Climate Technology
All Stories
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Time to slice up the tomato industry?
What happens when a few large buyers dominate a market? Anyone who keeps up with my posts — still there, mom? — knows what’s coming next: The buyers gain the power to dictate to dictate terms and conditions to sellers. For farmers, the results of concentrated markets are devastating. As a few giant companies like […]
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What should be done with the empty big box?
Last month, Circuit City announced that it would close 155 of its stores, most of them big boxes: those 50,000- to almost 300,000-square-foot warehouse-like structures, often built far from city centers. By one estimate, there are almost 3,000 vacant big boxes littering the American landscape, with more to come as major retailers falter. Makes Wal-Mart’s […]
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One in three toys tested has worrisome levels of toxic chemicals, group says
A study of some 1,500 popular children’s toys sold in the United States found that one in three tested contained “medium” to “high” levels of a range of toxic chemicals including arsenic, lead, mercury, and others, according to green group the Ecology Center. “Our hope is that by empowering consumers with this information, manufacturers and […]
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U.N. climate change body has suspended clean energy auditor DNV
Like landfills, oil sands, and “occasional irregularity,” the term Clean Development Mechanism is in the euphemism Hall of Fame. But once a rip-offset, always a rip-offset. Reuters reports: The U.N. climate change body has suspended one of the largest auditors of clean energy projects under Kyoto Protocol, a move highlighting problems long aired by critics […]
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Green tech is still selling
I have been quite critical of the mainstream media for using the global recession to attack clean tech. One reason the storyline was lame is that a recession this deep is going to hit all new capital projects. A second reason is that there had been no evidence that clean tech was being harder hit […]
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Is cheap gas OPEC’s way of robbing Obama of his clean energy initiative?
Why have gas prices dropped so low, so quickly, and so soon after endless proclamations of a future of $200/barrel oil? The New York Times thinks that it has something to do with a drop in demand and a lack of unity amongst OPEC member-states. My friend Gregorio has no time or such naivete. According […]
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As long as the feds are restructuring auto companies, why not drag them into the 21st century?
The New Republic has an interesting article up from two bona fide experts on the auto industry (who are not employed by the industry), contributing to a discussion where ideas have been plentiful but expertise lacking. They recommend a bailout road map that stops short of Chapter 11 but involves fairly substantial restructuring. Interesting reading, […]
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The not-so-fragrant side of fresh-cut flowers
In conventional development dogma, the fresh-cut flower industry makes plenty of sense. Nations in the global south need foreign exchange and jobs; folks in the industrialized north have plenty of disposable income for buying pretty things. Moreover, land tends to be cheap in the south and dear in the north. Pursuing the promise of what […]
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Somebody’s going to get rich
“There is going to be a generation of Googles and Ciscos in the cleantech area. It’s coming.” — Alan Salzman, co-founder and chief executive of VantagePoint Venture Partners, which has more than $1 billion allocated to the clean-tech sector
