Japan
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Critical List: Senate voted against Keystone XL; CSA delivery by sailboat
The Senate voted against approving Keystone XL. Japan has almost shut down its nuclear industry; next month only one out of 54 reactors will be working. Those affected by the BP oil spill could get 60 percent of the settlement money they’re owed as soon as a new program to pay out claims is set […]
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Map shows what a U.S. Fukushima could have looked like
With the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima reactor crisis approaching, the Natural Resources Defense Council has put together a mapping tool that lets you envision what could have happened if one of the 104 U.S. reactors had suffered a similar accident. The take-home message: If you live on the East Coast, you’re practically guaranteed to […]
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Japanese zoo tries to make endangered alligators have sex
There are only 150 or so Chinese alligators left in the wild, which means that if they had any sense of mortality, these critters would be breeding like crazy. But apparently they don’t have the “survival of the fittest” will to reproduce, or maybe they just have a headache. So one Japanese zoo tried to […]
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Levitating houses stay safe during earthquakes
A Japanese company called Air Danshin Systems can make houses fly. Not all the time, and not for particularly long. But when it counts — during an earthquake — the company’s technology can levitate a house more than an inch off its foundation. That means that while the earth shakes, the house stays safe.
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New revelations about how Fukushima almost forced the evacuation of Tokyo
During the most dire period in the Fukushima meltdown, the president of Japanese utility company Tepco tried to evacuate all workers at the stricken reactor. If that order went through, it would have precipitated a worst-case scenario and ultimately the evacuation of Tokyo.
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Activists get Amazon to stop selling whale meat
Weird things available on Amazon.com in the U.S. include wolf urine, fresh rabbit, canned unicorn, deer butt, and (fake) horse heads. But until yesterday, the company’s Japanese subsidiary was selling something a lot more grisly: whale bacon, whale stew, whale jerky, and canned whale meat. Now, only a day after the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) put […]
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Japan’s emissions shot up after Fukushima — but it could have been worse
After the Fukushima disaster, Japan launched a campaign to cut energy use. Businessmen wore relatively skimpy outfits to the office, turned off lights, abstained from air conditioning. But despite those energy efficiency efforts, carbon emissions still went up after the nuclear plant shut down. Aw hell — hot dark rooms full of scantily clad people […]
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Critical List: Big trees suffer more from deforestation; Japan’s version of Al Gore
Deforestation is disproportionately killing off the world’s largest trees. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif., a.k.a. the Mustache of Justice) wants to subpoena Koch Industries executives to force them to testify about the company’s connection to Keystone XL. The National Academy of Sciences wants to find out more about nanomaterials and their effects on humans, since the […]
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Critical List: Canadian minister hates tar-sands opposition; airlines charge for free carbon permits
Canada's natural resources minister is not happy that all of you with your "radical ideological agenda" think Canada's turning into a creepy petrostate.
Japan is releasing those three whaling activists who boarded a Japanese whaling vessel.
Carbon emissions are delaying the next ice age.