Climate Cities
All Stories
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The automotive equivalent of high heels
Was looking for an electric vehicle and this came up. Seriously -- six batteries? And a suicide trunk?
Part of me kind of wants it.
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WTF?
They’re submerging subway cars to make artificial reefs?! Nobody tells me anything.
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Transit investment should and will be a part of the peak oil solution
Joseph Romm has made a number of very good points in his new Salon piece (and accompanying Gristmill post) on the problem of peak oil. He is, in my view, quite correct that oil prices will continue to increase based on supply and demand fundamentals. He is right that alternative oil source development would be […]
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Boston looks to generate electricity from indoor composting
The city of Boston is looking to build an urban, indoor composting facility. Most cities, if they compost at all, transport food and yard waste in gas-guzzling trucks to dumps outside the city limits, where energy and methane from decomposing biomass get lost to the atmosphere. The first-of-its-kind proposed Boston facility would generate electricity from […]
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Plans for Indiana BioTown face obstacles, but sputter on
In 2005, Reynolds, Ind., was deemed the world’s first “BioTown,” as agricultural officials unveiled a plan to power the 550-person burg entirely with corn, hog waste, sewage, and other energy sources in ready local supply. Three years and many obstacles later, the ambitious proposal is far off track. A significant private investor dropped out; construction […]
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A post-Katrina homebuilding project gives hope for weathering severe storms
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Mississippi on August 29, 2005, the storm’s 125-mile-an-hour winds and 25-foot wall of seawater ground homes, boats, and businesses into matchsticks across the state’s three coastal counties: Jackson, Hancock, and Harrison. The cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, roughly 20 miles east of the Mississippi-Louisiana state line, were […]
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The WaPo reveals why mass transit gets the shaft on the national level
I have a couple of things to add about the Washington Post article pointed to by Ryan Avent in his smart recent post about mass transit. The article, by Lyndsey Layton and Spencer S. Hsu, is a superb and important piece of work, but it’s maddeningly written; it buries key and even shocking information. The […]
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Army Corps climate efforts in New Orleans may not be enough
No one wants to see this again — but can post-Katrina protection efforts keep the Big Easy safe? Photo: NOAA Here’s the good news: The Army Corps of Engineers is “racing” to complete a comprehensive levee system for metropolitan New Orleans by 2011 that actually takes into account global warming, at least in terms of […]
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Fifteen years after the Great Flood of 1993, floodplain development is booming
Once it was a cornfield; now it’s a Wal-Mart, a Taco Bell, a Target. Here along a stretch of Missouri’s Highway 40, in the Chesterfield Valley area just west of downtown St. Louis, what’s said to be the largest strip mall in the country sits on about 46 acres of Mississippi River bottomlands. Less than […]
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A comprehensive solution to end congestion
On Monday, the Washington Post took a look at the ideas of a key Department of Transportation policymaker named Tyler Duvall, a man of bold plans who hopes to bring congestion pricing to highways across the nation. Congestion pricing is an idea with roots in the field of economics, widely supported by a broad spectrum […]