Climate Technology
All Stories
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Sign of the TIMOs
A major shift is taking place in U.S. timber ownership, and it could have significant consequences not just for the industry but also for ecosystems across the country. Traditionally, the major private owners of forestlands in the U.S. have been forest product companies, but increasingly, such land is being bought by investment groups hoping to […]
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Shaft!
The cost of closing and cleaning up old and abandoned mines around the world likely runs into the trillions of dollars, an amount that is far beyond anything mining companies can handle on their own, according to Robert Wilson, chair of the metals giant Rio Tinto. Wilson, who made his comments during a mining industry […]
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Vera, Vera Good
Portland, Ore., has long had a reputation for attracting Birkenstock-wearing, bike-riding, tree-hugging residents. Now city officials hope to attract Birkenstock-wearing, bike-riding, tree-hugging companies. (Okay, yes, we know companies can’t really ride bikes.) Last month, Danish wind-power company Vestas Wind Systems chose Portland as the base of its U.S. operations, bringing as many as 1,000 new […]
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The Lion Sleeps Better Tonight
A new economic model that uses cost-benefit analyses to predict the fate of endangered species has been unveiled by New Zealand economist Robert Alexander and researcher Chris Fleming. The model analyzes the socio-economic pressures that push animals to the brink of extinction and could be used to assess the probable success or failure of conservation […]
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The blue-green relationship hits the skids
The Washington, D.C., headquarters of the AFL-CIO, which represents 13 million workers in the United States, is on 16th Street just a couple of blocks north of the White House. On the morning of Sept. 11, some of the U.S. environmental movement’s most influential leaders — John Adams and Robert Kennedy, Jr., of the Natural […]
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Mr. Green Genes?
When you’ve skyrocketed into the public eye, become an overnight billionaire, and successfully mapped the human genome, what do you do next? Why, find the solution to global warming, of course. J. Craig Venter, the maverick scientist who gave the federal government’s Human Genome Project a run for its money and accelerated the pace of […]
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Cells Sell
The internal combustion engine took one small step toward obsolescence yesterday, when General Motors announced the addition of an 80,000-square-foot research facility in upstate New York that will be wholly dedicated to the commercialization of fuel cells. Fuel cells generate electricity by mixing hydrogen and oxygen; the only byproduct of the process is water. The […]
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Corn Huskers Motion
By a vote of 68 to 31, the Senate yesterday killed an attempt to remove a measure in the Democratic energy bill requiring U.S. refiners to triple their use of ethanol by 2012. The measure would increase nationwide use of the corn-based fuel additive from about 1.7 billion gallons this year to 5 billion gallons […]
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Umbra on corporate paper recycling
I work for a large corporation that is very wasteful with paper. I am looking for information on whom I can complain to about this so that something will happen. They do not use recycled paper or require any recycling of paper. Beth Dearest Beth, Prepare yourself: The fate of reams of office paper is […]
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Ski Bums
At anywhere from $40 to $70 a pop for lift tickets, downhill skiing is one of the country’s priciest sports — yet many ski resorts pay next to nothing for the federal land on which they operate. On average, resorts located on national forests fork over just 2 percent of their revenue to use the […]
