France
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Mont St Michel — flushing the meadows
Restoring the natural topography around Mont St Michel will result in a sandy stretch at low tide, prompting locals to suggest sand and eventual climate change will replace the region’s famous “pre-salted” lamb with pre-salted camel.Tim BromfieldThe lambs gambling in the meadows around Mont St Michel have a hard life. Grazed on the bay’s low-lying […]
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France imports UK electricity as summer heatwave puts a third of its nukes out of action
To avoid maxxing out on my July quota of irony in the first week of the month, I will simply report this as a straight news story. The UK Times reports: With temperatures across much of France surging above 30C this week, EDF’s reactors are generating the lowest level of electricity in six years, forcing […]
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The greening of Sarko
Think of Nicolas Sarkozy, and what springs to mind? Carla Bruni, of course. His platform heels, probably. A somewhat aggressive manner, naturellement. Napoleon Bonaparte, pourquoi non? Al Gore attended the October 2007 unveiling of the Sarkozy government’s green program, called “Grenelle de l’Environnment.”Courtesy Elysee.frIndeed the French president is often compared to the diminutive emperor with […]
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French government interested in solar because it uses less water than nukes
A year or so ago, I spoke at a solar conference in France — a country that produces 78 percent of its electricity with nukes. A couple of folks told me that the government’s interest in solar stemmed from the fact that during the previous summer’s heat wave, river levels dropped to the point that […]
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E.U. foiled in bid to force France, Greece to allow GM crop
BRUSSELS — The European Commission was foiled Monday in its bid to force France and Greece to allow genetically modified maize from U.S. biotech giant Monsanto to be grown in their fields. Food chain experts from the E.U. member states, meeting in Brussels, could not reach agreement on whether to back or oppose the French […]
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Paris digs deep to harness Earth’s green energy
PARIS — A major new project is under way in Paris to provide ecologically clean heating for an entire district by extracting piping hot water from nearly two kilometers under the earth. In a revival of the French capital’s geothermal potential, drilling has just begun in the north of the city on a desolate building […]
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Bike-sharing in Minneapolis, and other cycling news
Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean there’s no bike news out there. To wit! Minneapolis is working on a bike-share program called, appropriately enough, Nice Ride Minnesota. But its launch has been pushed back, reports the Minnesota Daily, due to “complications in securing the $1.75 million in federal funding necessary to implement the program.” Hm, […]
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Ring in the new with a ‘natural’ bottle of bubbly
Fewer chemicals in our sparkling wines? We’ll drink to that. Nothing says festive quite like the pop of a chilled bottle of bubbly. But while sparkling wine delivers a party in a glass, things are typically less thrilling out in the field. Like most wine, bubbly tends to come from grapes grown in large monocrops […]