Climate Technology
All Stories
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Will cleantech turn mercenaries into missionaries?
Lately, politicians from Tony Blair to comrade-in-arms George Bush have raced to embrace green technology — at least on the surface. But is there substance behind their carefully crafted words? Venture capitalists are seeing green. Image: iStockphoto. Well, while government funds may be slow to swing around to so-called “cleantech,” venture capitalists are suddenly sniffing […]
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Biggest energy companies in U.S. call for caps on carbon emissions
Tuesday saw a tectonic shift in the climate-change debate during an all-day Senate conference on global-warming policy. A group of high-powered energy and utility executives for the first time issued this directive to Washington: Bring on the carbon caps! The Energy and Natural Resources Committee heard statements from leaders representing eight big energy companies, including […]
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Hospitals and doctors’ offices look to cure their environmental ills
The irony is almost too obvious to state: tens of thousands of hospitals, doctors’ offices, medical laboratories, and assorted other health-care providers spew toxic substances into the environment, or dispose of trash containing a noxious mix of contaminated or infectious waste. Some of it will make its way into the air, water, and soil. All […]
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Chop Revenuey
China creates new taxes to curb timber and energy use China has announced an array of new “green taxes” on diverse goods — from throwaway chopsticks to golf balls to SUVs — to try and rein in deforestation and skyrocketing energy use. Chinese nibblers use around 45 billion pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks a year, […]
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A little time in the lab could teach big business how to help the poor
Recent weeks have seen surprisingly effective demonstrations in support of animal testing in SustainAbility’s home city of London, under the catchy title of “Pro-Test.” Will support for the oft-reviled practice catch on? We aren’t sure, but it made us think. If we humans are animals, is there ever an argument for treating people as laboratory […]
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A Spat on the Back
California governator at odds with biz lobby over plan to cut CO2 Arnold Schwarzenegger’s til-now cozy relationship with the California Chamber of Commerce has hit turbulence over the Republican governator’s ambitious proposal to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The chamber has denounced a preliminary report from the California EPA’s climate action team, which predicts that fulfilling Arnie’s […]
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Eco-friendly furniture meets the cubicle culture
The email query came not from you, dear reader, but from a staffer at the Mothership: “Grist is moving offices this spring, and we’re looking into environmentally friendly office furniture,” it read. “I’ve been tasked with researching some companies, and it was suggested you might be able to identify good places to look into. Any […]
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Repent, Ye Synners
Shady synfuel industry making billions off tax-credit loophole A budget bill currently being hashed out in Congress may help a few dozen coal plants continue to get filthy rich off of taxpayer money. The backstory: In 1980, Congress enacted tax incentives for turning coal into synthetic fuel, requiring only that the coal be chemically altered […]
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Ethanol is suddenly all the rage in D.C. and Detroit
It’s as befuddling to see the “Live Green, Go Yellow” slogan splashed across the General Motors ads running throughout the Olympics as it was to hear the term “switchgrass” uttered by President Bush in his State of the Union speech last month. Here we have GM and Dubya, two of the world’s most entrenched and […]
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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Remunerate
Eco-entrepreneurs pay people to recycle What’s the best way to get people to recycle? Same way you get them to do anything: pay them for it. Patrick FitzGerald and Ron Gonen founded RecycleBank in 2004 on the notion that economic incentives would motivate recycling more effectively than green principles. Their system rewards households with up […]
