Stories
These Buildings Generate More Energy Than They Use
Norway ushers in an era of energy-positive architecture
This Is How Blockchain Could Upend the Grid
by allowing people to buy and sell energy in small increments from, and to, their neighbors
Bottling Sunshine without Batteries
Turning sunlight into liquid fuels or hydrogen gas could address solar power’s biggest limitations
Saltwater Aquaculture Moves Inland
Improved technology could give fish farms a sustainable foothold far from the ocean
The Problem with Making Nature Pay for Itself
Trying to make nature valuable has had a disappointing track record.
Picturing a Way Forward
An interview with Kim Stanley Robinson: Climate change, science fiction, and our collective failure of imagination
Hacking Nature
For decades, humans have modeled technology on observations of the natural world. But new discoveries about nature—and tools for ... Read More
Blurring Life’s Boundaries
Darwinian theory is based on the idea that heredity flows vertically, parent to offspring, and that life’s history has branched like a ... Read More
A View from Everywhere All the Time
Tech companies are rapidly networking the environment in ways that will transform our perception of nature—just as social media ... Read More
How different are we after all?
The question “What makes us human?” is typically answered in terms of differences. The traits proposed to define us—tool use, language, Read More
The Climate Change Apocalypse Problem
Thinking about apocalypse, like thinking about one’s own death, is not something that most of us have much enthusiasm for
Water-Harvesting and Arid-Adapted Agrobiodiversity
A revival of rainwater harvesting is occurring around the world, as desert communities restore traditional systems known as rain ... Read More
Amphibious Architecture
Amphibious structures are not static; they respond to floods like ships to a rising tide, floating on the water’s surface.
The Race to Reinvent Cement
The material that built the modern world is due for an upgrade. What if we could transform cement from a climate wrecker into a carbon Read More
Does driving an electric car help decarbonize the economy?
You would need to drive an electric car more than 50,000 km in Quebec and 150,000 km in Germany to outcompete a conventional car in ... Read More
The Resurgence of Solar Agriculture
Can farmers get the same food production under solar panels that they currently do growing lettuce for your dinner table the ... Read More
All forests are not equal in the carbon count
To clean up our carbon mess, we don’t just need more forests, we need better forests in the right places
Milk Without the Cow. Eggs Without the Chicken.
Yeast-derived “animal products” may soon be part of an environmentally balanced diet
On Wizardly Prophets and Prophetic Wizards
Ted Nordhaus reviews The Wizard and The Prophet by Charles Mann
The Circular Economy Made Real
In more and more pockets of the industrial landscape, the byproducts of one process are becoming the raw materials for another, trash ... Read More
Instead of Trump’s Wall, Let’s Build a Border of Solar Panels
A solar border would alleviate a range of binational problems. For one, it would have a civilizing effect.
An Internet of Wings
Researchers will track migratory animals from the International Space Station to predict the next pandemic
How Much Energy Will the World Need?
The story of energy use, economic growth, and carbon emissions in four charts.
Artificial Intelligence and Decarbonization
New experiments are pushing artificial intelligence and sensor networks into the grid—and into factories, data centers, and transit ... Read More
Cutting Loose the Climate Future from the Carbon Past
Geoengineering demands a new way of looking at the world—one that can be troubling.
When You’re in a Carbon Hole Stop Digging
Here’s a coal retirement plan that doesn’t rely on uninvented technology or science-challenged leaders.
Human-Driven Evolution Is a Hallmark of the Anthropocene
The Human Age will be shaped by the species we create and foster as well as the ones we kill off
The Rise of the Wooden Skyscraper
New, mass-timber engineering could transform the twenty-first-century city from a carbon source into a carbon sink
The Carnery
Imagine a culinary future with in vitro meat . . .The real thing may not be as far away as you think
Nanosilver may cut down on odor, but does it make clothing “green”?
Less frequent laundering may not offset the additional environmental impacts of using antimicrobial silver nanoparticles in textiles.
Why citizen science may shine, even in Trump’s world
As we brace for fresh environmental onslaughts to be leveled by the incoming administration, a sleeper cell in the federal government ... Read More
The Global Financial Establishment Is Waking up to Climate Risk
Regulators are beginning to rewrite the economic rules
Who’s Winning the Clean-tech Race?
You could be forgiven if you thought the European Union—historically a leader on low-carbon finance and policy efforts—would have a ... Read More
Art That Delivers Clean Water & Power
An international competition challenges designers to show that clean energy production and dazzling public art can be one and the same
How We Think about E-Waste Is in Need of Repair
China and Ghana are looking less and less like electronic wastebaskets and more and more like leaders in a powerful, informal green economy
An Anthropocene Journey
The word “anthropocene” has become the closest thing there is to common shorthand for this turbulent, momentous, unpredictable, ... Read More
We should be measuring the footprint of supply chains
Attributing water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions to countries rather than industrial sectors is a leading example of how the ... Read More
Habitecture
Tiny houses and great cathedrals, carbon-neutral skyscrapers and Airstream trailers: architecture is among the greatest of human ... Read More
Ecology for Insiders
The indoor biome covers as much as six percent of the world’s landmass—and we know almost nothing about it.
Science Fiction in the Anthropocene
The ultimate literature of the imagination calls upon us to do more than merely invent or imitate the apocalypse
Letting Biodiversity Get Under Our Skin
Some aspects of dirty living can be healthy. A new study posits that the decline of plant and animal diversity in cities may be linked ... Read More
Visualizing Carbon
Pictures make a story come alive—and in the climate change story, one of the main characters is invisible. Carbon Visuals helps people ... Read More
The Future Will Not Be Dry
In a world of melting ice caps, storm surges, and tropical cyclones, the most resilient cities aren’t the ones that fight the water ... Read More
What Food Should Go Nude?
As consumers, we should worry less about the Styrofoam and plastic wrap encasing the ground beef—and take a pass on the shrink-wrapped ... Read More
Reality Is Too Confining
We know that nature experiences can change environmental behavior—but it turns out those experiences don’t have to be real.
Spies Like Us
Armed with low-cost surveillance technologies, nonprofits aided by “citizen spies” are tracking fracking in Pennsylvania, flaring in ... Read More
Butter Is Toast
Margarine has a significantly lower environmental impact than butter in four important areas: global warming potential (i.e., carbon ... Read More
Taming the Blue Frontier
Should the U.S. cultivate giant offshore fish farms in its piece of the sea or keep taking most of the fish we eat from foreign waters?
You Pay or We Drill
When Ecuador asked the world for $3.6 billion to not drill for oil, the world balked. But in terms of reining in carbon, Ecuador may be Read More
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