Climate Technology

Company creates global map of wind patterns

Any way the wind blows, weather-consulting service 3Tier wants to map it. The company has created a global map of weather patterns that’s available free on the internet, allowing anyone to check whether there’s strong enough air movement — and transmission capacity — to power property in a certain area. 3Tier plans to do a […]

EPA attempt to ban bird-killing pesticide runs into opposition

The U.S. EPA has proposed a ban on a pesticide lethal to birds, but is running into resistance from the company that produces the chemical. The pesticide, carbofuran, is typically used on crops such as corn, alfalfa, and potatoes, and has been linked to the dieoff of 558 separate bird flocks since 1972. A manager […]

Can we trust carbon labeling?

About a year ago, I was cautiously bullish on British supermarket giant Tesco's pledge to start putting carbon labels on its food. But I think that their progress so far -- which I'll get to in a minute -- suggests an important lesson about the policy risks of treating a fuzzy exercise as if it were completely reliable.

Tesco's idea was that the chain and its suppliers would pay for objective, comprehensive reviews of the greenhouse-gas emissions from the foods on the store's shelves. The analyses would cover all major steps in bringing food from farms to the checkout line -- everything from running farm machinery, to food processing, to transportation, to refrigeration. Then, each item in the store would be labeled with the climate-warming emissions that could be traced to that particular product.

This sort of exercise is called "life cycle analysis," and it's been used for decades to great effect, to shed light on all sorts of questions: paper vs. plastic (for bags), cloth vs. disposable (for diapers), hybrids vs. hydrogen (for cars), and a host of others.

Last week, a nifty article by Michael Specter in The New Yorker reported on Tesco's progress so far. The results? There's still only one product on the shelves with a carbon label -- a single brand of potato chips, or "crisps" in British parlance.

You see, as it turns out, life cycle analysis can be really, really difficult. And to make matters worse, it may be that the whole enterprise is chock full of uncertainty.

Where carbon is concerned, it can be hard to trust the label.

Monsanto uses child labor in its Indian cottonseed fields

Photo: iStockphoto Monsanto dominates the global seed industry and churns out $1 billion a year in profit. Investors are so enamored of its market power and profitability that they’ve bid up its share price by nearly 1500 percent since 2004. So why does Monsanto rely on farms that use child labor to cultivate its genetically […]

Has the east coast car-sharing company screwed up the west coast car-sharing company?

Late last year, the country’s two major car-sharing companies, west-coast Flexcar and its larger east-coast cousin Zipcar, merged and became, um, Zipcar. Flexcar fans were concerned about the effects of the merger. Sadly, Flexcar fangirl Erica Barnett reports that they were decidedly negative: more expensive, fewer cars, less friendly service, etc. Zipcar, what hath thou […]

Archer Daniels Midland will squeeze out competition, says Fortune

Record corn prices aren’t just squeezing consumers. They’re also hurting the ethanol industry — yes, the very folks whose ravenous appetite for corn drove up prices in the first place. From Fortune Magazine: Cargill announces it’s scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant near Topeka, Kan. A judge approves the bankruptcy sale of an […]

Kodak, Wal-Mart partner on photo kiosk recycling

Wal-Mart continues on the “Seriously? They’re still doing good stuff?” path with a new partnership with Kodak that will bring recycling to those handy in-store photo kiosks. The printer ribbon, spools, and cartridges recycled annually by the program will weigh about as much as six commercial planes. Which is, even by Wal-Mart standards, big.

Mr. Straight Talk voted against requiring double-hulled tankers after the biggest oil spill

You’re likely aware that the notorious Exxon Valdez case is back in court yet again. Yesterday, the Most Profitable Company of All Time argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that it shouldn’t have to pay $2.5 billion in damages to Alaskans harmed by the spill. (That was reduced from the original $5 billion, but Exxon […]

Chinese bosses could see salary cuts for water pollution

China is considering a law that would cut a head honcho’s income by up to half if his or her company was found to be “directly responsible for causing severe water pollution incidents.”

Wal-Mart wants your cleantech ideas

Wal-Mart wants your help: We are trying something new at Wal-Mart…amidst the crazy fast, rapidly growing space of clean/green technologies we have found it pretty difficult to do two things: 1. Find the technologies that we should be implementing and 2. Be sure those that we know about are the best options with the most […]