Climate Technology
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Oil and Peace Don’t Mix
Oil strategists plan for geopolitical drama as demand increases It’s a small world after all — with an even smaller oil supply. That’s what U.S. energy experts, oil companies, and national-security planners are concluding as they try to project America’s and the world’s oil demand versus declining supplies in coming years. Military planners in particular, […]
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Who’s Minding the Restore?
Ecosystem restoration is booming business, only getting boominger One positive side effect of polluting and despoiling the planet is that somebody stands to make money cleaning it up. (Hey, our glass is half full!) And sure enough, ecological restoration is a booming business. Viewed narrowly, as attempts to restore natural resources to something approximating their […]
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Paul, Returned From Damascus
Duke Energy CEO has climate-change conversion, proposes carbon tax In a letter to shareholders last week, Duke Energy Corp. CEO Paul Anderson announced his company’s decision to lobby for a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions — a move that shocked shareholders and has some greens scratching their heads. Anderson said in a speech yesterday that he […]
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Giuliani joins law firm renowned for defending energy interests
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — whose name is often bandied about as a possible 2008 GOP presidential contender — added a splash of deep red to his moderate-Republican profile when he announced last week his decision to join a Texas-based law firm known for representing heavy-hitting energy companies. Rudy Giuliani. Photo: NYC.gov. […]
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Today a Report, Tomorrow … Well, We’ll See
Ford acknowledges global warming, but makes no big promises Pressure from shareholder activists is producing effects at large companies — if not yet concrete proposals to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, at least notable signals that they’re starting to take global warming seriously. The latest to hop on the bandwagon is Ford Motor Co., expected to announce […]
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A Little Crab’ll Do Ya
New Chesapeake Bay conservation ads appeal to appetites The Chesapeake Bay Program’s current public-education campaign features the catchy, slogan “Save the Crabs … Then Eat ‘Em,” sure to enrage easily enraged animal-rights activists everywhere. Via billboards, TV commercials, and print ads, the campaign asks area residents to wait until fall to fertilize their lawns. Spring […]
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Critics question World Bank’s role as carbon trader, fossil-fuel funder
For as long as it’s been around, the World Bank has been prone to mission creep. Established 60 years ago to rebuild war-torn Europe, it morphed into an institution whose raison d’etre was to help developing countries advance, then refined its focus on poverty alleviation and sustainable development in the 1980s and ’90s. During that […]
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I Coulda Had a V-12
Automakers make SUV engines bigger, less efficient Under heated criticism for making SUVs that are unsafe and grossly fuel-inefficient, American automakers are responding the way any responsible industry would: making their SUVs even less safe and less fuel-efficient. General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and Ford are all cranking up horsepower in their SUV engines, in some cases […]
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Maybe There’s Something to This “Polite” Business
Auto industry agrees to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in Canada After years of halting negotiations, the auto industry has reached a deal with the Canadian government to voluntarily reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by some 5.8 million tons by 2010. Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion had previously threatened to impose strict fuel-economy standards if the automakers didn’t […]
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O Brother, Where Wal-Mart Thou?
Environmental lawsuits stymie Wal-Mart’s attempts to colonize California Retail Brobdingnagian and perpetual defendant Wal-Mart, having carpeted much of the U.S. in Supercenters, has its sights set on one of its last potential growth markets in the country: California. But the Golden State has proved a stormy climate for the hungry giant; dozens of lawsuits have […]