Environment
-
In the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Energy poured money into creating a miraculous technology: converting sunlight into electricity. Solar energy was a pipe dream, far too expensive and unreliable to be considered. Solar power installations cost 80% less today than a decade ago. Alternative energy (like wind and solar) is now cheaper than conventional…
-
Humans were not around to see Antarctica in the good times, tens of millions of years ago, when it was home to palms and baobab trees, reptiles and marsupials. It had some of the same mountains it has today, some of the same valleys and inlets. But it didn’t have the same address. Long ago,…
-
This place is where the planet’s warmer and watery future is being written. It is so warm here, just inside the Arctic Circle, that on an August day, coats are left on the ground and scientists work on the watery melting ice without gloves. In one of the closest towns, Kulusuk, the morning temperature reached…
-
A global research house says sales of petrol and diesel cars have passed their peak and by 2030 more than 60 per cent of new cars sales will be electric vehicles. This follows Tesla’s delivery of 95,200 cars during the three months ending June 30 besting its previous record of 90,700 deliveries set in the…
-
Last year, when China, the biggest consumer of discarded plastics, banned nearly all waste imports, it signaled a sea change in the global recycling system. The trade in plastics quickly rerouted to neighboring Southeast Asian countries that lacked effective recycling plants and disposal laws, leaving much of the waste to be burned or dumped in fields and…