Climate Technology
All Stories
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Haida Ho
In an unusual move, unhappy employees of paper giant Weyerhaeuser are siding with native inhabitants of British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands, the Haida, in their legal battle against the company. Earlier this year, the Haida sued the company for control of the islands and their forests; on Monday, a reported 135 of 155 Weyerhaeuser employees […]
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Taylor-made Destruction
Charles Taylor, the president of Liberia, has spread instability within his nation’s borders and helped foment a brutal civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. To fund the fighting, he has exploited his country’s natural resources. At first, it was diamonds — but as international scrutiny on the dirty diamond trade has increased, Taylor has been […]
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A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing
Does access to information protect us, or put us at risk? That question is at the heart of an environmental debate that’s taken on a different shape — and different stakes — since Sept. 11. At issue is the public’s right to know about chemical plants and other factories manufacturing hazardous materials. Environmentalists maintain that […]
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TRI a Little Tenderness
The amount of toxic chemicals released into the environment dropped 8 percent in 2000, continuing a decade-long trend of declining industrial pollution, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA. The Toxics Release Inventory compiles data from more than 23,000 factories, refineries, hard-rock mines, power plants, and chemical manufacturers, which together reported pumping […]
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Taipei Personalities
More than 200 former employees of an RCA television and semiconductor plant in northern Taiwan have died of cancer and at least 1,000 others are suffering from the disease, in what industry watchdogs are calling the worst cancer cluster in the history of high-tech. A group of former plant workers arrived in Silicon Valley yesterday […]
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East of Eden
After years of foreign control, East Timor became the world’s newest nation this week. Now the country must rise from the ashes wrought by years of brutal domination by Indonesia — and it hopes to do so in part by capitalizing on its abundant natural beauty to attract eco-tourists. Currently, East Timor is the poorest […]
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Sign of the TIMOs
A major shift is taking place in U.S. timber ownership, and it could have significant consequences not just for the industry but also for ecosystems across the country. Traditionally, the major private owners of forestlands in the U.S. have been forest product companies, but increasingly, such land is being bought by investment groups hoping to […]
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Shaft!
The cost of closing and cleaning up old and abandoned mines around the world likely runs into the trillions of dollars, an amount that is far beyond anything mining companies can handle on their own, according to Robert Wilson, chair of the metals giant Rio Tinto. Wilson, who made his comments during a mining industry […]
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Vera, Vera Good
Portland, Ore., has long had a reputation for attracting Birkenstock-wearing, bike-riding, tree-hugging residents. Now city officials hope to attract Birkenstock-wearing, bike-riding, tree-hugging companies. (Okay, yes, we know companies can’t really ride bikes.) Last month, Danish wind-power company Vestas Wind Systems chose Portland as the base of its U.S. operations, bringing as many as 1,000 new […]
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The Lion Sleeps Better Tonight
A new economic model that uses cost-benefit analyses to predict the fate of endangered species has been unveiled by New Zealand economist Robert Alexander and researcher Chris Fleming. The model analyzes the socio-economic pressures that push animals to the brink of extinction and could be used to assess the probable success or failure of conservation […]
