Climate Technology
All Stories
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Cheap Tricks I
Toyota Says Hybrids Can Be Inexpensive to Manufacture Defying conventional wisdom, Toyota unveiled its new hybrid-car production site in Toyota City, Japan, yesterday and sent a clear message to other automakers: Gas-electric hybrids can be manufactured inexpensively. Such cars have traditionally been thought of as too costly to be practical, and Toyota and Honda, the […]
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Cheap Tricks II
New Solar Panels Would Be Inefficient — and Inexpensive Usually, inefficient energy sources are an environmentalist’s worse nightmare — but the opposite might be the case for a new type of solar cell. True, the new cells would only capture about 10 percent of the sun’s energy (roughly half of what conventional solar cells capture), […]
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The Fairest of Them All
Fair-Trade Food Starts to Catch on in the U.S. Hey, you — sipping the fair-trade, shade-grown, organic coffee. How would you like a fair-trade banana with that? Or a fair-trade chocolate bar? A small but growing number of products in U.S. grocery stores carry a fair-trade label issued by TransFair USA, based in Oakland, Calif., […]
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Say It Ain’t Soy
Brazil Will Allow Planting of GM Soybeans In a big blow to opponents of biotechnology, Brazil announced last week that it will allow farmers to plant genetically modified soybeans, ending its role as one of the leading nations opposed to GM crops. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government had previously promised to oppose […]
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Enemy Mine II
Malaysian Mining Industry Is Getting a Second Wind Twenty years after a glut in the global tin market sent the Malaysia mining industry into a freefall, the country’s miners are lobbying for a second chance — this time, with coal. Recently, prospectors in Malaysia found nearly 237 million tons of new coal reserves. That’s good […]
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MTBE Promises
Energy Bill Likely to Include Liability Protections for MTBE Makers The makers of a gasoline additive that can contaminate groundwater will almost certainly be protected from liability issues under the terms of the nation’s energy bill, negotiators of the legislation announced yesterday. Methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, has been added to gasoline since the […]
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City of Light Traffic
Paris, Edinburgh Contemplate London-Style Traffic Fees Thousands of miles from Tokyo, France and Scotland are trying to figure out what to do about their own traffic-induced pollution problems. The French government is considering instituting a toll for vehicles entering Paris, which is suffering from severe pollution as a result of heavy traffic combined with consistently […]
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Squeaky Green
Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products Make Inroads into the Mainstream It’s hard to get excited about housecleaning, but Monica Nassif has found a way. In fact, as the president of two separate companies that manufacture eco-friendly cleaning products, Nassif was one of the most enthusiastic participants in the 19th annual Natural Products Expo East, held this month […]
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A Nice Piece of Tailpipe
New Low-Polluting Cars to Hit U.S. Showrooms Next Month There are low-emission vehicles (LEVs), ultra-low-emission vehicles (ULEVs), super-ultra-low-emission vehicles (SULEVs), and the holy grail of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). As if the clean-car world weren’t baffling enough, now there’s a new acronym to add to this alphabet soup — partial zero-emission vehicles (PZEVs), which Ford and […]
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Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease
U.S. Companies More Mindful of Social Concerns Activists, take heart: It seems that the relentless pressure of boycotts, lawsuits, bad PR, and slow but steady cultural change is having an effect on corporate America. Companies doing business in the 21st century are beginning to listen to the social, health, and environmental concerns of their customers, […]
