset when I see their pictures of kids putting their heads on it; it has borax, a known respiratory irritant, added as a fire retardant and to keep out vermin. All cellulose insulations do. Now Alex Wilson at Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Public domain For a Little While, %19 of the State's Electricity Came from Wind Power It looks like the wind is blowing strong these days in Texas. On Sunday Feb. 28th, it broke a wind power electricity generation record with 6,242 megawatts on the ERCOT grid, and that record was broken again 5 days later on Friday March 5th with a 6,272 megawatts peak, and this is just for ERCOT, it doesn't include wind turbines on the "Panhandle" part of the state because they are...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Kia South-Korean Automakers Could Help Make EVs More Affordable I have a love/hate relationship with concept cars. It's always fun to see what automotive engineers can come up with, and they have a lot more freedom to innovate with concept cars than with production models, but a lot of the time, the results can be impractical and/or silly, and you just know that they'll never make a production version. That's why I'm happy to see that Kia's electric car concept is based on a production model. Read on for the technical specs....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via The Cove Congrats to The Cove and the entire team who made this world-changing documentary. The movie exposes the dolphin slaughter happening in Japan by doing some Mission-Impossible-style footwork to film the annual killing at one of Japan's most notorious hunting grounds in Taiji, Japan. The film has made a huge splash worldwide, even in Japan, and has impacted the start date, and the quota of dolphins and whales killed during last year's September hunt. They progressed even further by winning t...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Last year, TreeHugger honored more than 170 winners across eight topics with our first annual Best of Green Awards. This year, we asked for your nominations and the response was overwhelming with hundreds of suggestions spanning dozens of categories. Now, your suggestions, along with some of our own, have been compiled and it's time to vote for your favorite....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via oskay Innovations that help us get the lead out of electronics is a really big deal. The heavy metal is a big source of pollution in soil and ground water tables due to electronics being tossed in landfills, and is a toxic substance in e-waste dumps. University of Maryland is working on what could be the first commercial replacement for the lead used in transducers, actuators, sensors and other components. Resear...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: ManTownHuman "We, in ManTownHuman, believe that a more critical, arrogant and future-oriented cadre of architects and designers can challenge the new eco-centred, bureaucratic, anti-intellectual, fragmentary, localising consensus and in this way can lay the ground rules for overcoming the cosy rut in which architecture now finds itself." Every now and then a subject for a post comes along that is so wrong headed that I struggle with whether I should fan the flames of publicity, or leave it well alone. But as the rece...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo credit Yakkay via Facebook. This is not a story of why you should wear your helmet. We're not going to get into that hornet's nest...if we can help it. The debate may never be over. Instead, we're going to show off the ways helmet manufacturers are trying to make you WANT to wear your helmet...if you want to wear a helmet. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via HaPPi Like A HiPPo digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pets_animals/Mama_Elephant_Gives_Birth_To_First_Known_Male_Twins'; Happy - and very unusual - news! Delivered to a cheering crowd, two male calves were born in the north-eastern province of Surin to a 35-year-old mother named Phang Thong K...Read the full story on TreeHugger