Grist List
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Real-life Farmville kills the same amount of time, actually does some good
We knew things were going to get weird once we found out there was a real-world Angry Bird. Now a farm in England is turning itself into live-action Farmville. For a £30 ($49) annual fee, members of MyFarm will get to weigh in on every decision made at Wimpole Estate Farm in Cambridgeshire. They'll vote […]
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Daylight-mimicking LEDs save power, might reduce symptoms of Alzheimer’s
All the cool kids know that CFLs are merely a bridge technology — and now students at Drexel University have a grant to enhance their successor, which are household lights comprised of light emitting diodes. LEDs aren’t new tech — they’re already used in your monitor, television, Christmas tree, throwies, etc. They're super efficient, plus […]
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Baddest-ass hybrid in the world to become a reality
Jaguar has announced plans to build a hybrid-electric supercar that goes from 0 to 60 in three seconds — proving once again that green cars aren't just better for the environment; they're also substantially more bad-ass than the belching, muck-fueled dinosaurs they replace. The C-X75 will have an ultralight carbon-fiber chassis and an all-electric range […]
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Nixing pollutants could save $76.6 billion in health care costs
Between medical costs and lost productivity for parents, environmental illnesses in children cost $76.6 billion annually, says a new study in Health Affairs. That’s the cost of all illnesses that are correlated with exposure to pollutants and toxins. (Some of the associations are better-documented than others, but many — like lead poisoning, which costs $50.9 […]
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Republican debate: Present Pawlenty vs. Past Pawlenty on cap-and-trade
Tim Pawlenty may have once promoted cap-and-trade as a response to climate change, but now he considers that choice a "battle scar.” Because nothing’s more traumatic than caving to peer pressure. "We all [have ‘clunkers’ on our records], and that's one of mine," he said last night at the first debate in the Republican primary. […]
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Critical List: House Republicans demand offshore drilling; climate change eating away at food supply
The House voted yesterday to fast-track new offshore drilling lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia. Look for $0.99 gas within a few weeks. As a group, the drilling bill's primary sponsors raked in more than $8.8 million in donations from the oil and gas industry. Climate change is […]
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Rwanda to power itself with plentiful, domestic geothermal energy
If the first thing you think of when I say "Rwanda" is "Don Cheadle looking worried while a radio booms 'Hutu Power!' in a basso profundo," it's time you updated your thinking. The country is currently looking into meeting its need for electricity by tapping into the hot rocks that underlie much of the country, […]
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Offshore wind power to explode to 17 times its current capacity in just six years
Offshore wind will reach 70.1 GW of capacity by 2017, says Pike Research. That's 17 times its current capacity, which is 4.1 GW, and amounts to several times the current maximum solar capacity of the most solared-out country in the world, Germany. Europe is currently in the lead on offshore power, but by 2017, China […]
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How the internet is saving the physical world by making it disappear
In 2009, a study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford made the case that the switch to downloading music from transporting physical CDs had significantly reduced the carbon footprint of Americans' music consumption. That's just one of countless examples of "ephemeralization," which is the process by which new, post industrial-revolution technology tends to lead to […]
