Good new month to you! Start it off right by getting the top green online news below — hand-gathered by us every morning:

1. Now that General Motors is declaring bankruptcy, what happens to the electric Chevy Volt model? Environmental Capital reports that — at a $40,000 price tag — the Volt doesn’t fit what GM needs to sell: profitable cars that appeal to a mass market.
2. Is global warming already causing 300,000 deaths a year? So says a new report from Kofi Annan’s group, the Global Humanitarian Forum. (Hat tip: Red Green and Blue.) Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth reviews the widespread skepticism about the report’s conclusions.
3. A new group in Borneo — the Center for Orangutan Protection — has started a guerilla media campaign to stop palm oil companies from destroying orangutan habitat. Mongabay interviews the group’s leader.
4. Should conservation report its failures? Yes, says the editor of the journal Restoration Ecology — which is going to start publishing papers on such failures.
5. What’s next for the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009 (formerly known as Waxman-Markey) bill? Grist’s Kate Sheppard reviews the bewildering thicket of House committees that might review the bill — and what they might do to it.

(Image: Chevy Volt with unplugged extension cord. Credit: JMRosenfeld through a Creative Commons license.)

Posted: June 1st, 2009 under Animals, Asia Pacific, Business, Climate Change, Climate Science & Research, Conservation Issues, Cool Green Morning, Energy, Green Living, Policy, United States.
Tags: American Clean Energy and Security Act, Andrew Revkin, Borneo, Center for Orangutan Protection, chevy volt, Climate Change, Dot Earth, Environmental Capital, General Motors, Global Humanitarian Forum, global warming, Grist, Kate Sheppard, Mongabay, Red Green and Blue, Restoration Ecology, Waxman-Markey