China
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Critical List: Patagonia becomes a Benefit Corporation; oil industry threatens Obama
Patagonia has become a Benefit Corporation, which means it can prioritize goals other than profit.
The oil industry is sending a message to Obama: Approve the Keystone XL pipeline, or face the political music in 2012.
It is possible to avoid earthquakes when disposing of fracking wastewater. It's just really, really expensive.
The U.S. isn't the only country leery of the EU's carbon trading airline scheme: China's protesting, too. -
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Screw China: American scientists are finding replacements for rare earth
Priuses, wind turbines, and other clean technologies require rare earth materials, which generally go into ultra-strong magnets that help power clean technology. But rare earth elements have a couple of problems: China controls most of the supply, they require less-than-environmentally-friendly mining to get at, and, uh, they’re rare. So there's a race on to create a replacement magnet component that doesn't require rare earth.
CleanTechnica reports that a team at Boston's Northeastern University has taken one step in the right direction -- developing a material with similar magnetic properties to rare earth. -
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Top five New Year’s resolutions for planet and profit
It’s that time of year when someone at a holiday gathering inevitably asks about your resolutions for 2012. Feel free to plagiarize mine: 5. Grow more of my own food. China’s biggest dairy admitted that some of its products contained a toxin commonly found in corn and wheat, transmitted to the milk of cows eating […]
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Critical List: The shortest day of the year; some grey wolves to come off endangered species list
Today marks the solstice: the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter. Things will only get better from here on out, as long as by “things” you mean “the amount of daylight available in the Northern hemisphere.” Grey wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will be taken off the endangered species list. […]
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Critical List: Seattle bans plastic bags; at least 100 million trees died in Texas this year
Seattle is banning retail stores from giving out single-use plastic bags. Paper bags will cost a nickel. Google is investing $94 million in solar projects. As many as 500 million trees died in the Texas drought this year. India could join the U.S. in officially complaining that China's been selling solar panels at too low […]
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America must not back down on sustainable energy
Clockwise from top left: Sens. John Kerry, Sheldon Whitehouse, Barbara Boxer, and Bernie Sanders.If you read just the headlines these days, you might think renewable energy in America is going the way of Solyndra. Don’t take our word for it: A recent headline from Fox News declared “ENTIRE Solar Industry on Brink of Collapse.” We […]
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Critical List: Congress does everything it can to screw the environment; fabric cleaned by sunlight
Congress voted to put sanctions on Iran, which would make it harder for Iran to sell oil, but potentially make oil sales more profitable for the regime overall. After all the work that the anti-Keystone coalition did, Republicans are trying to tack a measure to approve the pipeline onto a bill that extends the payroll […]
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It’s panda-countin’ time!
Get out your panda-counting equipment, because it's panda census time! China's government is organizing the first panda census in a decade, sending out teams of wildlife biologists over hill and under dale in search of the elusive critters. And it's not as fun as it sounds. Pandas are really rare in the wild — the […]
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Critical List: Same old U.S. and China at COP talks; Warren Buffett’s solar farm
At the COP talks, the United States is driving all the other countries crazy. The U.S. response: "What, us?" China's conditions for a climate deal include the demand that it and other growing economies would have to meet different standards than rich countries. So, essentially, nothing has changed. Warren Buffett's buying Topaz Solar Farm, a […]
