I’m back from Cancún, and I miss the weather there, if not the all-night hours of the assignment. You can read a longer version of my analysis of the conference over here, which includes some details on the last-minute drama as Bolivia tried to block adoption of the Cancún Agreements, only to be deftly overruled by Mexico. Juliet …
Technology
Technology: Google Makes the Earth—and the Planet’s Forests—Searchable
The more I write about environmental issues, the more I like writing about technology. Maybe that’s because while reporting on the decline of the environment can be, frankly, depressing (the naturalist Lois Crisler once remarked of the inextricable link between “love [of the earth] and despair”), while technology is undeniably …
How Rice (You Heard Me) Can Save the World
Another blueprint for the Green Green Revolution was announced today at the 3rd International Rice Congress, and this time it’s all about — you guessed it — rice. Well, according to rice types anyway (the corn guys might have a different theory). But the scientists that unveiled the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), a …
Vacationing in Space? The Planet Could Pay
To hear Richard Branson tell it, your next vacation will be in space. On Friday, Branson, the swashbuckling CEO of Virgin Airlines and the newer Virgin Galactic, cut the ribbon on a 2-mi. (3.2 km) runway in La Cruces, N.M., which will be used in as little as 18 months, he promises, to begin carrying paying tourists into suborbital …
More on Rare Earths: Looking for a Way out From Under a Monopoly
Last month, after China and Japan locked horns over Tokyo’s arrest of a Chinese fishing captain whose boat collided with the Japanese Coast Guard, shipments of rare earths from China to Japan started to dry up at over 30 different Japanese companies. Since then, Beijing has stuck to its story – that the there is no …
Bjorn Lomborg, Climate Skeptic, Calls for Massive Global Warming Investment
Yesterday the Guardian reported that Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish scientist with the shock of blond hair who made a name for himself decrying the world’s hysteria about climate change, makes a surprising claim in his upcoming book – that confronting climate change should be a global priority, and that a $100 billion per year …
Of Cheap Couches, Swedish Meatballs, and Geothermal Heat
Oh, IKEA. Always going that extra kilometer. As if the affordable bedside tables and mid-store meatballs just when we are getting hungry (you always know!) weren’t enough, the world’s favorite Swedish home furnisher is now trying to give America a gentle shove into the age of renewable energy. IKEA is working with U.S. Department of …
The Clean Energy Transition
A little light post for weekend reading. Science magazine has published a special news section on the alternative energy challenge, casting a sober eye on the difficulties—and oppourunities—of leaving behind the age of fossil fuels and scaling up green power. Usually Science studies are behind a paywall (hmm, sounds familiar), but …
Europe-based Fusion Project Draws Heat Over Funding
There is probably no more sorry field of clean energy research than fusion. The quest to harness the power of the sun—without carbon emissions—has long attracted quixotic dreamers, amateur fusioneers and straight hucksters.
But by its own, low standards, fusion research is in a sorry state. The only large, serious, potentially …
Apple Under Pressure to Open Up on China Supply Chain
Environmental NGOs in China and the U.S. are trying to redirect the world’s fixation on the new iPhone 4 to the environmental records of the factories where it and other mobile phones and computers are built in China. In particular, the groups have been revving up pressure on Apple to answer questions about pollution regulation …
