Climate Technology
All Stories
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Private Eyed
The Bush administration is considering privatizing about 70 percent of National Park Service jobs, according to the Interior Department. The jobs in question range from maintenance workers to secretaries to scientists. Law enforcement officers, managers, and most park rangers would not be affected. About 4 percent of current employees could lose their jobs. Interior Deputy […]
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Bottlestar Galactica
If Michigan environmentalists get their way, the state will dramatically expand its bottle law to cover 750 million additional beverage containers per year, including juice, water, and tea bottles that currently wind up as litter or in landfills. The state’s 1976 bottle law, which quickly cleaned up roadside litter, is both popular and successful. Every […]
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Membership Has Its Privileges
Joining the European Union comes at a price: The 10 nations that are poised to become members next year will have to spend up to $117 billion to meet the bloc’s 149 environmental regulations, according to E.U. Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom. For the mostly poor, formerly communist nations in question, that amounts to between 2 […]
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The Strong and Short of It
In a sign of increasing international concern about the ecological challenges posed by China, one of the world’s most prominent greens has moved to Beijing and set up shop as an environmental consultant. For more than three decades, Canadian Maurice Strong has been a major player in global diplomacy, environmental and otherwise; earlier this month, […]
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Volunteer Spirit
In an all-out effort to demonstrate the viability of voluntary solutions to global climate change, officials from the Bush administration are touring the country, coaxing promises from industry leaders to cut greenhouse gas emissions. If self-regulation fails to attract enough takers, staving off mandatory emissions restrictions will become increasingly difficult — a fact that many […]
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Climate Every Mountain
Move over, NASDAQ. Watch out, NYSE. Here comes the Chicago Climate Exchange, the nation’s first greenhouse-gas trading program. Announced yesterday by a coalition of corporations and government entities including DuPont, Ford Motor Company, Motorola, and the city of Chicago, the exchange will permit companies to reduce (on paper, at least) their emissions of carbon dioxide […]
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Dolorous Haze
Emissions that contribute to smog in the Los Angeles area are drastically worse than previously estimated, air-quality officials admitted yesterday. The announcement marked a reversal of the usual optimistic rhetoric about California air quality, which has been steadily improving since the late 1980s. Now it seems that progress in eliminating the two most common pollutants […]
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Great Build
It’s not clear if the problem is one of economics or one of spin, but either way, environmentally conscious building design is a concept that hasn’t quite caught on. The technology and expertise to build “green” structures have been around for decades; now, a movement is underway to sell developers on the economic benefits of […]
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Spotted Record
Federal protections for the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet have been blamed by many in the anti-enviro camp for the collapse of the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest during the 1990s. Now, the Bush administration has announced that it will review those protections, as well as the designation of “critical habitat” thought necessary […]
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Texas, With Mess
The Texas legislature is under pressure to find a way to fund a plan to cut smog in the state’s major urban areas. If the lawmakers can’t come up with the money soon, the U.S. EPA has threatened to reject the plan and take over the state’s pollution-control efforts. That would jeopardize federal highway money, […]
