Latest Articles

Study links fast-food diets to Alzheimer’s

As the economy plunges into an abyss, consumers are cutting back on spending. They’re desperately seeking bargains, including culinary ones. While most companies deal with declining demand, McDonald’s saw its U.S. sales jump 5.3 percent in the last quarter. At the supermarket, meanwhile, sales of stuff like Spam and Dinty Moore canned stew are surging. […]

Somebody’s going to get rich

“There is going to be a generation of Googles and Ciscos in the cleantech area. It’s coming.” — Alan Salzman, co-founder and chief executive of VantagePoint Venture Partners, which has more than $1 billion allocated to the clean-tech sector

Electronics, biomimicry, and design advances improve a mature technology

Solar energy sucks up a lot of research attention, partly because solar energy systems still have so much room for improvement. Wind turbines, on the other hand, have been around for over 1,000 years, and although the modern versions are vastly larger and more efficient than their ancient counterparts, the basic concept hasn’t changed much. […]

NYT: Maryland poultry CAFOs snuff out Chesapeake oyster industry

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. —– I write this on the second day of December — one among a string of months that end in “r.” That means, for those of us who live near the sea, it’s time to consider the oyster, that glorious […]

SanFran anti-transit activist puts $1 million between the city and bike infrastructure

Streetsblog brings word of a bafflesome episode in the life of San Francisco: Two-and-a-half years after a judge issued an injunction preventing the city from adding any new bicycle infrastructure to its streets, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and the San Francisco Planning Department have released a 1353-page Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) […]

Obama will never get 67 votes for an international climate treaty in the Senate

It is all but inconceivable that Obama can deliver the 67 votes in the Senate needed to ratify a global climate treaty — no matter what happens in the 12 months between Poznań and Copenhagen. And the only thing worse than no global climate treaty in 2009 is a treaty that Obama can’t get ratified. […]

E.U. agrees on emission rules for cars

The European Union has reportedly struck a deal with the bloc’s automakers, agreeing to rules that would see car manufacturers cut their fleets’ emissions 18 percent by 2015 and 40 percent by 2020. The E.U. had proposed a tougher standard last year, but heavy lobbying from automakers successfully diluted the goals.

President Bush pardons man convicted of killing bald eagles

A man convicted of accidentally killing three bald eagles in the 1990s was pardoned by President Bush last week. Leslie Owen Collier of Missouri left hamburger poisoned with pesticide to kill some coyotes, but many of the animals that then ate the coyotes also died, including a red-tailed hawk, a great horned owl, and three […]

Ford planning shift to small cars, company says

Ford Motor Co. is planning a significant product shift that will focus on the manufacture of small, fuel-efficient cars in lieu of its largely failed strategy since the 1990s to churn out mostly large vehicles like trucks and SUVs. Ford’s plan is meant to woo Congress into granting the Big Three U.S. automakers a much-needed […]

Massive solar installation completed in Southern California

California’s largest solar-panel installation was completed this week atop a warehouse in Southern California; 600,000 square feet of solar panels will produce enough electricity to power some 1,300 homes. The installation is the first in the utility Edison’s ambitious plan to affix solar panels on some two square miles of rooftops in the state.