We all knew coal is harmful -- we figured people just ignored that harm because of their profit margins. But according to the prestigious American Economic Review , harm from coal-fired electrical plants costs more than twice as much as the electricity they generate. All told, coal pl...
Cocoa production will become increasingly difficult in the key-growing regions of West Africa by 2030 because of climate change, according to a new study. More than half the world's chocolate is made from cocoa grown by farmers in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. But with average temperatures...
Photo: Isaac Wedin AquaBounty Technology's genetically modified salmon just got a hefty financial boost from the USDA: On Monday, the agency awarded the Massachusetts-based company $494,000 to study technologies that would render the genetically tweaked fish sterile. This would reduce...
It's a broadly accepted fact that engaged employees are a major benefit to businesses of all types. The Gallup organization dubbed employee engagement "a leading indicator of financial performance" and backed it up with research showing that "engaged organizations have 3.9 times the e...
Every day, countless threatened and endangered species inch ever closer to the point of extinction -- but it's rare indeed to have one, thought lost to the ages, make such a comeback. For over 150 years, biologists believed a small species of seabird known as the New Zealand Storm Pet...
Are Flame Retardants Safe? Growing Evidence Says ‘No’ New studies have underscored the potentially harmful health effects of flame retardants, used in everything from baby blankets to carpets. Health experts are now calling for more aggressive action to limit these chemicals, includin...
RHI update – 29 September 2011 DECC was planning to launch the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) for non-domestic generators on 30 September 2011. State aid approval is a necessary condition for the scheme to go ahead. As part of that process, the European Commission has expressed concer...
we read literally hundreds of documents published by the Bank of England and other academic sources and consulted with experts from the Bank, academia and former bankers themselves. The book reviews theoretical and historical debates on the nature of money and explains how we arrived ...
The best pizza. The most beautiful women. The finest wines. Plenty of cities claim to have these. But which cities are competing for a medal that means a greener, possibly longer-lasting planet? These ten cities have committed substantial budgets and time to making public transit not ...
This is why we have national parks, people: So there's one place in the country where "share the road" means "stop your damn car so baby bears can have a little tussle."
But my realist side tells me that even if there are positive trends, like urbanisation, which will lead to more than half of the 7 billion humans to live in cities where it is much easier to walk, bike, take the bus, etc... It still means that the other half will live in rural places ...
Cross-posted from the Center for American Progress . This post was coauthored by Valeri Vasquez , special assistant for energy policy at the Center for American Progress. On Sept. 19, President Barack Obama announced his plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years...
Regarding the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere (comments 1 , 16 -18 ), two different measures are being mixed up. For a particular CO2 molecule, its expected time in the atmosphere before being dissolved into the upper ocean or taken up by the terrestrial biosphere is indeed about 5 ...
Agilyx An assembly of pipes and vessels developed by Agilyx cooks plastics into a gas and then condenses the vapor into long-chain hydrocarbons that can subsequently be converted into fuel. Could oil companies soon be picking up your trash? Agilyx, an Oregon-based start-up, says it ha...
Google announced this week that it has set up a $75 million fund with solar financing company Clean Power Finance to essentially “rent” solar panels to homeowners. Photo: Flickr/Dave Dugale Google wants to help 10,000 homeowners go solar, announcing this week that it has set up a $75 ...
Slot canyons are fantastically narrow gorges that are much deeper than they are wide. Formed by water rushing through sandstone and limestone (although some are also shaped in granite and basalt) they can be less than three feet across yet well over 100 feet deep! Hidden away, and wit...
There is widespread misunderstanding of how new money is created. This book examines the workings of the UK monetary system and concludes that the most useful description is that new money is created by commercial banks when they extend or create credit, either through making loans or...
Find your local recycling solution for shoes Builders and manufacturers have been doing some pretty cool things with plastic bottles lately. Here’s one more to add to the list. New Balance announced the launch of a line of sneakers made from 95 percent post-consumer recycled plastic b...
Photo: Vlasta Juricek Cross-posted from Midwest Energy News . There's no denying that wind turbines make noise. A giant rotor blade the size of an aircraft wing swooshing through the air is going to make a noticeable sound, particularly in a quiet, rural setting. And it's on often-rep...
series we've talked about the fact that Things Are Not Just The Way They Are , we always need to ask difficult questions and challenge the status quo. We've thought about what we can we personally can bring to the table of change in What Can You Uniquely Do ? Today we're looking at th...
There are many visions for cities of the future, as GreenBiz colleague John Davies noted in a blog earlier this week. But idea of a smart, connected urban environment is central to those views. GreenBiz Group's term for that highly connected world is VERGE , and a forecast just out fr...
Integrated reporting -- the practice of embedding environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) information into corporate financial reports -- received another significant boost recently, when a group of financial institutions, professional bodies, nongovernmental organizatio...
This is bad news for nuclear advocates: Nuclear power turns out even more expensive than we thought. According to a study by Arthur D. Little, the four German nuclear utilities (E.ON, RWE, EnBW, Vattenfall) face costs of at least $25 billion for decommissioning their reactors. After t...
When federal climate change legislation failed in the U.S., many companies began to focus more on managing their energy use, which for some firms is the fastest growing expense behind health care. That focus translated into greater demand for software aimed at helping organizations tr...
The Cape dwarf chameleon, photographed in an ornamental tree on the patio at Jordan Estate vineyards, in South Africa's Stellenbosch wine region. Photo: Samantha Shapley related articles By Dan Shapley Ecotourism is dramatically better for local economies and ecosystems than other for...
Don't tell Michele Bachmann , but it turns out that when food isn't adequately regulated, you can get giant deadly food poisoning outbreaks. Most recently, a crop of listeria-tainted cantaloupe has now killed 13 people officially, and possibly as many as 16 -- shooting right past the ...
Global total new investment in clean energy 2004-10 ($BN) Good news: clean energy investment is basically doing awesome. "Few, if any, sectors can point to such a robust and broadly-based growth during a tumultuous time in the world economy," says Nathaniel Bullard of Bloomberg New En...
400-megawatt solar farm announced by National Solar Power National Solar Power has announced it will build the Southeast’s largest solar farm in Gadsden County, Florida. The planned 400-megawatt solar farm – a $1.5 billion investment – is expected to generate hundreds of new jobs in t...
China is now the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, but its per-capita emissions are still less than those of the average U.S. citizen. In six years, that could flip, says a new report from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency that was sponsored by the Europe...
What if Ecocide Were a Punishable Crime? by Chris Milton – September 29, 2011Follow Chris Milton on Twitter Trial Part of Campaign to get UN to Declare Mass Destruction of Ecosystems an International Crime Tomorrow, a trial in the halls of United Kingdom’s Supreme Court in London will...
