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From the news that the first known male elephant twins were born in the north-eastern province of Surin, Thailand to sustainable clothing ensembles and the The Cove's Oscar win at the Academy Awards, a lot happened this week in green. Find out what else happened in the world of green this week in our photo roundup of most popular, most important, and most oddball stories. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via SF Gate Over at the San Francisco Chronicle, Dr. Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute has come up with the most believable argument against global warming that I've yet encountered. And so, I'll close out my Friday by sharing it....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Acid ocean "SOS." Image credit:Alaska Marine Conservation Council US EPA has decided to consider ways that US states can, under already delegated authorities, curb pollutants that may otherwise add to the power of global warming's evil twin: Ocean Acidification. (Note: many US States regulate stack emissions to reduce acid rain and also have the delegated Federal authority to limit the acidity of effluent discharges within their boundaries. So, this would be an extension of State's rights, by interpretation of existing Federal and State la...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: LG Chem The Supply Chain for Electric Cars is Growing About 6 months ago we wrote that LG Chem was thinking about building an advanced lithium-ion battery plant in Holland, Michigan, to supply battery packs to GM for the Volt PHEV. Now it's confirmed, everything's official and the groundbreaking is scheduled for this summer, with a 2012 target for the beginning of operations. LG Chem says that the plant will create over 400 jobs by 2013, and many people will be hired and trained in advance....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Postwar suburban sprawl, courtesy of George Bailey and his Savings and Loan A lot of the Libertarian types think that those of us promoting higher densities and urban life are trying to limit freedom of choice. Joe Mysak wrote in Bloomberg about us: The notion appeals especially to people who like to think they'll be in charge after the revolution. They would apparently love nothing more than for the population to be confined to Soviet-style concrete-block high-rises and be forced to take state-run streetcars to their little jobs at the mill. According to the Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Infrastructurist Risk assessment is hard. We humans are hard-wired with many cognitive biases that can often distort our perception of reality and make us fear the wrong things. For example, on average, people will be more afraid of something with which they are unfamiliar compared to something that they see every day. Cars fall into the "familiar" category, and to remind us of the risk associated with driving, the nice people are the Infrastructurists made a really cool infographic that shows how cars are killing people around the wo...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Sörn @ flickr On Thursday, the Trust for Public Land released a roster of Hollywood A-listers and companies--including Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, the Walt Disney Company, the LucasFilm Foundation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Steven Spielberg, Warner Bros., Fox, Sony, NBC Universal, and Time Warner--who have collectively donated more than $3 million to save one iconic piece of land: Cahuenga Peak....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Good When one Peace Corps volunteer came to understand the flimsy safeguards a "reserve" provided the forest near his post in Paraguay, he was motivated to do something that would provide true protections for the trees. The solution he settled on involved two wheels and a lot of miles....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Guardian Most cap and trade schemes proposed by governments include provisions that allow polluting companies to buy carbon offsets--initiatives that pay for tree planting in South America or solar panel installation in India and so forth--instead of cutting emissions exclusively from their own operations. So, surprise, surprise, a recent report from the AP in the Huffpo Green has revealed that companies pa...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Media Coverage of the OCA Toxic Sludge Dump

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Suzy Amis Cameron and James Cameron reveal Jillian Granz's winning sustainable dress at Global Green's Pre-Oscar Party. Photo: Cerraeh Laykin I know, the dress looks blue—Avatar blue to be exact. But, it's actually about 85% green. The Red Carpet Green Dress Contest was created by Suzy Amis Cameron, wife of Avatar director James Cameron, to send a message that one can wear green on the red carpet. In addition to designing Oscar-worthy gowns out of sustainable fabrics, the contest also serves as an international fundraiser event for her beloved Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: marfis75/Flickr Tanzania and Zambia, conservationists fear, may receive special permission from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to auction off a combined total of 112 tonnes of stockpiled ivory. Though such auctions are strictly monitored by international organizations and the revenue earned is required to be used for elephant conservation projects, many believe that the sale could drive market demand for ivory and Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: ACS, Yang et al. Theoretical Energy Density: 1550 Wh/KG ! A few months ago I wrote about a battery breakthrough related to silicon nanowire anodes. The researchers said that it showed great promise, but that one of the main challenges to its commercialization was finding a cathode that could handle all this extra power. Well, it looks like that problem has been solved (that was quick!) thanks to a new lithium sulfide (Li2S) cathode with 10 times the power density of con...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photos by Lloyd Alter With the constant rewiring of the internet, deferred maintenance and the inevitable freeze-thaw cycle, you need good teeth to ride in Toronto bike lanes; otherwise they are shaken out of your skull. The Urban Repair Squad to the rescue, giving our roads a Pow! Bam! and Crunch!, just like an old Batman episode, warning us if the dangers ahead. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via A Green Living That's the topic of an ongoing online debate over at the Economist.com. In one corner, green jobs advocate Van Jones, who argues that governments should engage in the active practice of creating green jobs, by, for example, incentivizing clean energy projects. In the other, Andrew P. Morriss, a professor of business and law at the University of Illinois, who argues that green job creation should be left to the marketplace. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Shefaet, Flickr This one goes out to mig. Mig wrote us and explained that yesterday a distant facebook friend posted this: "Oceans are the single largest CO2 reduction system in the world. Water Vapor is the biggest contributor of CO2 in the atmosphere and 97% of all CO2 in the atmosphere comes from natural sources, not man made." Mig says: "Now, i'm not a scientist and don't know enough about all of this to debunk or confidently argue the point or the source. Have you heard of this?"...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Screenshot via youtube video German company Bundesdruckerei showed off what it is calling the world's first e-passport equipped with an AMOLED display at CeBIT 2010. It could be the future of airport security, ditching paper passports for one driver's license-like card that can display a rotating view of the passport owner. And what's even more amazing is that the card doesn't need a battery for the screen to function. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

All charts and graphs via EnviroKnow I've written before about the ever-increasing politicization of climate change--the thesis that the scientifically backed consensus that human activity is warming the planet is now treated as a political belief isn't a hard one to prove. But just in case I need to back the claim up with some hard numbers, Gallup has released the results of its most recent poll on climate change. In it, it's revealed t...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: CC The Food Was Too Expensive... Sad story of the day: 11 rare and endangered Siberian Tigers starved to death while confined to "cold, cramped metal cages" at the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo in China's North-East. The deaths took place in the past three months, with reports saying that "the tigers starved to death, having been fed nothing but chicken bones". The food bill for the tigers ran to about $1,320 (9,000 yuan) a day....Read the full story on TreeHugger