Two of us folk singers are ditching our station wagons to tour the country by train instead.

The music and the mechanism that will propel us around the country has become appropriately named Railroad Folk. Here is the story of how we sewed together our tour by train.

Palin on the Environment, Beyond the Sound Bites
We’ve all heard the big ones by now: Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in global warming (as a result of human practices, at least), she’s suing the federal government to get polar bears removed from the endangered species list, and she vigorously supports opening the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve up for drilling.

But Palin’s stance on environmental issues is far more detailed than those simple, sound bite-friendly talking points. A recent Associated Press article delves into her repeated run-ins with environmentalists and federal marine scientists and breaks down her votes on a slew of environmental issues. Take a look at some of the Alaskan governor’s votes and stances:

Recent Comment by Andrew : "eek. she just keeps getting scarier. However, I would love to see these kinds ..." [read]

Solar powered Hello Kitty chargers sound adorable, right? And the little one just has to have every piece of Hello Kitty merchandise there is—it’s part of the collector’s set! She needs them all! Even the overwhelmingly pointless, waste-producing products like this Hello Kitty Disposable Solar Powered Cell Phone Charger.

Recent Comment by Charlie : "And is there any solid reason to believe the other one would last longer? Anoth..." [read]

http://view.break.com/565864 - Watch more free videos

We're no strangers to liberal thinking, alternative medicine, or off-beat ideas. Hell, it's no accident that the very name "TreeHugger," is a play on the hippie-type folks that stood up and changed the face of environmentalism a few decades ago. Of course, when we started this site in the summer of 2004, our goal was to take green mainstream with some figurative tree-spiking (and modern design--check out our very first post) but it will always take a certain amount of radical thinking to keep the movement going.

The infamous group Earth First knows that. The purposely decentralized anti-organization that has randomly reared its head over the past few decades has alternately been blamed and taken credit for wreaking environmental havoc with stunts such as tree-sitting and car-bombing. In the video above, they're (supposedly) at it again. Only this time they're not being destructive, but rather taking part in a kind of ritualistic primal scream therapy session that can only be described as the Passion of the Trees.

Surely their good intentions, compassion, and close relationship with nature are a good thing. But is their new-age enthusiasm the kind of alternative approach that will throw a monkeywrench in the current mainstreaming of green? Or is it just the antidote we need to a world being flooded with greenwashing? Tell us what yo think in the comments below.

Via:: Linkognito

While there may be no doubt that school fundraising of all angles is a standard of the educational system in America and beyond, there’s one product that you just may never heard of being used to help raise funds for schools; carbon offsets.

With a new program called Brighter Schools put out by the folks at Brighter Planet, schools receive 20% of the cash raised from any purchase of carbon offsets through the program by students, teachers, friends and allies of their school. There’s even a way for schools to track their overall impact as a team reducing their carbon footprint through the website.

Though Amy Winehouse, the pop singer I erroneously reported would open Holland's "sustainable" WATT dance clublast week was nowhere near Rotterdam (Iggy Pop & The Stooges were the opening act), there were revelers enough to light up the dance floors and gaze upon the gray water toilet flushing system in the lavatories.

30% electricity reduction 50% water, waste, CO2 reduction
WATT is the first creation of a group of entrepreneurs united under the name Sustainable Dance Club, and planning to expand the concept, perhaps first to London or Berlin. WATT's signature feature is the piezo-electric dance floor - a meter shows dancers what they are generating (approximately 5 - 10 watts per person) and also drives LED lights in the floor.

Environment and hedonism hand in hand?
But the London club Surya Club4Climate is saying it was first with a piezo-electric dance floor with "crystal blocks which generate up to 60 percent of the club's electricity." Hard to say who has the greener disco, but hit the jump for info on Surya's run-in with Friends of the Earth and the clubs' credos.

Image source: Getty Files

Feeling overwhelmed about the state of the planet? Read this book. Feeling like you could be doing more but don't know what to do? Read this book. Feeling like everyone is pointing and laughing because you're an eco-geek who is into recycling, composting and reusing plastic silverware? Read this book.

Flight of the Hummingbird: A Parable for the Environment, is the tale of a forest that is on fire and how the different forest animals respond to the challenge. It is often the smallest and least likely in the crowd who can make the biggest difference. The subtitle of this book should have been, 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.' Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is the illustrator and each of the drawings are so appropriate and fit in beautifully with the story.

Comedy Show Tackles Clean Energy
From the Earth to America environmental comedy show, through National Energy Wasting Day to our coverage of The Onion’s “Obligatory Green Issue”, we TreeHuggers are not averse to the occasional joke in our quest for a greener world. But I for one must say that the idea of an entire comedy show based on renewable energy is a little surprising. What’s even more surprising is that it’s actually pretty good. Take host Chuck Roy’s take on New Belgium Brewery’s wind-powered beer:

Recent Comment by Sisyphus : "This could have done without the drug references. I think we have a hard enough time be..." [read]