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A world of troubles to tackle (07 July 02:00) |
| The G8 leaders, meeting in Japan, have many challenges but few toolsTHE leaders of the G8 group of rich countries kicked off three days of annual summitry hosted by Japan in Toyako on the no... |
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Beetle attack (03 July 06:32) |
| Pining for a cold winterOVER the past 14 years, a tiny insect no bigger than a grain of rice has laid waste a swathe of British Columbia's forests so vast that the rust-red wasteland is visi... |
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Green gambit (03 July 06:32) |
| Stephane Dion, the Liberal with a carbon-tax planFANS of "Yes, Minister", a 1980s British sitcom, will recall that whenever Sir Humphrey Appleby, the emollient civil servant, labelled a brai... |
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Could do better (03 July 06:32) |
| Democrats in the House and the Senate have not been as green as their wordWANDER through the marble hallways of Washington's Capitol and look up. Screwed into the sconces and lanterns of one... |
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A balance of risk (03 July 06:32) |
| Pesticides keep food edible and cheap. On the other hand they are, by definition, poisonous. Europe's legislators thus face a dilemmaWHAT is the difference between risk and hazard? Quite a l... |
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Slippery when wet (30 June 12:52) |
| Kenya plants sugarcane; America uproots itLAST week Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida, announced the purchase of almost 300 square miles of land in the middle of the Everglades from a s... |
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Better living through chemurgy (26 June 06:54) |
| Efforts to replace oil-based chemicals with renewable alternatives are taking offFORTY years ago Dustin Hoffman?s character in ?The Graduate? was given a famous piece of career advice: ?Jus... |
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Give a fish a bad name (26 June 06:54) |
| How to rescue the reputation of Chilean salmonA GENERATION ago, Puerto Montt, the last town before southern Chile breaks up into a myriad of islands and fjords, was such a dead place that wa... |
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Lean, green and not mean (26 June 06:54) |
| The United States may drop a tariff on Brazilian ethanol. But the industry is still the victim of much misplaced criticismWHEN John McCain laid out his plans for reducing America?s dependenc... |
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Freezing the sun (26 June 06:54) |
| A double blow for solar energyIT SEEMED so promising?mirrors sprawled across desert land in the scorching south-west delivering clean electricity and helping to wean Americans off imported f... |
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The killing fields (26 June 06:54) |
| Long a symbol of freedom, America's wild horses may soon be no moreIN 1964 a new car was launched at the New York World's Fair: the Ford Mustang. Both its name and its galloping horse logo, ... |
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Those in peril (26 June 06:54) |
| Not for the first time, navigating the archipelago by ferry proves deadlyTHE shipping industry in the Philippines put another big blot on its abysmal safety record when the ferry Princess of... |
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Creditworthy (26 June 06:54) |
| A new rating agency aims to separate emissions reductions from hot airEMISSIONS trading, says Ian Johnson of IDEAcarbon, a research firm, ?is not an easy concept to understand?. Indeed, the ... |
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Time to cut the knot (23 June 12:53) |
| Security and greenness are two separate goalsWHEN the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, they declared that increasing America's energy security and tackling climate change would be... |
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Emissions suspicions (19 June 06:18) |
| Are countries that regulate greenhouse gases exposing their industries to unfair competition from those that do not?IN AMERICA they call it the China question. In Europe they call it the Ame... |
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Computing sustainability (19 June 06:18) |
| How computers can help to cut carbon emissionsHOW much computing can mankind afford? That is a question the computer and telecoms industries hate to hear. They do not see themselves in the s... |
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As high as an elephant's eye (19 June 06:18) |
| Havoc in the MidwestDON HOLST, surveying his farm near Walcott, Iowa, on June 17th, saw glistening pools where corn stalks should have been. Where the water had receded the earth was muddy, ... |
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The wood for the trees (19 June 06:18) |
| A proposed new safety standard shows pernicious regulatory creepWHAT could be more relaxing than to amble through an ancient wood, pausing to rest beneath a gnarled old tree or even to hug o... |
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Crony charity (19 June 06:18) |
| Big business to the rescue?BUSINESSES in Myanmar are not famous for their public-spiritedness. But since last month's cyclone, several well-known companies have helped the relief effort. The... |
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Why does Berkeley have so many Priuses? (16 June 12:51) |
| The geography of green consumerismBUYING green is all the rage: barely a day passes without the rollout of a new ?environmentally responsible? product. This week it's the waterless car-wash,... |
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Let them heat coke (12 June 06:39) |
| How green taxes hurt the poorAS SPANISH hauliers and French fishermen have shouted out for all the world to hear, higher fuel prices are not popular. This is uncomfortable for those?includin... |
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Will it ever be able to stave off starvation? (12 June 06:39) |
| Famine is once again threatening the continent's second-most-populous country and once again its government is partly to blame GORU GUTU is perched in the misty heights of the steep hills ab... |
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The Malthus blues (09 June 12:55) |
| Cheering thoughts about populationWHEN crammed into a Victoria line train in the full flood of the morning rush hour, your nose jammed into a stranger's sweaty armpit, the idea that London i... |
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Green in the east (06 June 02:51) |
| China and India are increasingly keen to show how they are tackling climate changeIF AMERICA at last gets a president who is committed to cutting carbon emissions, then two big Asian countri... |
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Fridges of the world, unite! (05 June 07:34) |
| Energy efficiency: Smarter appliances that turn themselves down at times of peak demand should mean fewer brown-outs IF THE millions of refrigerators, electric water-heaters and air conditio... |
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A new twist for offshore wind (05 June 07:34) |
| Energy: Floating wind-turbines are being developed that can be used at sea in deep water, and do not need to be permanently fixed in place WINDS sweeping across New England, in the north-eas... |
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Trooping the tribal colours (05 June 07:30) |
| A hardy and versatile species that can do surprisingly well in boardrooms, palaces and even diplomatic conferencesWHEN the five nations that assert sovereignty (and economic rights) in the m... |
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Don't make the desert bloom (05 June 07:30) |
| Milk and honey is all very well. But what about the water?THIS is the fourth consecutive year of drought in Israel. Last winter it rained only about 65% of the long-term average. The water l... |
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Trading dirt (05 June 07:30) |
| A controversial bill on climate change goes before the SenateA MAN who is worried about global warming is pounded into the ground by falling oil barrels; another who is worried about rising ... |
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Spot the rancher (05 June 07:30) |
| What the numbers do and don't say about deforestationHOW reliable are the Brazilian government's estimates of deforestation? Not at all, according to Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Gross... |
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A convenient truth, sadly ignored (05 June 07:30) |
| A deal to be done between rich and poor countries on global warming is going beggingIF ALL goes well, in 2011, a year before the Kyoto protocol expires, a new opera will open at La Scala in ... |
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Welcome to our shrinking jungle (05 June 07:30) |
| A political storm over environmental policy has coincided with a rise in deforestationFROM the Amazon last month, Brazil's Indian agency released aerial pictures of painted men with bows and... |
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A month of misery (05 June 07:30) |
| The junta is still thwarting efforts to help its desperate peopleWHEN the United Nations' secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, met Myanmar's reclusive leader, General Than Shwe, on May 23rd, he s... |
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Melting Asia (05 June 07:30) |
| China and India are increasingly keen to be seen to be tackling climate change; though it is dirtier, China is making a more convincing show of actionSINCE 2006 the railway line across the T... |
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Tapping the oceans (05 June 05:30) |
| Environmental technology: Desalination turns salty water into fresh water. As concern over water?s scarcity grows, can it offer a quick technological fix?THERE are vast amounts of water on e... |
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Meshing together (04 June 10:12) |
| A new way of separating oil and waterWHEN the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989, 38,000 tonnes of oil spilled into Prince William Sound. Ecologically speaking, it was one of the mos... |
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Cute, cuddly, edible (02 June 12:55) |
| Defending Canada's seal huntersSUSTAINABILITY?whether in reference to farming, logging, fisheries, medicinal plants or crocodile skins?is all the rage these days. But people seem less likely... |
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And the winner is... (29 May 07:11) |
| A much-criticised city turns out to be one of America's greenestFROM the air, Los Angeles hardly looks like an environmental paragon. It sprawls heroically, seeming to begin well before pass... |
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National treasure (29 May 07:11) |
| Paying for a toxic legacyONE of the more unusual tourist attractions in Montana is the Berkeley Pit, an enormous man-made lake in Butte. It was originally an open-pit copper mine, but when i... |
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Get your green pants here (29 May 07:11) |
| A Sri Lankan firm says it has the world's first carbon-neutral clothes factoryAT A SPANKING new lingerie factory in Thulhiriya, a short drive from Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, senior manage... |
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Just let them get on with it (29 May 07:11) |
| Poor people who rely on nature's gifts should be helped to help themselvesCONSERVATIONISTS and animal-welfare types please take note: trade in wildlife products, as long as it is properly ma... |
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No more pyrotechnics (26 May 02:35) |
| Taming the rock-concert industry's excessesAS ANY country-music fan knows, Willie Nelson, America's favourite outlaw-troubadour, can?t wait to get on the road again. Although he often sings ... |
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A modest opening (22 May 06:22) |
| Foreign pressure on the junta is only partly successfulTHE millions of victims of cyclone Nargis have now endured three weeks of misery while the military regime that runs Myanmar has dragge... |
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Forcing help on Myanmar (22 May 06:22) |
| ASEAN needs to play a bigger role in its region, and Indonesia a bigger role in ASEANTHREE long weeks after a cataclysmic cyclone struck Myanmar, something approaching an international relie... |
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China helps itself (22 May 06:22) |
| The government's relief effort is impressive; even more inspiring is what ordinary people are doing to fill the gapsSOME 200 survivors of China's deadliest earthquake in more than 30 years l... |
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Strange bedfellows (22 May 06:22) |
| Activists and companies can move from confrontation to co-operationLAST month Tom Katzenmeyer, vice-president of investor relations at Limited Brands, met representatives of the government o... |
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The wisdom of Canute (22 May 06:22) |
| Letting the waves rule BritanniaTHE Jurassic coast, which runs along the southern edges of Devon and Dorset, is a fossil-hunter's paradise. No spades or hammers are needed to persuade the ea... |
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Buy our stuff, save the planet (22 May 06:22) |
| The internet could become as ungreen as aviation. A self-serving solution beckonsIN COMPUTING, buzzwords are in most cases just that. But the latest, ?cloud computing?, stands for a real tre... |
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Coming down from the trees (22 May 06:22) |
| Appearances in the branches notwithstanding, Berkeley has changed THE dreaded Hayward fault slices right through the football stadium of the University of California, Berkeley, leaving visib... |
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Green pedicure (19 May 12:54) |
| Footprints in carbon, nitrogen and waterCARBON footprints have become the accepted way to measure and describe humanity?s impact on the planet. But in principle, one can work out any kind of... |
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