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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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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, […]

  • Better Place comes to Hawaii

    Hawaii is now a Better Place.

  • 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 […]

  • 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

  • NYT: Maryland poultry CAFOs snuff out Chesapeake oyster industry

    In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. —– I write this on the second day of December — one among a string of months that end in “r.” That means, for those of us who live near the sea, it’s time to consider the oyster, that glorious […]

  • E.U. agrees on emission rules for cars

    The European Union has reportedly struck a deal with the bloc’s automakers, agreeing to rules that would see car manufacturers cut their fleets’ emissions 18 percent by 2015 and 40 percent by 2020. The E.U. had proposed a tougher standard last year, but heavy lobbying from automakers successfully diluted the goals.

  • Ford planning shift to small cars, company says

    Ford Motor Co. is planning a significant product shift that will focus on the manufacture of small, fuel-efficient cars in lieu of its largely failed strategy since the 1990s to churn out mostly large vehicles like trucks and SUVs. Ford’s plan is meant to woo Congress into granting the Big Three U.S. automakers a much-needed […]