air pollution
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The Pacific Grim
Air pollution from factories and power plants in booming Asian cities is blowing across the Pacific to the West Coast of North America, posing threats to human health and wildlife far from the pollution’s original sources, according to a report published last week in the journal Science. Report coauthor Kenneth Wilkening of the University of […]
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Get on the Bus
The Los Angeles metro area made a national first on Friday by adopting sweeping rules that will require new transit buses and garbage trucks to be powered by electricity, fuel cells, or relatively low-polluting fuels such as natural gas. The new rules, intended to cut down on diesel emissions that foul the air and are […]
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How far can clean cars take us?
I loved cars long before I knew there was any reason to worry about their effect on the environment or be concerned about the smoke that poured from their tailpipes. In the 1960s, ignorance like mine was widespread in the United States, maintained by a powerful automotive lobby and a complacent federal government. Highway congestion, though already bad, was somewhat masked by an expanding national highway grid, and most people celebrated the migration to the suburbs that the new roads aided and abetted. Cars were equated with freedom, and ads of the period showed happy vacationing families riding in roomy sedans, with the uncrowded interstate stretching out in front of them.
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Hail the Cabs!
Nearly 300 taxi, bus, and truck drivers clogged traffic by driving slowly through downtown Hong Kong yesterday to demand government action to combat air pollution, then marched to government headquarters carrying signs that read, “The industry wants to protect the environment.” The protesters are calling for the government to help them convert their vehicles from […]
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How green is your pleasure machine?
They be jammin’. When you look at U.S. transportation habits, you start to wonder where in the world we’re all going, and why we’re working so hard to get there. The average household makes more than six car trips per day, each averaging nine miles. With busier schedules, we are each spending an average of […]
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Gas 'n' Uh-oh
40 percent — petroleum’s share of global energy consumed in 1998 $246 — amount spent by the author on gasoline to drive a 1987 Honda Accord 5,700 miles on a cross-country road trip from Feb. 15 to March 15, 2000 $433 — estimated amount the author would have spent if he had driven a new […]
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Bhopal — or RuPaul
Friday marks the 15th anniversary of a very unhappy occasion. On Dec. 3, 1984, a Union Carbide industrial plant in Bhopal, India, released a deadly cloud of the gas methyl isocyanate into the air, killing at least 6,500 people (and some say more) and injuring tens of thousands. Ever since, Union Carbide and Bhopal have […]
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Two
• percentage of the Earth’s surface covered by cities • percentage of the Earth’s surface covered by rainforests • number of miles of highway laid down in Florida each day • percent by which global energy use is projected to increase annually over the next 15 years • factor by which an average home generates […]
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Who Consumes the Most?
Singapore, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, United States, Norway. Those are the world’s five top nations, in descending order, in — well, what category would you guess? If you say income per capita, you’re close, but no cigar. Since the 1985 oil price crash, the Middle East no longer dominates the list of the world’s richest […]
