image: NOAA As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues to spread, and the Coast Guard investigating reports that oil has begun washing ashore in Louisiana, President Obama has banned new offshore oil drilling. White House advisor David Axelrod told

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Obama Bans New Offshore Drilling Until Investigation on Gulf Spill Complete

Story by Katie Levitt, originally published April 2010 on Tonic.com. Since February, 350,000 free endangered species condoms have been distributed nationwide. The bulk of those were passed out at Earth Day events on Thursday. The condom campaign is the work of the Center for Biological Diversity. The goal is to educate people about the consequences of irresponsible reproduction, and the negative affect it has on the earth’s resources. The planet holds 6.8 billion of us humans and we consum… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Protect Endangered Species: Wear a Condom

Students from Hacienda Heights, California have built a vehicle with a hydrogen internal combustion engine (HICE) using a four-stroke engine from Honda. The three-wheeled vehicle runs entirely on hydrogen and uses absolutely no gasoline. After a successful test drive, the car is now ready for a public showing. “The bugs have been fixed, bu… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Students Hack Honda Engine to Run Entirely on Hydrogen

Maybe not as radical as square watermelons , but still quite progressive is Andrew Kim’s square Coke bottle design . It definitely raised the question whether or not all bottles and containers should be square from an environmental point of view. Of course aesthetics, identity and function are also important, but it’s surprising how much we could lower the environmental impact of distributing goods by stopping to transport air!… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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A Square Coke Bottle = Smaller Environmental Footprint, by Andrew Kim

Comparison of Arctic summer sea ice image: EPA It’s long been known that melting Arctic ice could help speed global warming . As the ice melts, surface reflectivity changes, more heat is absorbed than reflected, more warming. But now a new study in Nature confirms that this is already happening, with melting Arctic ice being the main cause of the higher than average warming the region has experienced…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Arctic Sea Ice Loss Confirmed As Main Cause of Faster Polar Warming

Photo: Public domain Having Fewer Energy-Hungry Ships and Planes Might Help Too… The U.S. Navy, like the other branches of the U.S. military, is a big consumer of oil. Since a significant fraction of that oil comes from unstable regions and from regimes that can be hostile to America, it makes a lot of sense from a strategic point of view (on top of all the environmental reasons that we already know about) to cut back on oil use. To move in that direction, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has set a series of goals for the Navy’s fleet and … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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U.S. Navy Wants to Cut its Petroleum Use, Create "Green Strike" Groups

Photo: Michael Graham Richard About as Fuel-Efficient as the 2010 Toyota Prius in Gasoline Mode The Chevy Volt is slowly getting closer to its launch date, with the first pre-production units rolling off the assembly line a couple weeks ago, and GM is releasing a slow but steady trickle of information about it. We don’t yet have the price, though Nissan’s anno… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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The Chevy Volt Will Get 50 MPG When the Battery is Drained, According to GM

photo: AP/Icelandic Coastguard Just to reassure the more apocalyptic leaning readership we may have: According to scientists from the University of Colorado, Boulder the vast volcanic ash plume coming out of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull , currently disrupting air travel into and across Europe, will likely dissipate in the next few days and doesn’t pose a threat to world climate. Phew…… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Don’t Go Into the Survival Shelter: Icelandic Volcano Eruption Unlikely to Have Global Impact

Photo: Renault A Cousin of the LEAF Renault has just unveiled the finalized design of its electric version of the Fluence sedan. Not surprisingly, Renault is leveraging technology from its Japanese partner Nissan (battery tech, of course, but no doubt many other components). Most interesting in Renault’s announce was the part about how they want to offer a leasing option on the battery. They also claim that their Total Cost of Ownership target is similar to that of a diesel-powered vehicle…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Renault Unveils Final Design of Fluence Z.E. Electric Car

Image: Youtube Disturbing but Memorable If you want people to notice your public service announcement, you could do worse than showing grown men and women peeing in public (on sidewalks, inside stores, etc). This is exactly what an environmental group from Canada did in an ad that they produced for their anti-idling campaign. Check out t… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Vehicle Idling = Public Urination, says Canadian PSA (Check Out the Video)