Climate Cities

Bright Lights on the Big City

Residents of New York, rejoice: Your city might be noisy, crowded, and crass, but it’s also the most compact megalopolis in the U.S. That’s right — the Big Apple ranked number one on Smart Growth America’s recently released list comparing urban sprawl in major metropolitan areas. Other cities that did well include, in order, Jersey […]

Cell-ebrate

In what could be the first significant step toward mass-marketing fuel-cell vehicles, Toyota and Honda put the world’s first such cars on the road yesterday. The cars are being leased to the Japanese government and several public organizations in the U.S. — at the whopping price of between $6,500 and $9,800 per month, meaning the […]

Wine, Wine, Wine

Napa Valley, Calif., is known as the heart of U.S. wine country, not exactly as a toxic cesspool. But local environmentalists say soaring wine production in the valley has lead to unhealthy farming practices that pollute the land, place heavy pressures on natural resources, and harm wildlife. The county has passed legislation designed to limit […]

The Shipping News

Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn has announced an agreement in which several of the largest shipping companies in Asia will work with L.A. to clean up air quality in the city’s port. Last year, the port received 2,200 cargo ship visits, each burning about 14 tons of heavy bunker fuel. Under the new plan, the […]

Rome If You Want to

One-third of Italy’s most important cultural sites are in a state of emergency, according to the Italian environmental group Legambiente, which studied 36 areas in the country that have been designated World Heritage sites by the United Nations. The group said water pollution was threatening Venice, while smog and sprawl were damaging Naples, Florence, and […]

If You Drive Alone, You Drive With Saddam

For some U.S. citizens, solar panels, wind turbines, and fuel-efficient cars have become the ultimate patriotic statement. With a war looming in the Middle East, green groups are framing the cause of energy conservation in terms of national security. They are issuing reports, creating websites, and hitting the airwaves with the message that true security […]

Fueltide Greetings

The Bush administration is weighing a proposal that would require auto manufacturers to improve the fuel efficiency of SUVs and light trucks by a teensy bit. Working off data submitted by the Big Three automakers in Detroit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent a draft plan to the White House that would raise […]

Prairie Dogged

Faced with drought and plunging profits, Colorado farmers are under growing financial pressure to hawk their land to developers. Between 1993 and 2001, about 1.5 million acres of farmland in the state were put on the market and developed; 300,000 of the acres were sold in 2001 as a drought began to take hold. State […]

Random Acts of Unkindness

The Earth Liberation Front is back in the news, after vandals went about their business and then etched the group’s initials on the windows of two McDonald’s and one Burger King in the Richmond, Va., area, as well as on the windows of 25 SUVs at a local dealership. Those incidents occurred this fall; earlier […]

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