Latest Articles
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Hummer to hum along no more?
Crash course General Motors has decided to park the ultimate gas guzzler in that big garage in the sky. GM thought its plans to sell Hummer to a Chinese company had the green light, but got run off the road this week by the Chinese government, ironically, over fears of pollution. Enviros who say fuH2 […]
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Your car and your meat-eating: the biggest causes of climate change
A new study coming out of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that when it comes to the net contribution to climate change on-road transportation, burning biomass for cooking, and raising animals for food are the biggest culprits. Since most of us don’t […]
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Grading RGGI’s first year
For all the haters who can’t abide cap-and-trade, I give you a new report by Environment Northeast, (ENE) grading RGGI — that’s the carbon cap-and-trade program that’s been operational for over a year now in the northeastern United States. I’m going to steal their thunder and take you right to the conclusion: States deserve significant […]
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Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai — is the world next?
Driving around Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, you can easily see the massive construction sites and melting pot of cultures. What is less evident is that a sustainability revolution is going on, from the most humble corner shop to the highest levels of government. Abu Dhabi may best be known in […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 8
U.S. energy and environmental policy sucks. We burn too much fuel, we emit too much pollution and we do so under a set of rules that cause us to spend far too much on energy, even as we use it in volumes that poison our planet, our geopolitics and our economy. We deserve better. That […]
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Bill Barrett Corporation deploys lobbyists to protect sweet drilling deal in the Rockies
Drilling companies seeking to exploit unconventional energy resources in the Rocky Mountain wilderness and elsewhere are running into all kinds of obstacles these days, thanks to lawsuits, regulations, and pesky citizens who would rather ensure their drinking water remains, well, drinkable, preferably without fear of ingesting toxic chemicals or lighting themselves on fire when they […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 7
Having noted in part 2 that all barriers to clean energy deployment can be lumped into utility policy, environmental policy, and out-of-date policy — and having outlined the necessary fixes for the first two in parts 5 and 6 — we now address out-of-date policies. This is perhaps the hardest to address, because it is […]
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Gold, silver, bronze, & green
What do the Vancouver Olympics have to do with Sir Richard Branson’s “Carbon War Room” and solar power? We hear from venture capitalist Jack Hidary on this Planet Forward webisode. Hidary and Branson aren’t just enjoying the sporting events at the Vancouver Olympics. They’ve started a “Carbon War Room” which is looking for market-driven solutions […]
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From staple to superfood: açaí goes industrial
“The fruit was traditionally collected from wild palms. Now companies have açaí plantations, and collectors are raising more açaí palms on their land, according to Antônio Cordeiro de Santana, an agricultural economist at the Rural Federal University of the Amazon. With cultivation more concentrated, resistance to disease and productivity have decreased, he said, even as […]
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Smithfield tries to weave a silk purse from a sow’s ear
“Just this week I promoted somebody–and I can’t even believe I’m saying this word here, folks–to a chief sustainability officer.”—Larry Pope, CEO of Smithfield Foods, speaking before the North Carolina Agribusiness Council. Smithfield’s environmental record was nicely documented in the classic 2006 Rolling Stone article “Boss Hog.”
