Climate Technology

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  • Battle of the carbon titans

    As summer approaches, so do the action-fantasy movies. Last week, the venue was not the local cineplex, but another location noted for outlandish egos, special effects, and scripts that require substantial amounts of imagination to fill in the gaps — Washington D.C. Two titans of the wars to tackle climate change and modernize the nation’s […]

    Terry Tamminen Technology

  • Boost your support for urban agriculture with a rice-growing bra

    AFPEager to show your full support for urban farming, ladies? Then try this over-the-shoulder rice-paddy holder: a bra that double-A’s a pot to grow rice, complete with irrigation system (the watering hose is a belt that holds seedlings). The concept was inspired by the recent boom of interest in boob food security. It’s not Victoria’s […]

    Ashley Braun Technology

  • Home Star: Let’s move past the talk and get to the action

    Now that it has passed the House of Representatives with flying colors (246 to 161), we are thisclose to making Home Star a reality. This is the plan, supported on both sides of the aisle, that would give U.S. homeowners rebates for energy-efficiency improvements that cut energy consumption. Most importantly, Home Star will put many […]

    Steve Cowell Technology

  • A new oil rush endangers the Gulf of Mexico and the planet

    The oil spill viewed from NASA’s Terra satellite on May 17.Photo: NASA’s Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team Cross-posted from TomDispatch. Yes, the oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in staggering quantities could prove one of the great ecological disasters of human history. Think of it, though, as just the […]

    Michael T. Klare Technology

  • Nestle to save orangutans, tropical forests, and our climate

    Photo courtesy Frank Peters via FlickrFinally … some good news! Today, Nestle, the world’s biggest food and drinks company, announced that it will cease using products that drive the tropical rainforest destruction. This is great news for our environment in what has otherwise been a bleak few weeks. President Obama continues to dig in (or […]

    Philip Radford Technology

  • American PRIDE Alternative to Lieberman-Kerry Climate bill -short executive summary

    This is the executive summary(doc) of the American PRIDE (Promote Renewable Infrastructure & Develop Efficiency) proposal.  The PRIDE(doc) proposal is a two decade ~400 billion a year jobs bill that makes a profit, while creating two to five million new jobs per year, reducing U.S. oil use by a third within ten years, and reducing […]

    Gar Lipow Technology

  • Feds push solar solution to coal addiction

    Infinia’s PowerDishPhoto: PowerPlay SolarThe Obama administration last week gave a $62 million boost to efforts to make solar power truly competitive with coal. “The projects announced today will seek to improve component and system designs to extend operation [of concentrated solar power projects] to an average of about 18 hours per day, a level of […]

    Todd Woody Technology

  • Agribiz giant ADM gets taste of Hugo Chavez’s wrath

    Longtime Grist readers might recall reading here about a Mexico-based transnational company called Gruma. I’ve written two articles (in 2006 and 2007) about how, after Mexico’s privatization bonanza in the early ’90s, this well-connected company managed to industrialize one of the world’s greatest foodstuffs, the tortilla, strip it of its flavor and much of its […]

    Tom Philpott Technology

  • BP chief says catastrophic oil spill really not all that big

    “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” — Tony Hayward, CEO of British Petroleum, attempts to put the now-underestimated Deepwater Horizon oil spill into perspective with that big, blue ocean thing

    Ashley Braun Technology

  • The federal MMS: a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry

    The Deepwater Horizons rig goes boom, killing 11 people and starting a massive and ongoing oil leak. If the Minerals Management Service had been a functional, independent oversight agency, this disaster would likely have never happened.  (Photo: U.S. Navy) Has the government surrendered its ability to rein in corporate excess? Yes, says the New York […]

    Tom Laskawy Technology