Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
A report from the Murray Darling Basin Commission released in March 2008 shows that the huge rains in January did very little to relieve the long-term challenges faced by the drought stricken river system. The total inflows to the river over the last two years are the lowest since 1937. The two year total to Continue Reading →
Washington Post Foreign Service
GAOLONG, China — The first time Li Gengxuan saw the dump trucks from the nearby factory pull into his village, he couldn’t believe what happened. Stopping between the cornfields and the primary school playground, the workers dumped buckets of bubbling white liquid onto the ground. Then they turned around and drove right back through the gates of their compound without a word.
This ritual has been going on almost every day for nine months, Li and other villagers said.
In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its industrial growth, such stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon. But the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It’s a green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production — silicon tetrachloride — is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards.
Its called the [1] Solar Taxi, but that is just its name. Its not a taxi and it does not run exclusively on solar power. Louis Palmer wants to be the first man to drive around the world in a solar-powered car. He started the SolarTaxi project, which aims to circumvent the globe, meeting Continue Reading →
The Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong has handed the allocation of water rights back to the state governments. Water ministers from state and federal governments met recently to review the Murray Darling management scheme set up in the dying days of the Howard government. State governments want the right to manage the amount of Continue Reading →
Swiss adventurer, Louis Palmer, is halfway around the world in his solar taxi, which left Switzerland in July 2007 and arrived in Perth on the 9th of March. The light-weight car runs totally on solar-generated electricity and travels at up to 90 kilometers per hour. It took three years to build and has travelled 23,000 Continue Reading →
From New Scientist CAN you put a freeze on earthquakes? It seems so, according to a computer model showing that earthquakes happen less often in areas covered by ice caps. Trouble is, quakes come back with a vengeance when the ice melts. Andrea Hampel at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and colleagues wondered why Continue Reading →