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Is post-Jobs Apple going to stop poisoning China?
While Steve Jobs was head of Apple, the company was one of "America's least philanthropic companies," lacking even a basic corporate charitable arm. Apple also often seemed reluctant to green its operations. But under new CEO Tim Cook, that might be about to change. In the meantime, many of Apple's suppliers are still poisoning the […]
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Keystone XL would be right on top of latest Oklahoma earthquakes
Red: proposed route for Keystone XL Orange star: epicenter of Saturday's magnitude 5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma, which buckled a highway and cracked a building. The state is currently recovering from the quake and bracing for storms. A decade hence, if Keystone XL were running straight through the state, would they also be dealing with a […]
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One-wheeled electric motorcycle is like a Segway, but cool
Sure, the RYNO looks like the hideous progeny of a motorcycle and a unicycle (nobody likes to talk about that night behind the circus tents), but it could be your new means of urban transportation. It runs off a lithium-ion battery that recharges in 90 minutes, has a smaller footprint than a Vespa, and is […]
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A declaration of independence from Wall Street
Photo: Helga Tawil Souri This piece originally appeared in Salon. After three years of political nonsense, we can hold one truth to be self-evident about our government: It is broken. A financial crisis that should have inspired a grand new set of rules for Wall Street instead delivered a hopelessly compromised reform package — and […]
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Solyndra birtherism: GOP demands Obama’s BlackBerry, gives Big Oil CEOs a pass
Watch out — they’re coming for your BlackBerry.Photo: White HouseFor two months, Republicans have been searching for some evidence that political favoritism played a role in the Obama administration’s loan guarantee to Solyndra. They have failed. After a half-dozen hearings, testimony from virtually everyone involved, and the release of thousands of pages of emails and […]
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China bulb ban will eliminate 1 billion incandescents annually
Joining the U.S. and just about every other country with an economy, China will ban import and sale of incandescent bulbs beginning in 2014, reports the AP. State-run Xinhua News Agency quoted Xie Ji, deputy director of the NDRC's environmental protection department, as saying China is the world's largest producer of both energy-saving and incandescent […]
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The GOP brain explained: Why Cliff Stearns wants to subsidize successful companies
Your brain on conservatism.Yesterday I sketched the sort of personality type most likely to identify as conservative: those who prefer stability to change, order to complexity, familiarity to novelty, and conformity to creativity. This sort of personality type is drawn to clear lines separating in-groups from out-groups, highly aware of social hierarchies, suspicious of change, […]
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Solar cheaper than fossil fuels in a decade, says Steven Chu
Solar power will be cheaper than fossil fuels at some point between the end of this decade and 2026*, said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at the Washington Post's Smart Energy conference this morning. (For more on what Chu said, check out Guardian reporter Suzanne Goldenberg's tweets from the conference.) The date at which […]
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Investors throw money at cleantech companies
The financial turmoil of the past few years has made venture capital financing hard to come by, but clean technology is still raking it in. In this past quarter, cleantech companies raised more than $1.1 billion, according to Ernst & Young. That's a huge jump — 73 percent — from last year. Most of the […]
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Did Germany screw the planet by deep-sixing its nuclear plants?
Germany’s phaseout of nuclear power was a boneheaded move that has wreaked havoc with its power grid and cost consumers dearly, and it will hurt the planet by leading to more coal-fired power, says a feature by Aaron Wiener in The New Republic. But wait, says Grist’s own David Roberts! Germany did no such thing! […]
