Following on from last weeks paper trail... this week things are really going digital.
Paper airline tickets will soon be a thing of the past.
"In just 278 more days, the paper ticket will become a collector's item," said Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association. The changeover from paper will not only cut airlines' costs by US$9 for every traveller but would also mean the industry -- criticized by environmentalists for its part in global warming -- would save 50,000 mature trees a year, he added.
More at Planet ArkThe M200XThe daily papers have all been reporting on this flying car, although it appears to be a Jetsons inspired UFO to us. The saucer-shaped vehicle can take off and land vertically and travel at a maximum speed of 100mph.The Moller company is behind it all (Dr Moller had been inventing flying machines for more than 20 years) and taking orders now.
Watch the spooky video here .

On August 24 The 2007 Index awards were handed out for Body, Home, Work, Community and Play. Winner of the PLAY category was The Tesla Roadster electric vehicle, with zero emissions and zero-to-sixty acceleration in four seconds! Watch the video here.
The INDEX: Design to Improve Life awards are the biggest design award in the world, worth €500,000.Inhabitat reports that The United nations Building will be renovated and go “Green”.... ish.
The project aims at a 30% reduction in energy consumption. To do this, the entire lighting system will be retrofitted with energy-efficient light bulbs, room sensors and solar panel technology. $28 million of the budget to ensure green principles are applied The work should take 7 years! More at Business Week.
Are you like me and have bags of old batteries and nowhere to put them? Sony has reported that it's developed a biologically friendly battery that generates electricity from sugar in a way that's similar to what's found in living organisms. In addition, Sony made the battery casing of vegetable-based plastic. Sounds too good to be true? Read more here...

Ever wanted to see the “pulse” of a city? Thanks to Wiki City Rome and M.I.T, on September 8 anyone with an Internet connection will be able to see a unique map of the Italian capital that shows the movements of crowds, event locations, the whereabouts of well-known Roman personalities, and the real-time position of city buses and trains.
More here at M.I.T

As for News this week, it seems the only way is UP .The first space hotel is becoming a reality and take off date is 2012. For the price of $4 million, the guests staying at the Galactic Suite can expect space training on a tropical island, rocket travel to the hotel and 15 sunrises a day. Nothing is mentioned of the carbon offsetting of this holiday.
Image from Site .
Iceland has introduced new measures to encourage its residents to drive greener. They are offering
free parking for energy efficient cars. Any car that consumes less than 5 litres of petrol per 100 km is entitled to a free space.
Source:The Iceland ReviewIn another move , this time in USA, New York state will enforce that any car of the 2010 model will have to display stickers that inform how energy efficient that particular car is. It seems that embarrassment may scare the buyers into making wiser choices.
Source: Staten Island Advance

Image by Aaron Logan on wikipedia
The Burning Man Festival, which runs for 3 weeks in Black Rock Desert in Nevada is trying to get greener this year. In the past, tons of fuel was used to power the generators, not to mention the burning of a giant man at the end. The festival is a gathering of self sufficient communities and runs on a gift economy, or bartering. The theme this year is “The Green Man”, and attempts to green include a no waste policy and "coolingman", a carbon offset program.
Good story on GristThe clever researchers at Germanys Frauenhofer Institute have come up with novel way of generating energy - body warmth. Studies have show that even medical machinery like heart frequency readers could potentially be powered by the actual patient.
Source:Sonnenseite

It would be nice to see something new for a changeHow will we deal with congestion pricing in New York City?
Most likely they will choose not to deal with it since car commuting
is such an issue. The commuter suburbs in Westchester, Connecticut,
Long Island & New Jersey have excellent scheduled train service directly into the city. Outlying sections of many New York City boros are linked only by bus routes that can hardly be called 'scheduled' to midtown and to the subway termini. Waiting and changing from bus to subway and back again can make this an arduous and lengthy trek especially in inclement weather, its easier to drive. Commuters from within New York City who drive thus constitute a significant proportion of city drivers who would be understandably distressed by a usage or congestion tax.Current scheduled bus service is dysfunctional and probably will never work well again no matter how much money is spent on it. The bus service replaced an interlocking grid of light rail streetcar systems so dense it went almost everywhere in the city and so
widespread it was possible to almost reach Chicago by light rail (except for a 20 mile gap near Buffalo NY) from New York City. Many
of those rights of way are still embedded in the streets and could be
restored to light rail services. Most of the lines serviced areas that were until recently considered 'remote' and 'abandoned.' These locations have now become hotspots of real estate development much of it highly desirable waterfront property that are literally off the public transport grid.
Light rail would re-integrate these areas back into the urban fabric.
Certainly real estate developers understand this particularly the
Durst Organization which is developing a number of waterfront residential properties in NY
and the BoA Tower.Realizing the that its unlikely that city will build light rail
anytime soon the Durst's invested in a company which has a fleet of water taxis
which go straight from quais near his buildings to midtown. One of
these water taxi stops even has a beach bar next door with a great view of the United Nations and 5 minutes away from midtown Manhattan by sea. Definitely a better way to commute than being stuck on a bus to nowhere for an hour.Its time to put some useful and clean public transportation projects back on the drawing boards. These require the kind of large scale capital investments that are too big for private developers to go alone. In spite of his mixed legacy it would be nice to a master organizer and builder like Robert Moses step up and take charge of some long term infrastructure planning and funding.

Rober Moses, he built big...In the meantime until something better gets built lets try parking and commuting taxes based on a sliding scale according to how much carbon your vehicle emits. Enforcement and legislation is local, you prepay your EZ Pass based on the car model you drive. No carbon signature, a very low or no fee. Hybrid a lesser fee. High carbon output a very high fee. Drivers will immediately recognize the advantage of low or no emission vehicles. A plan like this is being discussed for possible implementation in London's Borough of Richmond right now. According to Peter Goldmark of the Environmental Defense Fund, mobile sources account for a lot more of New York City's carbon signature than 20% and the 'traffic problem must be compared to the Mayor's initiative on smoking' which is I think not a bad way of putting it. It is a health as well as a traffic issue, if we can ban the use of trans-fats in food preparation and cigarette smoke why not noxious carbon monoxide fumes from our city streets?If not ban at least make it expensive enough that people carpool using existing HOV lanes and put pressure on their elected representatives to extend and improve the transportation grid.