At first glance, it might seem like Amazon’s planned delivery drones will be just another way to overconsume. But it turns …
Economy
The E-Waste Blight Grows More Dangerous Than Ever
There’s nothing that thrills tech-lovers more than the latest Shiny New Thing. In the first three quarters of 2011 alone, 55 million iPhones were sold—and that was before the release of the 4s this month. That’s a lot of Shiny New Things.
The problem is, Shiny New Things quickly become Familiar Old Things, and nothing seems so …
A New Report Counts Up Green Jobs—And They’re Not What You Think
Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart famously said the phrase in 1964: “I know it when I see it.” It, in this case, was obscenity, and Stewart was making a point about the trickiness of properly defining the term. How do you have an argument about pornography if you can’t quite say what it is?
For the past several years, …
Fashion: Why Green Is Not The New Black
Part of the challenge of the environmental movement in the developed world is to get people to look more deeply into their lifestyles and consumer choices: to see, for example, that cellophane-wrapped beef probably comes from a cow that fed on grain grown on land cleared of rain forest, which accelerates climate change.
But while …
The U.N.’s Human Development Report Shows Life Is Getting Better—and Money Isn’t the Only Reason
Sometimes, I admit, this green beat can be a little depressing. Shrinking icecaps. Rising seas. Endangered species. Air pollution. Acidifying oceans. Oil spills. Invasive Asian carp. And perhaps worst of all, the United States Senate. It can seem as if life is getting is worse every day—like a Beatles record played …
Will Britain sell off its public forests?
One of the major environmental challenges today is the task of convincing many developing economies in the tropics to protect their forests. But some countries up north in the developed world may soon understand how difficult it can be to strike a balance between economic pressures and arboreal conservation, at least according to a …
The Future of Energy in Europe
I just spent an interesting morning at the European Future Energy Forum in London. The opening panel debate—titled “Movers and Shakers”—included representatives from European governments, industry and NGOs. A full line-up can be found here.
The conversation was fast-paced but seemed to orbit around what will happen if the next …
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 …
The Riddle of the Bee Deaths: Solved at Last?
Bees have had it hard for the past few years. Ever since 2006, entomologists and other scientists in the U.S., Europe and Asia have been trying to figure out what’s causing wholesale deaths of of once-healthy hives—an epidemic that’s wiped out from 20% to 60% of colonies in the affected areas. Now, according to a paper published in the …
Hundreds Die of Lead Poisoning in Nigeria
These days, environmentalism has become synonymous with the fight against climate change. But good green campaigners know that more immediate environmental challenges still exist.
That reality hit home yesterday when the United Nations said it will send an emergency team to Nigeria, after 200 children died in an outbreak of lead …