It’s hard to live in Sweden, having to envy the Danish their magnificent city of Copenhagen. Not only does it have a great big-city pulse, it just feels so much more green aware than any place on our side of the Kattegat sound. Stockholm may have been first (after London) to implement a congestion tax to try to encourage motorists to find alternative travel, but when it comes to cycling, Copenhagen shines.

Congestion Tax
And now the sixteen municipalities of Greater Copenhagen have gotten together to get a congestion charge passed in the city — approximately $4.50 each time a car would enter or leave the city. Similar to London and Stockholm …

TOD:E also broke its monthly record! Congrats guys!

More site stats under the fold, including our top referrers, whom you should patronize at every opportunity. And if you haven’t been back yet, make sure to go check out Energy Bulletin now that they are back online after their tumultuous server upgrade. We feel your pain, EB.

The whole TOD enterprise doesn’t happen without all of you coming here and taking part. We thank you for your patronage, your civilly intelligent participation, and your enforcement of the norms we have created here. People can inform and learn from each other, and we thank you for making it happen.

My colleagues here are pretty amazing people. Thank them the next time you get chance–they deserve it, at least in my humble opinion.

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Please patronize our top referring sites:

http://energybulletin.net
http://peakoil.com
http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
http://kunstler.com
http://leasticoulddo.com
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
http://powerswitch.org.uk
http://econbrowser.com
http://radiohead.com

Site stats:

VISITS
Total 12,053,046
Average Per Day 27,901
Average Visit Length 5:30

This month’s visits: ~820k in 30 days.

28k visits a day (and google analytics says that’s 19k-ish different people per day) is pretty amazing.

PAGE VIEWS
Total 28,998,438
Average Per Day 60,143

This month’s page views: ~1.8M in 30 days

How not to do it: Oil palm plantation in Indonesia. Photo by Achmad Rabin Taim.

Can anyone think of the exact moment when the biofuel backlash first reached its tipping point? In any case, it seems like, finally, people are realizing that liquid biofuels aren’t quite the green panacea they were once made out to be. Not to demonize them, it’s just that (like most things) there are plusses and minuses to each feedstock and production method and these need to be carefully considered when formulating policy. It seems like the incoming EU president, France, has gotten the message.

<a href=”http://www.reuters.com/article/en…

Tesla Electric Car Factory in the Bay Area
This story is still breaking, but here’s what we know so far: The Tesla Motors electric car factory that was supposed to be built in New Mexico will instead be built in California, in the Bay Area, thanks to help from governor Schwarzenegger (a $9 million incentive package is mentioned by TechCrunch).

Whitestar Electric Sedan now “Model S”
From the start, we knew that Tesla’s plan was to start at the top of the market with the Electric Roadster, and then progressively move down. The second step is an a…

Image: Kudzu weeds engulf a light pole by a47nn on Flickr
Weeds: are they troublesome invaders, ecological opportunists or key to tackling a potential global food crisis? According to research done by weed ecologists, our ambiguous relationship to these resilient plants could soon change in a world where carbon dioxide levels are rising – and where weeds could grow to oversized proportions (think 12-foot tall lambs-quarters, a common weed).

Of course, “weed” can be a rather subjective label, depending on your context – fa…

photo by Colin Ashe

Last week saw California and the United Kingdom reveal plans to promote renewable energy and combat climate change. Today, India has announced its intentions in this arena.

Solar Power Will Change the Face of India
In announcing the National Action Plan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that a gradual shift towards renewable energy, in particular solar power, would enable India to “make [its] ec…

In Medieval times, you couldn’t trust the water and most people, including kids, drank beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner. After reading Elizabeth Royte’s new book Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale and Why We Bought It, one is tempted to take up the practice. One learns all the water that we drink, from bottle to tap and, yes, toilet, is fraught with compromise. Yes, the bottled water boom is all about hype and marketing (as is the bottle backlash) that there is much, much more floating around in the stuff.

Drink tap water? it can have contaminants, hormones, fertilizers, pesticides, arsenic, sodium and radon, let alon…

This year’s Tour to the Shore fuel economy competition had the goal of beating the previous record: 75 MPG in a Honda Insight hybrid. That might seem hard to do, unless you are Jack Martin, a member of the Triad Electric Vehicle Association in Burlington and teacher of Sustainable Transportation at Appalachian State University. He squeezed out 124 miles out of one gallon of gasoline in his unmodified Insight hybrid (and he has one passenger).

He did it by using <a href=”http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/hypermiling-mpg-fuel-economy-gas-p…

This is a business idea we shouldn’t need; every office building should have decent bike storage and a place to change and shower, it should be in the building codes like washrooms. Unfortunately they don’t; that is where urban bike stations come in. The coolest one is Bike Central in Auckland, New Zealand; they offer safe storage, showers, coffee and a bite to eat, wifi and will do your dry cleaning and laundry while you are at work. It is more like a health club than a bike shop, but then if you are biking to work that’s what you want.

…

This week is Carnival of the Green # 134 and it’s being hosted by the blog at Two Hands Worldshop, which promotes fair trade and sustainable living. So head on over to the site to check out a round up of green news and events from the past week, submitted by other bloggers and green sites.

To learn more about Carnival of the Green, where it will be and how to host, please click here to link to our previous post.

PLEASE NOTE: Because the Carnival of the Green books so far in advance (thanks to all …