innovation
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Ask Umbra on solar pool heaters
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, With all the rain we’ve had this year, the pool water doesn’t get a chance to warm up in between rainstorms. We are trying to design a passive heating system. We’ve thought about flexible one-inch black hose (if we can find it) attached to the filter and […]
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Can we really make the drive-thru a source of power?
My father believes that the one modern invention above all others to contribute to the downfall of the planet, not to mention our civilization, is the drive-through — or, in the spirit of efficiency on which it’s based, the drive-thru. Your idling could light this sign!Not only does it encourage laziness and obesity by tempting […]
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Ask Umbra on green burial
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, At bedtime last night, my significant other remarked that when her time comes she would like to be disposed of in an earth-friendly way, rejoining the soil and not mummified forever in chemical preservatives. Is this even possible and legal? And how about the fiery alternative (no, […]
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Proof of concept: Well-crafted standards spur innovation in lighting
There was an excellent article in the NY Times last Sunday, detailing the unexpected rise of super-efficient incandescent light bulbs as a result of the standard in the 2007 energy bill. The article quotes NRDC’s own lighting and electronics efficiency guru, Noah Horowitz, and really drives home an important point – well crafted standards spur […]
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Next on climate: Improve Waxman-Markey innovation provisions in Senate
Few aspects of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill matter more than the insufficient degree to which it applies future revenue to clean energy innovation. Quite simply, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) makes only a modest start toward promoting the technology breakthroughs that will make clean energy cheap, reduce carbon emissions, and create thousands […]
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Getting to know the neighborhood — through its trash
Left behind.coldcolours via flickrIt’s Sunday on Bourne Street. I am weeding at the JP Green House, furious at the reappearance of the Dog Strangling Vine that we battled hard last summer. A pernicious creeping vine, it takes over any neglected area around here: East Coast kudzu. An abandoned house is not really vacant, but inhabited […]
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Why I’m not freaked out about the Waxman-Markey climate bill
Feeling ambivalent?Will the Waxman-Markey bill spark a full-scale energy revolution? No. Not on its own, not in the next 10-15 years. The short-term targets for reducing greenhouse gases are too low, the renewable electricity standard is too weak, too many offsets are allowed, and there’s too little investment in clean energy. To boot, there’s every […]
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Tom Friedman chats with Grist about the green challenge and globalization
At a Grist gathering in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, we were pleased to host New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for a chat on the state of green. Our intrepid video expert was on hand to tape the event. Friedman released Hot, Flat, and Crowded way back in October 2008 — before the worst […]
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One man’s plan to re-create suburbia, sans cars
California’s East Bay — the collection of towns, cities, and suburbs across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco — has a lot to boast about. There’s the perpetually great weather, enlightened inhabitants, and a halfway decent, if in my opinion overpriced, public transit system in the form of BART. Yet despite BART’s 43 stations spanning […]