Top Gear is one of my all-time favorite shows. It never ceases to provide laughs and good entertainment while simultaneously managing to actually deliver useful content as well. My only gripe with it is that here in the States, we are always at least one season behind. So, while season 14 starts up on BBC in Britain, we’ll be lucky if we see the start of season 13 by February on BBC America.

That lag especially sucks right now because in episode two of season 14, which just aired in Europe, the Top Gear crew has built themselves a “car to save the world”—the Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust. Due to the fact that BBC in Britain restricts video viewing from their website to Europeans, I can only bring you a mish mash of bits and pieces of the episode from youtube… but even without the full episode, there are plenty of laughs to be had.

Cheers and enjoy.

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If you want to have a totally handmade holiday, now is the time to get started. Over the next couple of months, we’ll be posting about recycled gifts and giftwrap you can make yourself and great handmade finds for sale!

There are lots of ecofriendly gift wrap options out there if you’re feeling the traditional, paper wrapping thing. If you want to branch out a bit, though, you might try wrapping some gifts this year using the traditional Japanese method furoshiki. Here’s how!

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In preparation for the steadily approaching launch of their first mass-market electric car—the LEAF—Nissan has produced a series of videos highlighting different aspects of their approach to developing electric car technology.

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Less than a week after switchable EV battery pioneer Better Place announced a newly expanded agreement with French car maker Renault, the company’s founder and CEO, Shai Agassi appeared as a guest on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report in hopes of getting that sought-after ‘Colbert Bump’.

The Colbert Bump, as it is known, is a phenomenon wherein people (places, companies, ideas) that appear on the Colbert Report receive a sudden boost in popularity for their cause.

The deal announced by Agassi in Frankfurt builds on an agreement reached between the two companies in August and will be to install the Better Place battery system (and build-out the charging network) for the Renault Fluence ZE for sale in Israel and Denmark. The Fluence ZE was one of four models in Renault’s new line of electric cars unveiled last week at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

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Earlier this week we covered the announcement that OriginOil had created a Live Extraction process for converting algae to oil coined, ‘milking’. This is just one of several big breakthroughs the company has had during the past year so I decided to catch up with CEO Riggs Eckelberry to get his take on algae to fuel.

Q: Due to this breakthrough technology (Live Extraction) and some of the others you’ve recently announced, how soon do you think you’ll be able to use this technology to produce algal fuels at a commercial scale?

A: Due to the lag in actually building large scale projects, the ability will come long before the fact. Also, we won’t build or produce ourselves, but instead we will provide technology and devices, and help design, build and maintain these sites. The next step is a pilot plant which could occur as early as next year.

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The blade plant on the Isle of Wight was in the process of researching and testing the world’s longest wind turbine blade—a project that will likely continue thanks to the deal announced Monday.

The sluggish turbine market and political opposition to large-scale wind development in the UK are being cited as reasons for the plant closures by Vestas officials. Company officials said they would likely be shifting production of its onshore turbines to its facilities in Colorado.

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So to liven-up the debate about carbon policy and make it a little more approachable for the kids, host Jon Stewart ‘Jizz-Ams in Front of Children on Cap’n Trade’:

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O’Reilly borrows from Matt Taibbi’s piece at Rolling Stone, “Inside the Great American Bubble Machine”, that examines the politics of climate change and the investment houses that stand to gain with the move to carbon markets. But O’Reilly should have quit while he was ahead because Taibbi put together a decent case against Goldman Sachs. By pulling Republican whipping-boy Al Gore into his soapbox, O’Reilly softens the blow of Taibbi’s pointed critique — never mind that Al Gore’s has actually said his first choice for a policy mechanism to address climate change is a carbon tax. Watch it:

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Coleman’s arguments rest on the tired arguments that global warming is a ‘left-wing conspiracy’ made up by the UN and the environmental movement to justify a world government and a massive redistribution of wealth [yawn]. Unfortunately, Coleman’s scientific credibility is overwhelmed by his political bias.

Needless to say, conservative media outlets had a field day with the news, reporting it as if Coleman had already found a court to hear his dubious legal challenge.

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So, what ever happened to that lawsuit anyway? To the best of my knowledge, nothing.

]]> http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/07/17/what-ever-happened-to-the-lawsuit-brought-by-weather-channel-founder-against-al-gore/feed/ http://sustainablog.org/2009/07/14/10-ways-to-support-charity-through-social-media/ http://sustainablog.org/2009/07/14/10-ways-to-support-charity-through-social-media/#comments Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:00:59 +0000 Max Gladwell http://sustainablog.org/2009/07/14/10-ways-to-support-charity-through-social-media/ This post is a collaboration between Max Gladwell and Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser. It is the second in our series of #10Ways posts being published simultaneously across as many as 300 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.

You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

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At least 100 activists in Italy occupied four coal-fired plants to demand action from world leaders to avert the worst consequences of global warming.

Greenpeace said that G8 leaders must “stop putting the interests of polluting industries such as coal ahead of the climate.”

“The sort of action G8 leaders are putting on the table regarding climate change would lead to more greenhouse gas- polluting power stations like this one,” Greenpeace protester Julien Vincent said by phone from a platform about 650 feet up a chimney at a coal plant in Brindisi, Italy where “carbon dioxide is belching out” at an alarming rate.

Vincent refers to backtracking from the commitment of major nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2050.

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“I believe in climate change for a very important reason,” said Colbert during his show last night, “so I can market the new Colbert Report Green. It’s just like the regular Colbert Report except we reduce emissions by jumping on the bandwagon.” Watch it:

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Invoking a custom of the House which allows party leaders as much time as they should need to discuss a bill or amendment, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) wrapped-up the Republican Party’s case in opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate bill by busting-out a filibuster, of sorts; poring through an amendment to the bill that was delivered late the night before.

Repeatedly highlighting the fact that it was submitted at 3:09 A.M., Boehner read aloud portions of what he called, “Speaker Pelosi’s National Energy Tax”, often pulling bits and pieces completely out of context to launch into the Republican talking points about how the bill will kill the American economy.

When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, “Hey, people deserve to know what’s in this pile of sh*t.”

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Invoking the now-familiar messages heard throughout both his campaign and much of his presidency, like growing new jobs, moving off foreign sources of energy and building a clean energy economy, President Obama implored the U.S. Senate to move forward with a version of the Waxman-Markey climate bill passed by the House of Representatives on Friday.

“My call to every senator, as well as to every American, is this,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly address, “We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past. Don’t believe the misinformation out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth.”

Mr. Obama focused on the passage of Waxman-Markey in his address despite reportedly having already recorded an address focusing on health care legislation. Watch it:

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The ad, relying simply on the words of the President, stands in stark contrast to the fear-laden ad released on Monday by the Newt Gingrich-led and billionaire-sponsored American Solutions for Winning the Future.

“The President’s voice is the most powerful, but he is only one of the millions of Americans who want to move to a 21st Century sources of clean, American energy,” LCV President Gene Karpinski said in a release. “In 30 years in Washington, the coalition that has formed in support of this bill is one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen because the vote in question is the most critical we’ve ever faced.”

With all signs pointing to a Friday vote in the House of Representatives on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, the right-wing political action committee behind the “Drill here, drill now, pay less” campaign of last summer, yesterday launched a last-ditch effort to block climate change legislation by scaring the crap out of you.

The ad, produced by the group American Solutions for Winning the Future, urges you to contact your Representative to tell them how scared you are of the devastating economic impacts of climate and energy legislation. The new commercial was released on the heals of a Congressional Budget Office report that found the annual cost of the Waxman-Markey climate bill would be an average of $175 per household — far less than previous GOP cost estimates.

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Led by former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, American Solutions for Winning the Future is no garden variety political organization. Financed by a host of high-profile billionaire-backers including Casino Kingpin and third richest person in America, Sheldon Adelson; co-founder of PayPal and staunch libertarian Peter Thiel; Cincinatti businessman and second-biggest contributor to the GOP, Dick Farmer, and; textile magnate and patron of right-wing causes for almost 50 years, Roger Milliken, the organization has emerged as one of the most powerful and, perhaps, reactionary PACs on the American political landscape.