Climate Cities
All Stories
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Old Yeller
In better mass transit news, Yellowstone National Park is in the early stages of launching a public-transportation plan designed to cut down on air and noise pollution. Harkening back to its past, the park has reacquired a small fleet of yellow tour buses that were phased out of service in the 1950s. The park plans […]
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Umbra on killing your lawn
Dear Umbra, I just moved into a house with a large backyard. I would like to xeriscape 90 percent of it, but I must first learn how to kill and remove the grass. I’m not a fan of chemicals and would like to find an alternate solution. Most of the yard is very, very brown […]
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The Dark Side
In most major metropolitan areas, you can count the stars visible in the night sky on your fingers. Now, the phenomenon is spreading; due to urban sprawl, bright artificial lights are drowning out the darkness in more and more of the world. That’s bad news for astronomers, public energy budgets — and many plant and […]
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Star Light, Star Bright, I Hope to See a Star Tonight
Not too long ago, the Indian capital of New Delhi was one of the most polluted cities in the world; now, you still might not want to run a marathon there, but the city is making serious strides toward cleaning up its air. Dilip Biswas, chair of the city’s Central Pollution Control Board, says pollution […]
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Not the Year of the Bicycle
Ever since the Communist Revolution of 1949, bicycles have been a seemingly indelible part of the Chinese landscape, as endemic as pandas. Now, though, as the pace of life picks up in China’s major cities, urban planners and government authorities have begun treating bicycles as nuisances — antiquated devices that impede the free flow of […]
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Sprawl Together Now
A new culprit has been named in the drought that has plagued more than a third of the U.S. this summer: urban sprawl. A report released yesterday by American Rivers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Smart Growth America found that the rapid expansion of pavement and developed land in metropolitan areas amounts to a […]
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A Ticket to Not Ride
Tree-huggers, time-wasters, socialists, elitists, leftists, losers, homosexuals, Democrats — those are just a few of the more printable epithets that have been directed at the members of Earth on Empty, an environmental organization dedicated to improving air quality and reversing global warming. What has Earth on Empty done to earn such malice? It has launched […]
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Is biodiesel the fuel of the future?
The Granola Ayatollah of Canola, aka Charris Ford, slides behind the wheel of his 1980 International Scout truck and turns the key. The truck burbles to life and off we go, cruising down the gravel roads that divide the aspen groves of southwestern Colorado’s Horsefly Mesa. It would be just a standard evening joyride, except […]
