Climate Technology
All Stories
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Electric Avenues?
What do Detroit billionaires do with their cash after they retire from the upper echelons of the auto industry? The answer, in the cases of Lee Iacocca and Robert Stempel, may surprise you: They start electric-car companies. Stempel, the former head of General Motors, helped create the emissions-reducing catalytic converter in 1966 and has always […]
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Michigan residents fight for control of the state’s water
Until two years ago, the 40,550 generally well-behaved Midwesterners of Mecosta County, Mich., regularly attended church, sent their children off to school on yellow buses, and never for a moment worried that their clean, freshwater supply would ever run dry. Mecosta County, after all, sits near the center of Michigan’s lower peninsula, which itself sits […]
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Trade Wins
The market for carbon dioxide emissions credits across the world could more than triple this year as companies prepare for the enactment of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Under Kyoto, companies that reduce CO2 emissions beyond the caps set by their countries can sell credits to firms that do not meet the reduction requirements. […]
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You Will Live a GM-free Life … in Bed
Until recently, China seemed to be positioning itself as a world leader in bioengineered foods, spending tens of millions of dollars on new technologies and touting the benefits of genetically modified rice, soybeans, and other crops. Now, though, the nation has imposed tough restrictions on domestic planting of genetically modified (GM) crops and strict labeling […]
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Massive a Tax
New Zealand has unveiled a carbon tax to help it meet the goals of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which the country expects to ratify by year’s end. The tax, which would be implemented in 2007 assuming Kyoto has come into effect, would boost retail gas prices by up to 6 percent, diesel prices […]
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The Slush of Kilimanjaro
The snow-capped peak of Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro is one of the most famous vistas on the African continent. Soon, though, you might not be able to see it in person: The mountain’s 11,000-year-old snow cap shrank by 80 percent in the past century and could be gone within two decades if temperature trends continue, according […]
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The Sub-zero Continent
Sun-scorched India is fast becoming one of the world’s hottest markets for air conditioners, as manufacturers rush to capitalize on an unsaturated market and a consumer base with rising disposable incomes. The average price for air conditioners in India has dropped by about 20 percent over the past two years, and sales have been booming; […]
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Greens in the Red
It’s not just investors who are bearing the brunt of the bear market: U.S. and Canadian environmental nonprofits are learning that when the stock market shrinks, so do the coffers of their financial supporters. A recent survey found that 10 leading private foundations in the U.S. lost $8.3 billion in the first six months of […]
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The Owl and the Pussycats
Canadian wilderness activists still can’t get over their astonishment or their delight over yesterday’s announcement by International Forest Products (Interfor) that it would halt all logging in spotted owl habitat in British Columbia, Canada. The company is the second-most active logger in the endangered owl’s terrain; not long ago it was considered Public Enemy No. […]
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Cheetos Sometimes Prosper
Here are two words you never thought you’d see next to each other: organic Cheetos. Yep, it’s true — snack-food maker Frito Lay is entering the organic food market, along with dozens of other huge food companies. Heinz now makes organic ketchup, and General Mills owns Cascadian Farms, an organic brand started in the Northwest […]
