Climate Technology
All Stories
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Moore Is More
In the largest gift ever to a single environmental group, the foundation created by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore announced yesterday that it would give Conservation International $261 million over 10 years. The money will help the Washington, D.C.-based group identify and protect biodiversity hotspots, areas that CI says cover 1.4 percent of the Earth’s land […]
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Domestic oil and gas is not the ticket to U.S. energy security
America’s fragile domestic infrastructure threatens her energy security at least as much as dependence on oil from the Middle East. Replacing oil from that region with even more vulnerable domestic systems would therefore decrease energy security. Stranger than science fiction. Extraordinarily concentrated energy flows invite and reward devastating attack. In our 1982 Pentagon study Brittle […]
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Borderline Inane
Almost every major community on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border suffers from poor air quality, according to a report due to be released shortly by U.S. and Mexican environmental agencies. The poor air is a byproduct of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which led to the construction of 84 assembly plants on the […]
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Terminal Illness
Plans to build a new $350 million liquid natural gas terminal in Baja California were unveiled yesterday by the El Paso Corporation, but a Mexican city is withholding approval due to environmental and social concerns. The Rosarito municipal government has denied El Paso a land-use permit, and the city’s mayor has described the project as […]
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Malaise-ia
A proposed pipeline that would transport natural gas from the South China Sea through Thailand and into Malaysia is bringing only conflict to the region thus far. The Thai government sees possibilities for modernization, dependable energy, employment, and the economic unification of Southeast Asia in the pipeline, but many villagers see a threat to their […]
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Fuel for the City
Seeking to control sky-high summertime fuel prices, the U.S. EPA proposed new regulations for anti-smog gasoline yesterday. The EPA has been gradually phasing in a plan to combat summer smog in densely populated areas by mandating the use of cleaner-burning reformulated gasoline (RFG). The oil industry blames that plan for high prices at the pumps […]
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Cogito Ergo Summit
At an environmental summit being held this week in Rio de Janeiro, Latin American and Caribbean countries are forging an alliance to pressure developed nations to foot most of the bill for the planet’s ailing ecosystems. During the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, industrialized nations pledged to spend 0.7 percent of their gross domestic products on […]
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Special K-O
Like the rest of the country, the town of Kellogg, Idaho, is at war. But this one is a civil war over the Silver Valley Superfund site, the legacy of a century of mining and smelting in the Coeur d’Alene River Basin. The U.S. EPA is poised to decide this week whether to expand the […]
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Swedish Neatballs
Sweden is setting the world’s standard for balancing economic growth with environmental protections, according to a report released last week by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Canadian International Development Research Center. The report used standards-of-living indicators such as quality of social services, infrastructure, education, and government, as well as assessing each country’s […]
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Flexing Their Muscles
The car-sharing company Flexcar is planning to expand beyond its Northwest roots and enter the Washington, D.C., market this fall, where it will compete with Boston-based Zipcar. Both companies work to reduce the number of cars on the road by enticing customers to share vehicles and avoid the hassles of car ownership. Customers pay for […]
