Climate Culture
All Stories
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Jesus Christ’s Supercar?
Hybrid SUVs to Hit U.S. Market This Year While a “green SUV” may sound like an oxymoron, Toyota and Ford plan to roll out new gas-electric hybrid SUVs later this year that warrant the label “greener” — or, at least, less egregiously wasteful. Ford’s hybrid Escape will hit U.S. showrooms this summer, while Toyota will […]
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Umbra on fabric softening
Dear Umbra, With winter upon us, I’m thinking about a serious matter: fabric softener. During the summer, I don’t use any. However, with snow looming, static cling is on my mind. Long story short, which is better: liquid fabric softener or dryer sheets? AllieShippensburg, Penn. Dearest Allie, Your home will be a happier, healthier place […]
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Umbra on diaperless parenting
Dear Umbra, I have a baby on the way. Due to prodding by my wife, I have begun to think about things such as diapers. Babies make a lot of boom-boom, and wrapping it all up in a bundle of plastic diaperness, tossing that in a plastic sack, and then tossing the lot in a […]
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Nativity Scene
Native Peoples Speak Up for Their Lands Indigenous peoples are rallying for their lands and their rights this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where a major U.N. convention on biodiversity is taking place. Representatives of native peoples are demanding the right to reject development projects on their ancestral lands, saying that multinational companies should not […]
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The Gas Is Always Greener …
American Cars Conspicuously Absent from List of 2004’s Greenest Vehicles An annual ranking of the year’s “greenest” and “meanest” automobiles released today found America’s Big Three auto manufacturers absent from the former list — and well-represented on the latter. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, widely considered a top source for info on eco-friendly […]
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Low-carb diets have a high impact on the planet
Lose That Extra Weight … While Eating the Foods You Love!” Pleased to meat you. For decades, such headlines were fixtures of supermarket checkout lanes, to be taken no more seriously than claims of alien abduction. But times have changed. High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets have become wildly popular because they help adherents lose dozens of pounds […]
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Greensylvania
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) unveiled a $22 billion state budget yesterday with numerous eco-friendly provisions that promise to protect green space, return abandoned mine sites to productive use, improve state parks, and revitalize aging city centers, asserting that such measures would spur economic development. Enviros hailed the budget, saying it would make Pennsylvania the […]
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Nano, Nano
A new paint set to go on sale in Europe in March promises to absorb the most noxious gases from automobile exhaust. Invented by British company Millennium Chemicals, Ecopaint contains spherical nanoparticles of titanium dioxide and calcium carbonate, suspended in a base of polysiloxane (a silicon-based polymer). Hey, wake up, the good part is coming! […]
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Oil Who Wander Are Not Lost
Last year, China became the world’s second-largest importer of oil (take a wild guess who’s No. 1), struggling to keep up with the energy demands of an economy expanding at a rate of 9.9 percent annually. Having recently concluded, like other oil-thirsty countries, that the volatile Middle East might not be a stable, long-term source […]
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Global-warming activists can learn from the anti-smoking campaign
Twenty years ago, it seemed that virtually everyone smoked. You couldn’t sit in a restaurant for five minutes without stinking of cigarettes for hours. Now, in state after state, even biker bars are going smoke-free. Clearly, there’s been a dramatic shift in the public’s attitude toward smoking — but it hasn’t been an intellectual shift. […]
