Don't expect giant machines that can purify the atmosphere or nanotech that can reverse global warming just yet. The U.S. government has yet to approve the fledgling agency which would unify several independent researchers and university labs with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Basically, it would be an Earth-monitoring super-group whose goals are to research and solve humanity's crimes against the biosphere.

USGS director Charles Grote, who is helping to put the group together, isn't quite as grandiose when explaining the ESSA's mission:

The USGS, in bringing not only its geologic, biologic, hydrologic and geospatial expertise to the understanding of natural systems, but also its research capabilities in energy, mineral, water, and biologic resources, gives the new organization a comprehensive perspective on both environmental and resource systems. If we effectively link these capabilities with those of NOAA, we will have a powerful research institution

But David Rejeski, former member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is thinking bigger:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has demonstrated the value of funding high-risk, high-reward research and development. ESSA should foster similar ventures in the environmental arena.

Given the kinds of projects that have come out of DARPA, including the internet and swarm robots, Rejeski is clearly hoping for giant robots who can cool down the oceans or clean up chemical spills. That's what we're hoping for too.

Earth Systems Science Agency, we have a planetary emergency! Help us before it's too late!

Image from Earth Sons.

Organizing an Earth Systems Science Agency [Nature via Eurekalert]

You can get in for free if you can prove you walked or bicycled to the club. Otherwise it's 10 pounds. According to Environmental Graffiti:

Based at Bar Surya in Pentonville Road, the club is owned by property millionaire and head of new climate change organization Club4Climate, Andrew Charalambous. The Greek-Cypriot businessman is trying to reach out to young people in an effort to save the world . . . Apparently everyone [who goes to the club] needs to sign a pledge promising to work towards curbing climate change. Is it just me or does that sound annoying?

It does sound annoying, especially if they want your e-mail or address so they can spam you. Hopefully the weird pledge thing won't get off the ground, but these dance floors will become more popular. I want one for my flat right now.

Eco-Nightclub [via Environmental Graffiti]

As you can see above, the city of Los Angeles would look a lot less ugly and disheartening if you could just wipe this traffic jam (photographed by The Infamous Gdub) out of existence and bring the city's formerly glorious cable car system back to life. If you ever want to see the LA cable car system of yore, it makes many exciting appearances in Harold Lloyd's 1923 comedy Safety Last!.

Right now, the city of Baltimore is considering upgrading its mass transit to include aerial gondolas, a system of elevated trams on cables with a tiny carbon footprint. They would initially service mostly the convention center and waterfront areas, but could branch out all over the city. Apparently gondola-makers have recently seen a spike in requests for mass transit systems, and even New York City is considering an aerial gondola to take commuters from Manhattan to Governor's Island and on to Brooklyn. Here is what the proposed gondolas might look like on a typical Baltimore city street (original photo from Zaloudek.net).

Seattle has a long and tragic history with monorails, once believed to be the public transit of the future. Just recently, the city voted to expand its tiny, largely-decorative monorail system, built for the World's Fair back in the 1960s. But urban planners have been trying to make Seattle a monorail city since 1910, when a Seattle monorail was first proposed (and shelved). We have yet to see whether the city will act on this latest vote for the monorail, but this is what you might see in downtown Seattle (original photo by GiSuser) if the system started ferrying commuters.

Although Melbourne has one of the most extensive electronic tram systems in the world, it might have been much bigger if early-twentieth century plans to expand it hadn't been derailed. If you look at images of late-nineteenth century Melbourne, you'll see a peaceful city full of trams and horses, but no traffic jams. Here's what Melbourne might look like today if the automobile had never taken over, and the city had become a haven for trams.

If you've ever visited San Francisco, you know that the downtown area is dominated by a wide street called Market (original photo by Hyku). What you probably don't know is that Market is actually a gushing river that early city planners decided to bury underground just to make everything nicer for carriages — and, later, cars. If we'd built San Francisco to cooperate with the region's actual geography, downtown San Francisco might have a system of canals like the ones in Venice (original photo by Minnaert). People could boat to work instead of burning gas in their cars.

Photoshoppage on all images by Stephanie Fox.

Abengoa Solar's PS10 power plant generates 11 megawatts of clean power, supplying more than 5,000 households. The heliostats automatically swivel to follow the sun and focus maximum sunlight on the receiver at the top of the tower. The company claims the potential to generate temperatures in the neighborhood of 1,800 degrees F with an efficiency 25 percent greater than current photovoltaic technology. Prototype towers were tested in the U.S., but PS10 is the first commercial plant. More Spanish towers are planned with greater power generating capacity.

How hard would it be to put a mirror array like this into orbit? With GPS, it would have pinpoint accuracy, cause incredible damage and leave no unpleasant radioactivity behind. Company reps swear they have absolutely no plans to demand a $500 million ransom from the world's governments to keep them from incinerating cities. Top photo by: afloresm. Schematic by: Abengoa.

11 Megawatt Solar Power Tower [EcoGeek]

Cory developed the balloons with aerospace engineer Pini Gurfil. The two say that these balloons would be good for off-the-grid applications, like setting up a camp after a disaster or pumping energy into a house far from electricity generators. Because the balloons are so lightweight and energy-efficient, they can be quickly deployed and moved around.

According to Inhabitat:

Cory and Gurfil have constructed several prototypes and have conducted research to show that a 10 ft balloon could provide around a kilowatt of energy (equivalent to 25 square meters of solar panels). Their target cost is $4,000 per balloon, compared to the $10,000 it would cost for a solar field producing the same amount of energy. The balloons will last about a year without needing maintenance.

Solar Balloons [Inhabitat]

Sanderson hopes that pictures like this, and one of Tribeca below, will inspire people to consider how much impact they've had on the natural environment — and perhaps give them pause when they think about intervening in it further.

According to Treehugger's Bonnie Hulkower, who recently saw Sanderson give a talk about his work:

Sanderson has been working on the Mannahatta Project for the last decade. He first became fascinated with his adopted city after he accepted a position here with the Wildlife Conservation Society, and began to study old maps. One map in particular, an 18th-century British Headquarters map, fascinated him. The map, made for British officers defending the island, details the contours of the island's topography, swamp, and river locations. Sanderson has been using this British map, Randel's Farm Maps, and a GPS system to create his own contour map of what Manhattan looked like in 1609, when Henry Hudson and his crew sailed into New York Harbor and the island was inhabited only by the Lenape. He has been able to produce an expansive vision of Mannahatta's ecologic richness through a computer program he created, named "Muir webs," after the famous naturalist John Muir.

Sanderson is using his program to map what would have existed on each city block in Mannahatta 400 years ago. The program works through a process of matching animals to their habitats and vice-versa. By knowing that a certain animal species existed in an area of Manhattan and knowing what that animal ate, Sanderson can predict through the Muir webs program what plants or soils would have been there as well, or conversely can use knowledge of plants and soils to discover what animals would have found a habitat in any specific area.

Ecologist Maps Manhattan of 400 Years Ago [Treehugger]

Mapping Manhatta Slideshow [New Yorker]

In Salaise-sur-Sanne, southern France, the Tredi factory is packed with high tech purification systems that handle extreme toxic cleanups like the one in 2006 in Ivory Coast that involved 6,000 tons of toxic waste and killed 10 people. Where does all your waste plastic from bottles and wrappers and tupperware go? To this factory in Qingzhou City, Shandong Province, China. Tons of plastic gets melted down and converted into threads and grain-shaped pieces. The results are sold to factories as raw materials. People help feed the garbage machines, too. Plastic straws are laid out in vast bales and piles to dry in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Once dried, they'll be shipped to a plastic recycling factory. Bangladesh has a near 100 percent recycling rate for its waste, and has one of the most efficient plastic recycling systems in the world. Dealing with waste can be very low-tech and industrial. In Ghana, workers turn waste into fuel for the local palm oil plant. Here you can see them scooping it into a steam-driven machine that powers the factory. The lowest-tech waste disposal job falls to these Palestinian workers, who use sledgehammers to break up the remains of a bombed factory. The cement and metals will be recycled. Images via Getty.

Here are the giant water bottle's many regular-sized friends (its mini-mes, if you will): And here it is close up: Now, from a distance: Photos via MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images.

Air Tree Structures in Madrid [Inhabitat]