Let’s start with just a few adjectives about our daily lives — overexposed, overwhelmed, stimulated, toxic, deficient. It’s not enough that many young people lack good nutrition, but they are also challenged by circumstance by a lack of clean air to breathe and pure water to drink.
Nowhere is the fight between the public good and corporate greed more apparent than in Germany, a nation that has made diesel vehicles the basis of much economic prosperity. To get a better understanding of how important diesel-powered cars are to the German auto industry, watch episode 1 of the new Netflix series Dirty Money. It examines the love affair German car companies have had with diesel engines since the 1970s when OPEC shut off the world’s petroleum supply.
A new study from the University of Innsbruck has found that even newer air quality models vastly underestimate real-world traffic-related nitrogen oxide pollution, by up to a factor of 4 according to the new work.
Real-world nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel vehicles are up to 50% higher than the estimates that result from laboratory testing, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature.
It’s called “urban biomass,” and it’s ours (spsmw.org). Hard to imagine a subject that would find The Wall Street Journal and Grist in line with each other’s thinking, but burning wood for energy has achieved it. Neither outlet seems to view the topic positively. Both have cited the scientific work … [continued]
Visiting the Grand Canyon is the trip of a lifetime. Trying to take in the natural beauty of the Southwest through a nitrogen oxide haze is a total bummer. To avoid this scenario the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed an emissions cut for the coal-firing Navajo Generating … [continued]
Canada’s Ontario province will burn virtually zero coal by the end of 2013, marking the first time a North American government has shut down an entire coal fleet, and proving a powerful point that ending coal use can save money and lives…
Now here’s an innovation that might make me consider moving back to New York City: air-purifying concrete. The small Dutch town of Hengelo is testing out the concrete paving stones, which contain a titanium-dioxide based additive that binds to nitrogen particles emitted by car exhaust and turns them into harmless … [continued]
