BOSTON (March 11, 2009) -- In most discussions of energy and climate, coal figures prominently as one of the villains. Burning coal is responsible for more than a third of all energy-related U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and 80 percent of those from electricity production. It is also one of the larg...

Meet the satnav that nags you to conserve fuel. Dubbed the Econav, this new gadget will not only guide you from Land's End to John O'Groats but will also tick you off when you abuse the accelerator and brake pedal. It'll sigh - well, flash a visual and audio warning - when you need to shift gear. If...

Inauguration day, 2009 was a thrilling affirmation of the United States and the most hopeful day I can remember. The American President is both our head of government and our head of state. He is both prime minister and king. And before about two million people, and millions more on TV and the web, ...

Turning Your Car Into a Golf Ball We're always careful with companies that claim to have products that greatly improve your MPG. Most of them don't work (magazines like Consumer Reports have tested a lot of them), and we often think "If it was that simple, carmakers would be doing it to have a compe...

In the book Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships Janja Lalich, Ph.D. & Michael D. Langone, Ph.D. created a list of common cult characteristics. It’s not intended to serve as “cult scale”, but it does serve as a layman’s scorecard for decidi...

An enthusiastic conservation effort, coupled with a wide variety of alternative sources of energy, will soften the blow of peak oil, but it might be too little too late.   And it’s incredibly difficult to get people to actually do something serious about conserving energy (see Janisse Ray...

Energy efficiency isn't considered sexy. Water heaters even less. But when you look at the numbers and realize that these energy-monsters that lurk in our basements are ranked third in energy consumption in U.S. houses (behind heating/cooling and kitchen appliances) and represent 17% of total demand...

Many streams of accelerating technological change, from energy to The Impact of Computing, will find themselves intersecting in one of the largest consumer product industries of all.  Over 70 million automobiles were produced worldwide in 2006, with rapid market penetration underway in India an...