environment

LAS VEGAS--One of the big complaints from consumers who buy General Motors cars that run on E85 ethanol is the lack of places to fill up.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner, in a meeting with reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas this week, says he has received hundreds of e-mails from customers who have bought such cars and are frustrated they can't find ethanol stations.

When GM started selling its flex-fuel cars, there were about 600 stations that sold ethanol in the U.S. Now there are about 1,400 stations.

But there are 170,… Read more

Lawyers for about 90 current and former residents of New York state filed suit against IBM on Thursday alleging that chemicals from an IBM plant have caused congenital heart defects in infants and kidney cancers in adults, and continue to cause problems.

The tort lawsuit claims that the plant released hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic and hazardous chemicals, including trichloroethylene (TCE), into the air, soil, and groundwater of Endicott, the birthplace of IBM, and the nearby town of Union over several decades.

A "toxic plume" continues to expose residents to hazardous vapors, according to the lawsuit … Read more

Reading about Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize this week while juggling holiday shopping gave me a severe case of cognitive dissonance about consumption. This feeling intensified today when the viral video The Story of Stuff arrived in my e-mail inbox.

The Story of Stuff illustrates the consumption chain and aims to reframe our conversation from unlimited production and consumption to sustainability and equity. The video is quite engaging, and I was impressed by its simplicity and effectiveness. No flashy graphics or sensational techniques, just simple line animation accompanying a 20-minute video lecture by sustainability expert Annie Leonard.

The story of this project is an interesting case study of viral video. Leonard has more than 20 years of experience studying factories and dumps around the world--giving her deep knowledge of sustainability issues, but not exactly a visible platform to launch a movement. Enter the video: according to Leonard's blog, The Story of Stuff has been viewed by more than 100,000 people since it was launched last week. … Read more

Tuesday was a really bad day for my carbon footprint.

First I learned that my divorce is heating up the planet. A Michigan State University study concluded that divorced couples use up more space in their respective homes, resulting in 38 million more rooms around the globe to light, heat, and cool.

Then, later in the day, as I readied to go home and light candles for the first night of Hanukkah--the Jewish Festival of Lights--I learned of the environmental implications of the annual tradition. The Jerusalem Post told of a campaign--now the topic of much blog fodder--encouraging Jews to … Read more

In 1964 congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Three years later came the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), followed by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. This litany of legislation proves that politicians can actually get things done when they put their minds to it, all recent evidence to the contrary.

As an engineering manager for Texas Instruments in the mid-80s, I was careful about discrimination. Then I got a memo explaining that sexual harassment would not be tolerated. I was terrified until I realized the memo went out to all employees. Whew, that was a relief. I wish the memo proves that executives care about their employees, but I think it was more about avoiding litigation. And my relief was all about keeping my job.

Regardless of how or why any of this stuff happens, it's exactly the kind of thing that distinguishes our nation. We've made great strides toward putting an end to job discrimination and sexual harassment. But lately, something seems to have gone terribly wrong.… Read more

A U.S. government science panel published a report Wednesday that quantifies North America's net contribution of carbon to the atmosphere, one of the first baseline studies comparing the continent's emissions and its carbon absorption through vegetation. The results show that the continent's fossil fuel emissions are outpacing the land's natural ability to absorb carbon dioxide by three to one.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a government panel, conducted the study with the help of researchers around North America and a slew of agencies including NASA, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, and the … Read more

I couldn't take my dogs for a run at their usual park this weekend. Why? Because it is an estuary for the San Francisco Bay, and the Bay's water and surrounding coast is coated with a layer of thick fuel oil that leaked out of a container ship that crashed into the Bay Bridge.

Some 58,000 gallons leaked out of the gash in the side of the ship after it inexplicably hit the bridge, the worst oil spill in the region in twenty years. This is the sea-going equivalent of tapping a parking meter with your bumper … Read more

MSN is going green.

No, I don't mean that it has decided to compost all its Starbucks grounds. And I'm sure it's had recycle bins on more than PCs for a while.

The Microsoft-owned Web site has launched MSN Green, a site for all kinds of environmental news and information. Partners include Conservation International, National Geographic and Grist, an edgy environmental news site.

The initial content is a mixed bag. There was an interesting article on whether extended daylight saving time actually equates to energy savings, but also more iffy concepts, such as a story on how much wood is used … Read more

The goal of Tree-Nation is to plant 8 million trees in sub-Saharan Niger, Africa, the world's poorest nation.

The sunny Web site, based out of Barcelona, Spain, provides social networking for would-be huggers and planters of trees. You can donate between $14 to $106 per tree, and then track and map its growth via GPS and Google Maps.

Working with ecologists in Niger, Tree-Nation will nourish the sprouts of the baobabs, acacias and other species in a nursery before transplanting them outside. Although desertification threatens most of the land in Niger, the trees grow in places that receive enough … Read more