Climate Technology
All Stories
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A Flash of Insight
Well, there she is. Sleek and silver, dealer plates still on, got her two days ago. Seventy miles per gallon, 700 miles a fill-up. So they say. Last time I bought a new car — a 1987 Honda Civic wagon that got 35 mpg at its best — I swore I’d keep it until I […]
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An excerpt from Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
Imagine for a moment a world where cities have become peaceful and serene because cars and buses are whisper quiet, vehicles exhaust only water vapor, and parks and greenways have replaced unneeded urban freeways. OPEC has ceased to function because the price of oil has fallen to five dollars a barrel, but there are few buyers for it because cheaper and better ways now exist to get the services people once turned to oil to provide. Living standards for all people have dramatically improved, particularly for the poor and those in developing countries. Involuntary unemployment no longer exists, and income taxes have largely been eliminated. Houses, even low-income housing units, can pay part of their mortgage costs by the energy they produce; there are few if any active landfills; worldwide forest cover is increasing; dams are being dismantled; atmospheric C02 levels are decreasing for the first time in two hundred years; and effluent water leaving factories is cleaner than the water coming into them. Industrialized countries have reduced resource use by 80 percent while improving the quality of life.
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Can We Measure Sustainability?
Every year at the peak of the Alpine ski season, the world’s movers and shakers, the heads of the largest corporations and wealthiest governments, head for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This year an event occurred there that was largely unreported but possibly historic. The attendees were presented with a ranking of the […]
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EV Come, EV Go?
General Motors Corp. is still committed to manufacturing its EV1 electric cars, the company’s vice chair said yesterday, contrary to reports last week that the company planned to abandon its electric car program to concentrate on vehicles powered by fuel cells and hybrid-electric systems. News that GM was dropping the EV1 had angered some enviro […]
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Th!nk Different
Ford will announce today that it has created an independent brand, Th!nk, that will develop and market low-pollution and electric-powered vehicles, as well as battery-powered bicycles. Th!nk, named after an electric car produced by a Norwegian company that Ford bought last year, will soon begin selling bikes and an electric golf-cart-like vehicle over the Internet […]
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It's Everywhere You Want To Be
What do the Internet, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Visa International, the organization that brings us the Visa card, all have in common? You can find them just about anywhere on earth, that’s one common thing. They have not spread through unrelenting market push, like Coca-Cola. Rather they are pulled by demand, because they meet real needs […]
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Bhopal — or RuPaul
Friday marks the 15th anniversary of a very unhappy occasion. On Dec. 3, 1984, a Union Carbide industrial plant in Bhopal, India, released a deadly cloud of the gas methyl isocyanate into the air, killing at least 6,500 people (and some say more) and injuring tens of thousands. Ever since, Union Carbide and Bhopal have […]
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The Battle in Seattle
Last month The Economist ran a frustrated editorial wondering why environmental groups would picket the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. The headline read “Why Greens Should Love Trade.” Actually greens see no particular reason either to love or hate trade. They don’t share the religious beliefs of economists, who love trade as […]
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Giving Unfair Trade a Shake
Delegates to the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle will be met by as many as 50,000 protesters from all around the world. WTO advocates seek to dismiss the protestors as anti-trade extremists who want to turn back the clock on human progress. In truth, the vast majority of the protestors will be coming from […]
