EarthScape

What choice will consumers make? After attending the 2011 Toyota Sustainable Mobility Seminar in La Jolla, California (April 4-7, 2011), this is what I walked away thinking. In all respects, Americans are already asking themselves questions like this about the life they live. With regard to the cars we drive it is time to think…

NEWARK (April 6, 2011) – PPG Industries has agreed to clean-up of one of the largest remaining sites contaminated with cancer-causing hexavalent chromium in New Jersey. The cleanup is estimated to cost PPG up to $600 million and remove an estimated 700,000 tons of chromium waste from a Jersey City neighborhood. The settlement stems from…

Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer’s green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine. However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called…

Converting forms of public transportation over to green technology is a great way of reducing the carbon emissions in a particular metropolitan area. To this effect, many cities around the world have invested in buses that utilize either hybrid systems or fully renewable fuel sources. London in particular has been working on hybridizing their buses,…

The Senate rejected a measure on Wednesday to kill the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, handing President Barack Obama a victory in his effort to quicken the move to clean energy. The EPA’s rules, which it began rolling out on polluters such as power plants and oil refineries early this year, are…

April 4, 2011 – UPS, Verizon, PepsiCo, AT&T and FedEx, are the charter members of the National Clean Fleets Partnership announced by President Obama on Friday. The public-private partnership aims to assist large companies in reducing diesel and gasoline use in their fleets by incorporating electric vehicles, alternative fuels, and fuel-saving measures into their daily…

With global demand for electronics surging – especially for tablet computers like Apple’s iPad – these gadgets’ sophistication and long battery life have created a huge market for rare earth minerals, often associated with global conflicts. Elements like copper and even rarer tungsten, neodymium, dysprosium, coltan, and terbium are tagged with the “conflict” label because…

As if there were a need for even more evidence that global warming is a real, verifiable and evidenced threat, new research is showing Central and South American coffee production is drastically dropping because of higher global temperatures. Add extreme rainfall totals to the mix and the result is rampant insects and damaged plants. If…

Astronomers have discovered that two symmetrical jets shooting away from opposite sides of a blossoming star are experiencing a time delay: knots of gas and dust from one jet blast off four-and-a-half years later than identical knots from the other jet. The finding, which required the infrared vision of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, is helping…

The Idaho House on Tuesday approved a measure that declares the state’s wolves a “disaster emergency” — akin to a flood or wildfire — and gives the governor broad powers to eliminate them. The bill, approved by a 64-5 vote, now heads to the Senate, where a dozen members have signed on as sponsors. The…