Its all about covers, uncovering and cover-ups this week!The Guardian published a list of ten green gadgets. Our best is a toy car powered through a mini solar panel that creates enough electricity to create a small light show and turn tap water into hydrogen. Other items include the fabulous sounding solar technology freeloader (a battery charger) and the new bamboo encased laptops from ASUS.
See the whole list.
Straight out of Russia, Wired reports on a wooden mobile phone case. But look again, its not just the case but each part is wrapped in a wooded container, battery and SIM card included. It's made from Russian apple-tree wood.

There is a 2 mile long diesel oil slick off the coast of Vancouver due to an overturned barge, but oil was not the only thing dumped into the ocean - a fuel truck and logging equipment went overboard too, making this a particularly toxic spill. It gets worse - The slick is close to Robson Bight, a protected area where killer whale pods come to rub on the shallow gravel of the beach.
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Hundreds people have stripped of in public once again for photographer Spencer Turnik, except this time its in the name of the planet. Greenpeace had joined forces with the attention seeking Turnik, and persuaded hundreds of exhibitionists to lie on a glacier in Switzerland. The reaction has been, as expected, huge.

Bild: Greenpeace/Wuertenberg China is doing whatever it takes to clear the skies for Olympic time. Not only are there attempts to control the weather by firing missiles at the sky , this week Beijing took 1 million cars off the roads to see if it reduced pollution., Violators caught driving in the city were to be fined $13 and ordered to return home,
The results were negative, and the hopes now are for strong winds. A giant fan perhaps?
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And to end off MR “Al Gore2” Kerry has publicly endorsed the 11th hour, by inviting Leonardo di Caprio to write a letter. Here it is....Our climate crisis demands action, and to get action we need awareness and activism -- so I'm really happy to see great work being done by people like Leonardo DiCaprio to help catalyze the grassroots movement. I'm pleased to give him the chance to tell you about this important new film--John KerryHello ,I'd like to thank John Kerry for giving me this opportunity to tell you about something that's very important to me. I'm writing to tell you about my new environmental film, The 11th Hour. The film documents the environmental crises we face and the solutions we must begin to implement.Please click here to take a look at the trailer.With the help of over fifty of the world's most prominent thinkers and activists, including reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, and Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, The 11th Hour documents the grave problems facing the planet's life systems. Global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans' habitats are all addressed.However, the most powerful element of The 11th Hour is not a portrait of a planet in crisis, but an offering of hope and solutions. The film ends with a call for restorative action through reshaping human activity.The 11th Hour opened on August 17th in New York and Los Angeles . On the 24th it opens in other cities, and in the following weeks across the country. It would be great if you could go see it and bring a friend.
You can go to our website to get more information on the movie and when it will play near you.We need the message of this movie to hit as far and wide as possible.The hope is us. Let's begin.
Thank you,
Leonardo DiCaprio

Placido Domingo spoke with us during our interview about the shrinking coasts in Mexico. Domingo was born in 1941 in Madrid, Spain, and moved with about eight years of age to this country. Where they used to have about 20 meters of beach he says, nowadays the beach is gone, shrunk. The singer assumes this is due to climate change.Domingo was quite concerned about the impacts of environmental misbehavior during our talk; he named historical buildings that survived centuries and seem to be endangered due to air pollution. Domingo who is frequently singing in all the Major Opera Houses of the World - amongst them treasures of architectural history like the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Vienna State Opera- loves these buildings.

Domingo has also talked about the air pollution in Beijing which challenge the Olympic Games next year. The city of Beijing is like many others over-polluted and stuck with traffic. The government now has to call to action (We reported).Sustainabiliyt is a topic among the opera singers and artists Domingo knows. He however has to fly which concerns him. Apart from that he tries to save energy and water. During the Salzburg Festival Domingo had the chance to talk with his colleagues and friends about the Hydrogen 7 limousine which he was driven in during the Festival. He liked the car he said during the interview and he expressed the hope that soon a hydrogen infrastructure will be established. Having in mind that he needs to fly a lot from concert to concert he added the wish that even airplanes will work with hydrogen one day.The Opera singer who is of an excellent health and voice is one ambassador of Hear the World, an institution that cares for hearing. In the Mission Statement they say: "By 2015, an estimated 700 million people will be hearing impaired, the equivalent of people using the internet today."
Pollution destroys historical buildings and the natural surrounding. He tested the Hydrogen 7 and said he enjoed this expierience. "Thump up", he says for new kinds of mobility.

What does ENVISAT do for us? To understand we have to recall that “seeing” garbage trace gases means that electromagnetic waves from the atmospheric constituents are received, whereby each constituent emits waves with very special wavelengths which can be taken as fingerprints of this constituent. So what the sensors of ENVISAT do is to point obliquely to the horizon, so that the light arriving stems from the atmosphere at the horizon and not from ground, and scan the arriving light at different wavelengths. Because ENVISAT circles Earth every 1 hour and 40 minutes, global atmospheric trace gas and aerosol maps can be gener-ated about once a day. But ENVISAT does much more. With nine different sensors it analyzes also clouds and atmospheric temperatures. It meas-ures land surface temperatures vegetation characteristics and surface elevation. It determines ocean colors, sea surface temperatures and surface topography in particular wave characteristics. It determines the extent of polar ice, its topography and the ice temperature. So in every aspect ENVISAT is a truly environmental satellite. These measurements give answers to today's crucial questions concerning climate changes: Is the ozone hole still growing? How much rain forest is deforested each year? What is the reason for the rise of the sea level? We know today that it’s NOT the melting of the ice! What are the effects of air pollution? Will natural disasters increase and intensify in the future and if yes, how much?