technologyreview.com: By Jennifer Chu

Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.

In the late 19th century, the realization that electricity could be coaxed to light up a bulb prompted a mad dash to determine the best way to distribute it. At the head of the pack was inventor Nikola Tesla, who had a grand scheme to beam elec­tricity around the world. Having difficulty imagining a vast infrastructure of wires extending into every city, building, and room, Tesla figured that wireless was the way to go. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to points kilometers away, and even started to build one on Long Island. Though his team did some tests, funding ran out before the tower was completed. The promise of airborne power faded rapidly as the industrial world proved willing to wire up. [ read more ]

portfolio.com: by Dave Demerjian

A jet engine developed by Pratt & Whitney could revolutionize the aviation industry.

One of the biggest names in aviation has developed a jet engine that is more efficient, less polluting and cheaper to use than almost everything else in the sky, and it could revolutionize an industry facing skyrocketing fuel prices and mounting pressure to clean up its act.

Pratt & Whitney has spent the better part of two decades developing the geared turbofan engine that burns 12 to 15 percent less fuel than other jet engines and cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 1,500 tons per plane per year. It’s being called one of the most exciting developments commercial aviation has seen in years, and it was a hot topic at the Eco-Aviation Conference, where the aviation industry spent two days charting the course to a greener future. [ read more ]

wired.com: By Chuck Squatriglia

Plug-in hybrids are a great way to ease our oil addiction and do something about global warming. But it’s taken 10 years for conventional hybrids like the iconic Toyota Prius to eke out almost 3 percent of the domestic market, and nothing suggests cars with cords will take hold any faster.

For that reason, plug-in advocates say, we’ve got to figure out how to start converting a sizable chunk of the nation’s 240 million cars into gas-electric hybrids you can plug into a wall socket. There’s a handful of companies venturing down this path, but they charge as much as 12 grand to do the job and the number of cars they’ve converted would fit inside a Toyota cargo ship with room to spare. [ read more ]

cnn.com : By Adam Lashinsky

The legendary venture firm is going green - and leaving Internet deals to the competition.

In the past decade Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has doled out $10 billion to its major investors, all of which are university endowments, philanthropic foundations, or public pension funds. Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms never divulge their actual performance. Yet this tidbit comes directly from John Doerr, Kleiner’s preeminent partner, who is so intent on ensuring that I’m correctly processing the significance of that figure that he helps me with the math. “That’s $1 billion a year on average,” he says. “Those are great gains. That’s not a couple university chairs, and it’s not a building or two. That’s whole quadrants of a campus.” [ read more ]

sciam.com: By John Broome

Weighing our own prosperity against the chances that climate change will diminish the well-being of our grandchildren calls on economists to make hard ethical judgments

What should we do about climate change? The question is an ethical one. Science, including the science of economics, can help discover the causes and effects of climate change. It can also help work out what we can do about climate change. But what we should do is an ethical question.

Not all “should” questions are ethical. “How should you hold a golf club?” is not, for instance. The climate question is ethical, however, because any thoughtful answer must weigh conflicting interests among different people. If the world is to do something about climate change, some people—chiefly the better-off among the current generation—will have to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to save future generations from the possibility of a bleak existence in a hotter world. When interests conflict, “should” questions are always ethical. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Jennifer Chu

Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.

In the late 19th century, the realization that electricity could be coaxed to light up a bulb prompted a mad dash to determine the best way to distribute it. At the head of the pack was inventor Nikola Tesla, who had a grand scheme to beam elec­tricity around the world. Having difficulty imagining a vast infrastructure of wires extending into every city, building, and room, Tesla figured that wireless was the way to go. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to points kilometers away, and even started to build one on Long Island. Though his team did some tests, funding ran out before the tower was completed. The promise of airborne power faded rapidly as the industrial world proved willing to wire up. [ read more ]

telegraph.co.uk: By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves, according to a panel of global experts at the Goldman Sachs “Top Five Risks” conference.

Nicholas (Lord) Stern, author of the Government’s Stern Review on the economics of climate change, warned that underground aquifers could run dry at the same time as melting glaciers play havoc with fresh supplies of usable water. [ read more ]

telegraph.co.uk: Graham Boynton

We no longer have a choice. Climate change demands that we adjust our habit and get serious about greener holidays. Graham Boynton invites you to nominate the best of the eco-travel companies.

We have reached a point in our development where we can no longer travel without conscience. Even those of us who are the most self-interested of creatures, indifferent to the state of the planet, will have to shape up and start travelling responsibly. [ read more ]

forbes.com: By William Pentland

In 2001, a water shortage in America’s Pacific Northwest wiped out nearly a third of the U.S. aluminum industry. Low precipitation levels in the Cascade Mountains during the preceding winter robbed local reservoirs of the water needed to turn the massive turbines inside the region’s main hydroelectric power plant, the Bonneville Power Administration. Electricity prices skyrocketed. Over the course of a few months, roughly a dozen aluminum plants closed. Nearly a decade later, only one has reopened.

Like oil, water is an essential part of doing business in almost every industry, and unexpected shortages can trigger potentially catastrophic consequences. The trouble for investors: Companies disclose very little if any information about their exposure to water-related risks.

“This is not an area that companies like to discuss quite frankly,” says Marc Levinson, an economist at J.P. Morgan and the principal author of the recent report Watching Water: A Guide to Corporate Risk in a Thirsty World. “They don’t want to call attention to a vulnerability and that applies very much to the water scarcity issue. Investors in general know very little about what is going on in companies’ supply chains.” [ read more ]

vtcommons.org: by Rob Williams

I want to start out with a little game, called “How Do You Know When Your Empire Is Collapsing?” – invented in a little different form by a
political scientist on Long Island.

Let me give you a few examples of how it works.

Let’s say for starters, you know your empire is collapsing when the empire that is your fiercest rival buys up a total of 26 percent of three of your major Wall Street firms for $9 billion, and declares that it has another $200 billion that it is looking to invest. Next, you might figure your empire is collapsing when its total debt obligations amount to $50.5 trillion. That is so big that it’s about the same as the total household income of everyone in the country, including the billionaires. In other words, we owe almost more than we make. [ read more ]