Grist List
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Help MIT evaluate people's attitudes about cities
MIT's Media Lab has developed a website called Place Pulse that evaluates your perception of cities and neighborhoods. You choose which of two images from Google Street View looks more unique, or more upper-class, or safer, and Place Pulse collates everyone's votes in a way that will hopefully be useful for urban planning. And for […]
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IKEA to go 100 percent renewable, starting with 67 wind turbines
Lots of companies talk about going green, but the scale of Swedish furniture retailer IKEA's ambition is breathtaking. In its quest to get 100 percent renewable, the firm skipped right over the usual, intermediate step of buying renewable power from a third party.
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Overheated river hobbles nuclear power plants
The Tennessee Valley authority has shut down three of its nuclear power plants for the second summer in a row, thanks to unusually warm temperatures in the rivers into which they would normally discharge water.
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Are these eco-friendly sandals worth $18,000?
Chipkos, a company that produces eco-friendly footwear, has partnered with artist David Palmer to produce the world's most expensive pair of flip-flops. They cost $18,000, but hey, at least they're really ugly!
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Neil deGrasse Tyson blasts Congress for not supporting science
Hayden Planetarium director and former slice of astrophysicist beefcake Neil deGrasse Tyson has some choice words for Congress about its priorities. He's talking about space exploration, which is his particular deal, but the same arguments apply to cleantech and renewable energy innovation.
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Critical List: Bachmann goes after Pawlenty on cap-and-trade; a bubble shield for wind turbines
At last night's Republican debate, Michelle Bachmann tried to stake Tim Pawlenty on his support for cap-and-trade.
The EPA wised up and banned DuPont from selling Imprelis, the herbicide that was killing trees.
San Francisco could require businesses to let bikers bring their ride inside. -
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Six of seven fracking committee members have ties to natural gas industry
The government is convening a panel of experts to weigh in on how (and whether) fracking can be made safer. Yay! Six of the seven committee members have financial ties to the natural gas industry -- including the chairman, who's a board member of two energy companies and has received $1.4 million from them over three years. Boo!
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Must-see photo essay about the drought
George Steinmetz' photo essay in Time about the drought in Texas, New Mexico, and Georgia is absolutely gasp-inducing. That's thanks to the beauty of the images, sure. But it's also the magnitude of the disaster (crops fail, waterways recede or disappear) and the shocking evidence of wastefulness (homeowners irrigate their lawns despite the record-setting drought; […]
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Buy an electric car, get a steep discount on the rooftop solar panels required to charge it
Ford has teamed up with SunPower to offer buyers of its forthcoming Ford Focus Electric a significant discount on SunPower's home solar power systems. This is more than just two companies teaming up to target a demographic likely to want to be interested in both their products: It also makes sense in terms of helping families get off of oil and coal at the same time.
