Latest Articles
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Heat shuts down Chicago marathon
Sweltering humidity and 88-degree temperatures forced yesterday’s Chicago marathon to shut down early for the first time in its 30-year history. One runner died, more than 300 were hospitalized, and thousands were really irritated.
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Barack Obama reveals details of energy plan in speech today
Barack Obama is going to unveil the details of his energy plan today. I haven’t seen a copy of the speech or the plan yet, so all I have to go on is the reporting, which is just … awful. I can’t decide which is worse, the L.A. Times, Reuters, or AP. From what I […]
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Obama will outline energy plan in New Hampshire
Barack Obama will outline his energy plan later today in a speech in Portsmouth, N.H. Expect him to laud cap-and-trade and energy efficiency, propose spending $150 billion over the next decade on clean energy R&D, and blame politicians for not being ballsy enough to make bold proposals for tackling global warming.
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Like they do it in Italy
From Der Spiegel: It’s not easy to be punctual for a meeting with Stefano Cimicchi. Parking places are hard to come by in Orvieto, even if cars are still legal. Cars in the city center stick out like a sore thumb among strolling pedestrians, who move to the sides of the streets with studied slowness. […]
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Brain food for your day of rest
Tabs, tabs, so many tabs open. Time for a whirlwind tour of my browser! Got a website? Here are 11 carbon-neutral hosting options. Environmental websites that effectively use graphics and imagery to convey the scope of a problem. I particularly like Gapminder. If Bill Clinton didn’t clear it up for you, the Christian Science Monitor […]
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Cause for humility
Paul Gipe opens one of his books with a story about a big celebration of a new wind project in So. California that was marred when, a few hours beforehand, the turbine oversped and destroyed itself. An executive with the company building the project said something like, "I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that the wind turbine destroyed itself. The good news is that we didn't have to evacuate Los Angeles."
Popped into my head when I read this: "Huge nuclear-safe containment to be built over the Chernobyl sarcophagus: The 'New Safe Confinement' will be an arch-shaped structure 105 metres high, 150 metres long and with a span of 260 metres."
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New sportswear retailer donates to green groups
Check out Planet Protect Sportswear, a brand new retailer that vends responsibly made items and gives 10 percent of its profits to either Earth Share of Oregon or Oceana (workplace of intrepid Gristmill contributor Andrew Sharpless). Planet Protect welcomes freelance artists to design T-shirts. Or if you happen to know a producer of sustainable swimsuits, […]
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A no-makeup diet is healthier for you and the planet
Did you know you can absorb up to five lbs. of chemicals every year from make-up and other "beauty" products? Yikes. A British paper presents that and other scary facts — "the average woman eats, albeit unwittingly, five lipsticks a year, which in her lifetime is the equivalent volume of 1.5 blocks of lard" — […]
