A former lawyer went to small claims court, demanding that Honda compensate her for all the gasoline that she expected to save when she switched to a hybrid. The ex-attorney Heather Peters said that when she bought a 2006 hybrid Honda Civic, the company promised her that she would get 50 miles to the gallon. more ›

The Angeles National Forest is still painfully scarred from the devastating 2009 Station Fire, and today comes word from the U.S. Forest Service that a project will find 3 million pine and fir trees planted in a 10,000-acre region over the next five years. As part of what is being hailed as "the first ecological response" to the massive blaze, those incoming trees will "offset greenhouse-gas emissions from a refinery in El Segundo," according to the LA Times. more ›

Environmentalists are divided over the proposed $7 million plan to restore the Malibu Lagoon, according to the LA Times. Tomorrow the Coastal Commission will consider the plan, which will see to it the lagoon's "stagnant, polluted waterways" be drained and rectified in order to better its "ecological health." more ›

I don't know if I've gotten even nerdier, or if documentaries have gotten even better, but half the films I've seen or wanted to see this year are non-fictional in nature. Which is why I'm stoked for DocuWeeks 2009, playing through the end of August at the Arclight. Sponsored by the International Documentary Association, the festival features compelling characters & stranger-than-fiction stories in first-look Academy-qualifying runs. Each week is a different program; this week features a look at ecology from the ground up, Up With People, the uphill struggle of Congolese & Nepalese refugees, and the uppest of the up, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. more ›

You can't fight the funk: scientists are just beginning to discover some of the more insidious effects of creeping global warming, which is about to put polar bears on the endangered species list -- and wild Alaskan salmon may be next. Alaskan fisheries, long been overflowing with magnificent salmon supplies, are now threatened with a sticky situation: warmer waters in the northern climes are breeding yucky bacteria called Ichthyophonus hoferi --or, Ich. The bacteria, while harmless to humans, makes the salmon mushy and unappetizing, as well as resistant to crucial preservation methods like drying. From the LA Times: more ›