United Kingdom
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Britain’s ‘Coed Darcy’ shows the value of sparkling new towns
Sim Darcy: An illustration of the Welsh urban villageCourtesy The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment Coed Darcy is an oddly named urban village that’s going to be built from the ground up over the next 20 years in southern Wales. It’ll have an impressive 4,000 compact homes, plus commercial space and 1,300 acres of […]
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‘Britain’s Appalachia’ engineers a brighter post-coal future
Can renewable energy turn Wales as clean and shiny as the Cardiff waterfront?Courtesy ttfnrob via FlickrThe sparkling, sanitized waterfront of Cardiff, Wales, reveals barely a hint of the country’s grimy industrial past. Where one of the busiest ports anywhere once shipped Welsh coal out into the world, a complex of upscale shops, pubs, and restaurants […]
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Pig Business: Who owns your food owns you
Ever feel like you were playing checkers and the other guy was playing chess? That’s the impression I get when watching many of the recent spate of food documentaries. Activists announce that this or that is wrong with the food system; on the rare occasion when something appears to be getting done about it, the […]
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Environmental groups unprepared for ‘Swift Boating’ of climate science
Are the climate skeptics increasingly winning the battle for public opinion? On the very eve of the Copenhagen conference, there are signs that they are — and that environmental groups are allowing them to. Polls on both sides of the Atlantic over the last weeks indicate that fewer people now believe that global warming is […]
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Climate change policy as prescription for British health care?
Will tackling climate change make us healthier — and save the NHS? Since Michael Moore pumped up Britain’s National Health Service in Sicko, there’s been a fair amount of debate on both sides of the Atlantic as to whether this iconic brand represents a model for other health-care systems in the world, or an unsustainable […]
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Britain’s Labour government places big bet on low-carbon future
The Science Museum is one of London’s best-loved landmarks, largely because generations of children have been taken there by their parents to play with its increasingly sophisticated sets of hands-on gadgets. But it also houses the originals of some of the iconic inventions that made possible Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Lord Mandelson, Britain’s deputy prime minister, […]
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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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Britain’s battered leader is set on saving the world
At home he is almost universally seen as a politician running out of time, but Prime Minister Gordon Brown continues to stride onto the international stage as if he were guaranteed many more years in power. He may have lost his rapport with the British public, chalked up blunder after blunder, and already faced two […]
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Britain coughs up a coal-powered climate policy
“Give me coal,” Ernest Bevin, Britain’s immediate post-war foreign secretary told the nation’s miners 53 years ago, “and I’ll give you a foreign policy.” UK climate change secretary Ed MilibandWikimedia CommonsExhausted, and almost bankrupt after defeating Hitler’s Reich, but still insisting on maintaining a huge army and air force to remain a world power, Britain […]