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Green Mountain's Green's Mountin'
Oil giant BP Amoco and a group of unnamed investors announced yesterday that they will invest as much as $100 million in GreenMountain.com, a company that sells renewable energy and natural gas as alternatives to power from dirtier sources. GreenMountain, which already has more than 100,000 residential customers in California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, plans […]
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Celling Like Hot Cakes
Texaco yesterday announced a sizable investment in fuel-cell technology, agreeing to pay $67.3 million for a 20 percent stake in Energy Conversion Devices Inc., an alternative energy company. Texaco plans to work with ECD to develop fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and oxygen to make power, as well as other alternative fuel technologies. Fuel cells […]
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Cutting Through the Crop
The Clinton-Gore administration today is unveiling a proposal to tighten the regulation of genetically modified (GM) foods, but the plan falls far short of what consumer and enviro groups say is needed to protect public health and the environment. The proposal would require, among other things, that biotech companies notify the Food and Drug Administration […]
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Wet's the Matter?
1.1 billion — the number of people worldwide who lack an adequate and safe supply of water for their daily needs, approximately one in five 5 million — the number of people, mostly children, who die each year from illnesses caused by poor-quality water supplies 5 — the minimum number of gallons of water needed […]
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A Site for Sore Eyes
GreaterGood.com, an online shopping portal dedicated to charitable giving, yesterday launched the Rainforest Site, a website that lets people protect 19.2 square feet of rainforest with a single click of the mouse, as often as once a day. A group of rotating site sponsors pay for donations to a Nature Conservancy program that purchases and […]
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P-Sea-B
Some 110 tons of PCB-contaminated waste that were forced out of Seattle’s port last month may now be headed for Johnston Island, a wildlife refuge and U.S. territory 700 miles southwest of Honolulu. The waste, generated at U.S. military bases in Japan, was to be temporarily stored in Seattle, but enviros, dock workers, and Washington […]
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One Is the Loneliest Number
Almost 20 years after China began trying to limit its population growth with a strict one-child policy, the effort seems to have been undermined in many regions by corruption, uneven enforcement, the erosion of central control over local governments, and the simple unwillingness of many Chinese people to comply. The one-child policy is still firmly […]
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Droughting Thomases
The planet is now hotter than at any time in recorded human history, according to research conducted at Texas A&M University and published in the Royal Swedish Academy of Science’s magazine Ambio. Scientists Thomas Crowley and Thomas Lowery examined 15 different records of past climates from around the world, including ice cores from Tibet, tree […]
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Mad Max
Environmental activist Richard Max Strahan filed suit yesterday against Maine Gov. Angus King (I) and U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daly, asking a judge to order them and other officials to stop licensing the use of lobstering and fishing gear that entangles northern right whales. There are only some 300 right whales left in the North […]
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Utilities Knifed
The New York state legislature approved a bill yesterday that aims to reduce air pollution drifting into New York from coal-burning power plants in Midwestern and Southern states. Under a federal program, utilities that reduce their emissions of sulfur dioxide below federal limits can sell credits to other companies giving them the right to exceed […]
