Climate Technology

We don’t need to destroy our economy to save the planet

As I’ve studied green issues, I have frequently come across the “buy local” train of thought, but I’ve never seen it embraced as completely as it was in this Gristmill post by Jon Rynn — at least not since my undergraduate courses on international trade and economic philosophy. It’s very easy to understand the intellectual […]

Bill Clinton partners with Wal-Mart to create green-tech buying club for cities

At a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Seattle yesterday, former President Bill Clinton announced that his foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative is pursuing new green plans to help curb climate change. CCI is partnering with low-price expert Wal-Mart to create a many-city bulk-buying club to lower prices on greener building materials and energy-efficient […]

A very promising climate change solution with an image problem

Bill McKibben's new column in Orion magazine reports on one of the most effective ways to cut carbon emissions that we've got, a mature technology which stands ready to recycle enormous amounts of waste heat into electricity. It boggles my mind that we're not doing this everywhere, instead of discussing new coal plants or nukes. Talk about low-hanging fruit!

The article centers on the fine work of the Chicago company Recycled Energy Development, piloted by frequent Gristmill contributor Sean Casten, and discusses the technology's image problem: it's not as sexy as wind or solar. Here's an excerpt, but the article is so short, I encourage a quick visit to the link above:

All hail the biofuel boom

A UN official recently declared biofuels a "crime against humanity," because they leach agricultural resources from feeding people and direct them to feeding cars. But one man’s crime is another’s boon. Surging biofuel use encourages farmers to maximize yield over all other considerations — and they do so by lashing the earth with all manner […]

How to find a job in your local area

I’ve been on the road. I started the first week in October at the University of Michigan and ended it at a “career visioning” retreat in the Connecticut woods with students from Yale. My impressions? At both universities, I found aspiring environmental professionals who are committed to building a sustainable society. (I also found great […]

Major car-sharing companies will merge

Major car-sharing companies Flexcar and Zipcar announced yesterday that they plan to merge. Zipcar, the larger of the two, has had strong growth mainly in large cities on the East Coast; Flexcar is more widely available on the West Coast. In both schemes, members can reserve a car over the phone or the interwebs, generally […]

Manufacturing a new economy

If we eat food from local sources, we can decrease our ecological footprint, reduce carbon emissions, and eat better food. In addition, any society that cannot produce its own food is vulnerable, as it cannot create one of society's main sources of wealth. It just makes sense to grow food locally.

The same principles apply to manufacturing. Grow locally, eat locally; more generally, consume locally, produce locally. In the case of manufacturing, "producing locally" would mean consuming goods that were mostly manufactured within your major metropolitan area, with most of the rest coming from around the country, but certainly not from around the world.

IBM announces new process to reuse, recycle silicon wafers for solar panels

Tech giant IBM announced it has developed a simple new process to recycle the silicon wafers it uses in many of its products. The process extends the silicon wafers’ useful life, and when that life is finally over, the wafers can then be sold to make solar panels. IBM calculates that if all of the […]

Umbra on corporate holiday cards

Dear Umbra, My company wants to send out holiday cards each year, but I find it wasteful, especially because of the increased transportation load on the post office. What could we do instead? Cindy Truckee, Calif. Dearest Cindy, A stumper. I can think of three choices: No cards, paper cards, and email cards. Is tradition […]

Trade consultancy: Whole Foods will ‘consolidate supply chains’

Apparently, I’m not the only one who worries about what the Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger will mean for organic-foods suppliers. In a report published by Organic Monitor, a European-based consultancy working on contract for Decision News Media, analyst Amarjit Sahota has sounded an alarm about Whole Foods’ growing power. Organic Monitor calls itself a “business […]