Climate Technology
All Stories
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Throwing It in Reverse
Ford Motor Company backpedaled yesterday on its promise to increase the fuel economy of sport utility vehicles 25 percent by 2020. It now says it will continue to try to improve gas mileage but will not set a fixed deadline for reaching the 25-percent goal. The company chalked up the change in plan to technological […]
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Give a Hoot
Pollution in North America decreased by 5 percent between 1995 and 2000, according to a report released today by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, established under the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 2000, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico released 3.6 million tons of pollution. Of that, 1.5 million tons went directly into the air, […]
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The economic heresy of Herman Daly
If economics is a religion, the World Bank is perhaps its grandest church. For the last half century, the venerable institution at 1818 H Street in Washington, D.C., has been dispatching its missionaries around the globe, spreading the theology of the free market to the heathens. And if economics is a religion, Herman Daly is […]
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Rewriting the book on economics
Joshua Farley, a researcher at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, didn’t get into economics to make money. In fact, he tells me, he almost quit the academy altogether to go back to carpentry — a far more lucrative career prospect. “When I graduated, there were virtually no jobs in ecological economics. I applied to […]
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Alcoa-holics
Two of the nation’s corporate giants, Alcoa and Archer Daniels Midland, have agreed to settle charges of violating the New Source Review rules of the federal Clean Air Act by making upgrades ballparked at some $700 million, according to people familiar with the settlements. Alcoa, the world’s largest producer of aluminum, has 12 months to […]
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Ecological economist Robert Costanza puts a price tag on nature
The idea of slapping a dollar value on to an alpine meadow or the dappled green shade of a forest strikes a chill into the very bones of most environmentalists. Like love, nature is the kind of thing that money just can’t buy. Or is it? A small but growing chorus of ecological economists are […]
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Dumb and Hummer
While sales of many big SUVs are dipping, Hummers are rumbling out of showrooms at a rate of 3,000 per month, topping the list of best-selling large luxury SUVs in the U.S., despite a starting price of $50,000. Some buyers say they feel patriotic in a massive Hummer H2, the civilian sibling of the military […]
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Civil Wrongs
In the South, low-income, black citizens are becoming more outspoken and effective as they fight the construction of landfills, polluting factories, and other environmentally hazardous facilities in their communities, and they’re increasingly being joined by neighbors of all colors. “Companies now don’t just bully in,” said Robert Bullard, a sociology professor at Clark Atlanta University […]
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They Brought Bad Things to Life
Meanwhile, in another legal victory on the other side of the country, a federal court yesterday rejected General Electric’s constitutional challenge to the U.S. EPA’s power to force the company to clean up the Hudson River. From the 1940s to the 1970s, GE dumped 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the upper Hudson, where 500,000 […]
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Hawkeyes on the Prize
Iowa will soon be home to the world’s largest land-based wind farm if MidAmerican Energy Company has its way. The power company plans to erect between 180 and 200 turbines capable of generating 310 megawatts of electricity and powering some 85,000 homes. If approved by the Iowa Public Utilities Board and state lawmakers, the $323 […]
