Climate Technology
All Stories
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Great Build
It’s not clear if the problem is one of economics or one of spin, but either way, environmentally conscious building design is a concept that hasn’t quite caught on. The technology and expertise to build “green” structures have been around for decades; now, a movement is underway to sell developers on the economic benefits of […]
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Spotted Record
Federal protections for the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet have been blamed by many in the anti-enviro camp for the collapse of the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest during the 1990s. Now, the Bush administration has announced that it will review those protections, as well as the designation of “critical habitat” thought necessary […]
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Texas, With Mess
The Texas legislature is under pressure to find a way to fund a plan to cut smog in the state’s major urban areas. If the lawmakers can’t come up with the money soon, the U.S. EPA has threatened to reject the plan and take over the state’s pollution-control efforts. That would jeopardize federal highway money, […]
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Put It on Credit
Industrial polluters will be allowed to buy credits from cleaner competitors to help comply with the Clean Water Act, under a plan released yesterday by the Bush administration. The National Water Quality Trading Policy would allow industrial, agricultural, and wastewater-treatment operations that cannot meet clean water regulations to purchase credits from cleaner facilities in the […]
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Less Than Zero
Under California’s zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) regulation, 2003 was supposed to be the year that thousands of nonpolluting cars hit the road — but on Friday, the state’s air quality officials proposed amending the regulation to postpone the deadline by a decade. The proposal seemed to be an acknowledgement by the California Air Resources Board that […]
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Do Tell
The General Accounting Office, the investigative branch of the U.S. Congress, will meet with regulators from the Security and Exchange Commission next week to discuss whether companies sufficiently disclose environmental risks to shareholders. The meeting was prompted by concerns from Sens. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) about corporate liability for […]
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It’s time Americans hit the brakes on consumption
Every year, long before the last of the Halloween candy has been eaten, the drumbeat of holiday consumerism ushers in a long, wasteful, expensive march to New Year’s. Now Holiday 2002 is finally over, and apparently it’s just as well, because it turns out the season was a “failure.” This information comes not from our […]
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Job None
Following the collapse of the Northwest timber industry in the 1990s, thousands of workers lost their jobs. The conventional wisdom has been that these workers were absorbed by a boom in the region’s high-tech industry — but a new study of a decade’s worth of employment records questions that conclusion. True, the region’s economy as […]
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Smokin’, Joe
Despite inevitable resistance from the Bush administration and fellow Congress members, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) plan to unveil a proposal this week that would force all U.S. industries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation would require all industries to limit their emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 and 1990 […]
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The No-good, the Bad, and the Ugly
During the 2000 budget year, the federal government awarded more than $855 million worth of contracts to companies that had violated at least one federal law in the previous three years, the General Accounting Office reported yesterday. In all, 39 companies winning contracts of $100,000 or more were guilty of violating federal environmental, labor, employment, […]
