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Beijing extends traffic-control measures to keep smog away

Beijing enjoyed its best air quality in a decade during the Olympic Games, thanks in part to strict traffic-control measures. Pleased by their success, city officials have unveiled ongoing modified measures in hopes of continuing to ward off the smog. Under rules that go into effect Oct. 11, privately owned vehicles will be banned from […]

Snippets from the news

• California will host international climate meeting. • General Motors will build Chevy Volt plant in Flint, Mich. • President Bush again says he wants to protect marine areas. • Could Warren Buffett reshape the nuclear power industry? • Cities turn off street lights to save energy. • World’s greenest museum opens in San Francisco.

An alternative bailout proposal

Jerome a Paris suggests a different bailout idea: a National Investment Bank that would focus on helping people rather than banks. It would serve the following functions: • allow bankrupt institutions in the existing financial sector to go bust without damaging the real economy by creating an entity able to step in to fund the […]

Gas shortages plague the Southeast

Gas lines snake through parking lots, independent gas retailers ration supplies, and fights break-out at gasoline-starved filling stations across the Southeast … Gas shortages throughout the Southeast continue after several oil refineries in the Gulf Coast region were knocked off line after the double whammy of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Though two refineries have plans […]

Snippets from the news

• Global carbon-dioxide emissions rising rapidly. • Cities produce less than two-fifths of greenhouse-gas emissions, says study. • In 2002, EPA prepared to declare public-health emergency over asbestos contamination — then met with White House and decided not to. • E.U. lawmakers deny Big Auto more lenient emissions curbs. • Climate-change program that lost federal […]

E.U. will no longer export mercury

Hold on to your thermometers: The European Union will ban exports of mercury as of March 2011. The 27-nation bloc stopped mining mercury in 2001, but its exports of the metal account for up to a quarter of global supply. The export ban will require mercury that’s no longer of service to be put into […]

Minsky on population

Artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky takes on the fraught subject of population in a rambling, semi-coherent TED talk: (Thanks LL!)

Urban hawk attacks

I received a strange phone call yesterday from my youngest daughter. “Dad, a hawk is eating Pinkfoot!” Pinkfoot was my daughter’s Bantam hen, which won Best in Show at the fair this summer. I raced home to find a fairly large hawk making short work of said hen and it had no intention of leaving […]

Snippets from the news

• Colorado adopts rules that protect wildlife from drilling operations. • Coal project moves ahead in Kentucky. • Pine beetle infestation may affect weather and air quality. • North Carolina experiencing gas shortage. • Northeastern and West Coast women chock full of mercury. • Pollution from Hurricane Ike could have been much worse. • Is […]

Northeast states’ regional carbon trading system goes live this week

The nation’s first carbon cap-and-trade program starts Thursday, when power plant owners in 10 northeastern states submit sealed bids to buy allowances to emit greenhouse gases. Two other regional programs are to follow, assuring that nearly half of the United States will be covered by carbon trading programs — with or without leadership from Congress […]