Image via California High-Speed Rail Authority In his Labor Day speech two days ago, the president announced plans for a $50 billion stimulus package that would take aim at updating the country's lagging transportation infrastructure. He called for Congress to approve an infusion of funds for highway, air traffic control, and, yes, high speed rail projects, that would lead to the "immediate" creation of jobs and give a boost to the economy. Obama said that the bill would be paid for by eli...Read the full story on TreeHugger

An artist's conception of the green new Transbay Terminal being built in San Francisco. Image via Inhabitat. One of my favorite things to do in Turkey is go down to the main otogar (bus station), ask around for buses to interesting destinations, and hop on. The station itself is no great shakes architecturally or anything, but I love the hustle and bustle and the feeling that a whole country's worth of options is open to me. That sense of possibility and movement draws me to trans...Read the full story on TreeHugger

This image shows an area of road building and development adjacent to primary forest in red tones, and secondary forest regrowth in green tones. Credit: Carnegie Institution. You can see the effects of global warming in a new high-resolution map that shows carbon locked up in tropical forest vegetation and emitted by land-use practices in Peru's Amazon. The maps were created with satellite mapping, airborne-laser technology, and ground-based plot surveys. And the images may help pave the way for a new United Nations monitoring system to curb deforestation and forest degradation....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Craig Anderson, Flickr Earlier this summer, when the BP Oil Spill was still at the top of the headlines everywhere, Russian predictions of a toxic rain consequent to the BP oil spill were generally dismissed by the scientific community. But the cultural meme, as well as an underlying level of anxiety for Gulf residents, was planted. Now, reports are appearing that raise the spectre of the Russian prediction. Are people living ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

A tiny baby seahorse was measured off the coast of Dorset, England. Image via the Seahorse Trust. It must have been like finding a needle in a haystack, but somehow, in murky water conditions, diver Neil Garrick-Maidment, the executive director of the Seahorse Trust, spotted a single 1.5-inch-long female baby seahorse "clinging onto a piece of seagrass" off the coast of Studland, Dorset -- a finding so rare he said it was "akin to seeing a Read the full story on TreeHugger