Climate Cities
All Stories
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The word on relatively green cars and positively green bicycles
Hy-wire act. Photo: DOE. My daughter Maya, who is 9, saw a picture of the General Motors Hy-wire, the company’s super-sleek experimental fuel-cell car, and immediately decided we should have one. Unfortunately, I had to explain to her that the hydrogen-powered, zero-emission, fossil-fuel-free car would be perfect for us in all respects except one: It’s […]
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Bicycles Shanghaied
Shanghai Bans Bicycles from Major Streets Shanghai, China, whose streets once teemed with peddling people, will ban bicycles from most major thoroughfares beginning next year. It’s a dramatic (and, many say, depressing) shift for a city that was home to some of the nation’s earliest bicycle factories. Now, Shanghai has become a center of China’s […]
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NRDC’s new Santa Monica building may be the most eco-friendly in the U.S.
Do you realize we are gathered in what must be the greenest building in the United States?” Natural Resources Defense Council Executive Director Frances Beinecke asked a crowd of well-scrubbed Californians gathered for the opening ceremony of the organization’s new SoCal headquarters in Santa Monica. Swilling mimosas and nibbling croissants on the building’s sunny, plant-strewn […]
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Next Thing You Know, They’ll Have a Better Human-Rights Record Than the U.S., Too
China to Adopt Fuel-Economy Standards Stricter Than Those in U.S. Intent on reducing its growing dependence on foreign oil, China is set to impose vehicle fuel-economy standards that will be markedly stricter than those in place in the U.S. The rules, expected to go into effect in 2005 and become more stringent in 2008, will […]
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Ding Dong, the Plant Is Dead
Germany Shutters First N-Plant in Beginning of End of Atomic Industry Germany began its historic phaseout of all atomic energy by shutting down the first of 19 nuclear power plants today. The Stade plant, in a city of the same name, had been open since 1972, making it the nation’s second-oldest atomic energy facility. Anti-nuclear […]
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L’enfant, Terrible!
Truck Pollution at U.S.-Mexico Border Is Killing Kids, Study Says Hundreds of kids have died and tens of thousands have been hospitalized in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just south of the U.S. border, because of respiratory illnesses seemingly caused by air pollution, according to a five-year study released yesterday by the environmental watchdog group created under […]
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Ghost Busters
Contaminated U.S. Ships Cause a Stir in Britain Controversy continues to swirl around four highly contaminated former U.S. Navy vessels — dubbed “ghost ships” — that are making their way across the Atlantic* to Hartlepool, England, where a British company has a contract to dismantle them. The first two toxin-tainted ships are being towed through […]
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Umbra on driving in neutral
Dear Umbra, I have a question about getting the most miles per gallon. If you put your car into neutral at stops or going downhill, do you save any gas? My car is an automatic. JeffVerona, N.J. Dearest Jeff, Another great question we have all pondered. Louisa and her fellow mechanics thought you might save […]
