The car lobby is demanding that the EU scrap rules that would better reflect PHEV pollution Carbon dioxide emissions from plug-in hybrid (PHEV) cars are six times higher, on average, than official tests suggest, according to new 2024 data published by the EU last week. The gap between PHEVs’ real-world CO₂ ... [continued]
The post Plug-in Hybrids Emit 6 Times, On Average, What Official Tests Claim — New EU Data appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Researchers urge governments to help worst afflicted countries, such as Nigeria and Algeria, which rely on oil revenues for public services
Conflict, migration and economic upheaval will accompany the global move away from oil, unless governments act urgently to help the worst afflicted countries to cope, research has found.
Nigeria, Iran, Angola and Algeria are among the countries that will be severely affected, as they rely strongly on oil revenues for their government and provision of public services, but have little diversification and too little capital to cushion the blow.
Continue reading...OS index examines which ‘urban heat islands’ suffer the most – and which cope the best with rising temperatures
Portsmouth, Leicester, Exeter, Bristol and Nottingham will be among the cities that warm the most by the end of this century as global heating turns British cities into urban heat islands, according to research.
Analysis from Ordnance Survey (OS) has created a heat vulnerability index for all cities in Great Britain. Portsmouth, which sits on the south coast of England and is home to 208,000 people, is the most vulnerable to extreme heat today and into the future, according to the research from the OS, the Met Office and the data analysis company 4 Earth Intelligence.
Continue reading...New questions continue to surface, days after the limited launch of the Tesla Cybercab robotaxi in Austin, Texas on September 3.
The post Even More Questions Swirl Around Tesla Cybercab Rollout appeared first on CleanTechnica.
In a report dated September 6, 2026, the International Council On Clean Transportation (ICCT) claimed that operating an electric car in Europe in 2025 cost one third less than operating a conventional gasoline or diesel powered car. Because of the surge in fuel costs resulting from the unprovoked attack on ... [continued]
The post ICCT Claims EV Operating Costs ⅓ Lower In Europe appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Estimates suggest drop in production with vineyards also concerned ‘smoke taint’ from wildfires may affect quality
French vineyards hit by severe drought and heatwaves are expected to report a 30-year low in wine production after the country’s hottest ever recorded summer, according to the agriculture ministry.
Initial estimates suggest winemakers will produce just under 34m hectolitres from this year’s harvest: a drop of 6% on last year, and 17% less than the 2021-2025 average.
Continue reading...Toyota is continuing to push the envelope on heavy duty fuel cell trucks, with Germany serving as a test case for inter-industry collaboration.
The post Acid Test Coming For Zero Emission Fuel Cell Trucks In Europe appeared first on CleanTechnica.
We worked with Street Sense Media to find varied funding to make its internship program more sustainable Interns contribute a lot of reporting for Street Sense Media, a nonprofit street paper whose mission is to end homelessness in Washington D.C. They work to elevate voices of lived experience of unhoused individuals. The newsroom is run by two editors and typically has around nine interns…
WMO report details extreme weather events causing climatic feedback loop with serious health consequences
Big increases in wildfires and heatwaves supercharged by the climate crisis are hindering improvements to air quality around the world, UN experts have said.
Regions that had recorded a fall in pollution emitted by cars and industrial sites are facing new threats to air quality because of exposure to smoke from wildfires, according to a new report, while rising temperatures caused by intense heatwaves are causing a surge in ground-level ozone.
Continue reading...Europe is running out of workers while still debating how long to preserve machines that burn imported fuel. That is an odd starting point for a competitiveness strategy. Europe’s central economic problem is not electricity prices alone. Mario Draghi’s competitiveness diagnosis is broader: weak productivity, fragmented markets, difficulty turning research ... [continued]
The post A Productivity Strategy For Europe Starts With Cheap Electricity appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Heat kills thousands of people across the U.S. every year. The risk is especially high for the millions of Americans who live in manufactured housing like mobile homes and trailers.
(Image credit: Ryan Kellman)
California, Oregon, Washington, New York, and New Jersey have just launched two major new electric truck accelerator programs.
The post East And West Coasts Throw Electric Truck Shade At White House appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The story of labor and the Linotype is unexpected in many aspects. For this Labor Day, I’ll share a bit on the subject from my book Hot Type. (Links to buy the hardback and audiobook versions and signed copies are here).
Printers waged their first strike against publishers in occupied New York in the winter of 1776. They came together to form what would become the International Typographical Union (ITU) in 1850.
All through the nineteenth century, a few hundred inventors tried to build the machine that would automate typesetters’ work. One might think, then, that they would follow in the paths of the Luddites and Captain Swing and destroy the contraptions. But those earlier protests were against feudal factories more than technology; the workers were not yet not organized into unions like the typesetters; and Swing’s followers ended up swinging from gallows. Besides, typesetters watched the experience of pressmen; with the introduction of steam-powered presses, their ranks shrank but then grew as publishing did.
More than the machine, typesetters feared the intrusion of women into composing rooms and forbade entry of black men — most notably Frederick Douglass’ son. (In Hot Type, I tell the story of Gussie Lewis Troup, who organized the first, regrettably short-lived women’s typographical union.) Typesetters were generally sanguine about the machine because so many of the 300 attempts at building one had failed.
Until the Linotype, the machine at the center of my book. On July 3, 1886, the first working Linotype invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler was hoisted up into the nonunion composing room of the New York Tribune, under the eye of its publisher, the villain of my tale, Whitelaw Reid. From Hot Type:
At the start of July 1886, a decade after he first met [his muse, James O.] Clephane, Mergenthaler supervised the installation of a Linotype in the New York Tribune composing room. “Through the Frankfort Street end of the composing room ran a huge flagpole,� that machine’s first operator, John T. Miller, recalled fifty years later, in a commemorative issue of the company newspaper, The Linotype News. “To that pole, that memorable afternoon in 1886, a block and tackle was attached. Nine stories below, in the street, was the first Linotype. It was completely boxed, and on top of it stood a man to guide it up through the network of telegraph wires. . . . As the man who made the dangerous ascent (I’m sorry I can’t remember his name, if I never knew it) threw one leg over the large window sill, he gave loud expression to his relief.� The composing room foreman gave that man thirty-five dollars for his perilous duty. “And soon Ottmar Mergenthaler and Charlie Letsch� — a nineteen-year-old assistant who had accompanied the machine from Baltimore — “had the Linotype in working order.�
The Tribune composing room was lined with hundreds of compositors’ typecases, which ran from one side of the building to the other. There were also three Burr machines, an unwieldy typesetting device that had survived multiple inventors, owners, bankruptcies, and names (it was later called the Empire). The Burrs composed and distributed type as [the machine Mark Twain backed] Paige’s Compositor did, a letter at a time. “The middle one of our three Burr machines had been shunted aside to make way for the new device,� Miller recounted. “Naturally, the arrival of the new and improved contraption made a big stir. All of us who could manage to, crowded about for a good look at it. Most of the hand men didn’t think much of it, and many said so. Even we Burr operators were a little skeptical.� The Burrs would soon be sold and four more Linotypes ordered.
The New York local of the ITU — known as Big Six — had a spy in Reid’s scab composing room. “‘The experiments were carried on in a partitioned-off end of the composing room floor, doors locked: entrance, except to pass-holders, forbidden,� J. W. Sullivan of Big Six recalled years later. “But one of № 6’s half dozen card men under cover on the then non-union Tribune got me a sketch of the machine with some of its type-faced slugs, explained its principles. . . . I could not rid myself of the conclusion that Gutenberg’s epoch-making invention of movable types had had its day.�
Here’s the surprising bit: The ITU did not forbid the machine. It embraced the machine, but under one condition.
The next year, the ITU dispatched “some of its most thoughtful and conservative members� to witness an “improved Linotype first-hand and report back. “It was found that this machine was capable of some excellent work, considered from a mechanical stand-point, and produced lines perfect in spacing and with a clear face, from which plates were made as readily as from type,� their report said. The delegation gathered data from twelve days’ work in one composing room in Brooklyn and another in Manhattan, where an experienced compositor was pitted against an expert typist. (The typist was a tad faster.)
The committee came away with a recommendation impressive for its foresight: “It is concluded that printers ought to stand ready to operate the machines, and that unions should in no way discourage their use, but should insist that their members be employed� to operate them. “It is not thought that there is anything apprehensive in the situation or that there is need of a panic in typographical circles.� They advised against “the foolish effort to stand in the way of mechanical improvement.�
And so, the typographers’ union made a bold and strategic decision not to reject the Linotype but to control it. On March 3, 1889, a newspaper publisher asked the union whether it would object to his introduction of a machine. “It is the sense of this union,� №6 resolved in reply, “where an employer desires to introduce typesetting machines the union should merely insist payment of the scale of the union and the employment of its members to do the work.� The national union followed suit, directing that “where typesetting machines are used, practical printers shall be employed to run them and also that subordinate unions shall regulate the scale of wages on such machines.� . . . .
The ITU came to recognize the inevitability of technology invading its sphere. “This is the day of the machine,� said a report to the union’s 1893 convention. “The machine is with us, and it behooves us as craftsmen to get closer together, en masse, and take care of it in a manner to show our appreciation of so important an invention and reap whatever benefits it may be possible for labor to derive from labor and dollar-saving machines. The web press is with the pressmen as the typesetting machine is with the compositor.�
It was a risk. By one accounting, the ITU lost 36,000 positions in short order, including older members who felt incapable of learning a new way to work. But with the new technology, media industries exploded.
“After 5 years the trade has about adjusted itself to normal conditions, and the membership of the printers’ union is to-day greater than its membership of compositors ever was,� the ITU’s Donnelly testified in 1900. “The policy adopted by the typographical union was not to oppose the machine, but to admit its success and make the best of it; to try and master it,� he explained. “The spirit that was manifested by the members was something of this kind: ‘Here is something that will take my bread and butter away from me and I must try and become its master.’ They endeavored to learn the machine as quickly as possible.�
One key to printers’ survival and success was that publishers chose not to pocket their machine dividends — a 66-percent saving in the cost of typesetting, with half the errors to boot. Instead, proprietors invested in more, bigger, and more competitive publications.
In my research, I was impressed to see federal commissions convened at the turn of the century to study the impact of new technologies on work and the economy. If only our current government were capable of such sane and sober study and analysis of AI’s entry into the workplace and culture; we need it.
There seems to be a lesson in the ITU’s actions: Rather than fighting and trying to forestall the inevitable arrival of new technology, it is better to take control of it. That worked well for the ITU for three-quarters of a century as it lobbied successfully for the eight-hour work day and drastically improved the working conditions — and health — of its members. The ITU — and particularly New York’s Big Six — became immensely powerful.
Until they weren’t/ In the 1960s and ’70s, new technologies threatened: punched paper tape that could run a Linotype without an operator, like the robot it appeared to be; cold type (shining light through letters onto photographic paper to set text); computerized hyphenation and justification of text; computers in newsrooms, allowing publishers to “save keystrokes� and eliminate typesetting in composing rooms; and finally PostScript, which turned letters into shapes to be described to and displayed by computers and printers.
This time, the ITU tried fighting the technologies. A series of strikes over these issues killed six of nine New York newspapers — and eventually the union along with them.
The lessons the ITU and its leadership faced with these new technologies was different from the lessons learned with the Linotype. For all these fascinating stories, you’ll need to buy the book.
Happy Labor Day.
The post Labor and the Linotype appeared first on BuzzMachine.
Direct electric freight rail is not speculative technology. It already operates across enormous railway systems, moves very heavy freight and works in difficult climates. The interesting North American question is therefore not whether electric freight rail can work, but where catenary should go first, where batteries or dual-mode locomotives make ... [continued]
The post US Lobby’s $1.1 Trillion Freight Rail Electrification Study Intentionally Asked The Wrong Question appeared first on CleanTechnica.
With thousands dead across Europe this summer, it’s time to recognise heatwaves as the major natural disasters they are
The numbers are now trickling in: nearly 2,900 dead in the UK, at least 35,000 dead across Europe. That’s how many people are believed to have lost their lives in this year’s early-summer heatwaves – the death tolls for the August heatwaves have yet to be counted. In a sense, these people died in a series of natural disasters, similar to the hundreds who died last month after flooding in Nepal, or during the 2024 floods in Valencia, Spain. And yet we do not process these events the same way. Increasingly deadly heatwaves are the most direct and damaging effect of the climate crisis felt in Europe, but they are rarely framed as such.
There are some obvious reasons for this. Heatwaves by definition unfold over longer periods than other disasters, they are less dramatic, the majority of those who die are elderly or otherwise vulnerable, and their deaths often take weeks or months to be catalogued and reported, all of which make heatwaves seem less immediate and visible. But while heatwaves will probably never provoke the same visceral shock as earthquakes or tornadoes, it should still be possible to shift the way the public thinks about them, which could save lives and lessen their damage.
Continue reading...Yesterday I was working in my home office when I suddenly remembered that the first IU football game of the season was on. So I went downstairs, turned on the TV, found the Indianapolis station carrying it (we still use an antenna here, 60 miles away), and started watching in time to see what I thought was the worst thing I have ever seen on a football field: a quarterback's head being rotated 180° by a face-mask grab. The quarterback was Josh Hoover, a top-ranked transfer from TCU. I thought he might be dead, face down on the grass while his helmet was elsewhere. But he got up, bleeding from the face, and stayed in the game. Three plays after the penalty, he threw a perfect touchdown pass. Indiana went on to win, 56-16.
Michael Elliot has an excellent recollection of WQDR, one of the great rock radio stations of all time. In its prime the station was a client of my ad agency, and many of its personalities became lifelong friends. (Most of those date back to their time at then-tiny WDBS, about which I've written here and here.)
As farmers grapple with soaring diesel and fertilizer prices and the Department of Agriculture yanks support for cheaper, renewable forms of energy, the agency’s chief, Brooke Rollins, is carrying millions in highly profitable oil and gas investments.
It’s no surprise some analysts say we are already in the midst of the third world war, but ordinary people have more power than we think
Don’t look up! The world is a mess. The sky could fall in any day. Unending wars, expanding humanitarian crises, rising authoritarianism, dysfunctional democracies, rampant racial and religious extremism, and unchecked lawlessness cast a dark cloud as the west’s new political year begins. Set all that against a backdrop of staggering global economic inequality, corporate and individual greed, irresponsible government indebtedness, dangerous AI gambles, climate breakdown and proliferating nuclear weapons, and a truly apocalyptic global outlook begins to take shape. It’s enough to make anyone shut their eyes, cover their ears and utter a Munch-like scream. And it’s only getting worse.
Democratic leaders who promise a better, safer, more optimistic future – what Britain’s freshly arrived prime minister, Andy Burnham, calls a “new era of possibility” – cannot escape this wider international context. Last week’s global bond market upheaval, sparked by external factors, left Burnham’s cash-strapped government struggling with sharply increased borrowing costs before he barely got started. The fact he chose Ukraine for his first overseas trip, while symbolically important, highlighted another grim reality. As a lead opponent of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Britain now finds itself in a de facto state of war with Russia – and facing attack. Argentina, too, is eyeing UK defence vulnerabilities. These are not the sort of possibilities Burnham envisaged.
Continue reading...
Virginia Mom Gets 6-Month Suspended Jail Sentence for Letting 5-Year-Old Walk to the Pond is a story in Reason, which adds this subhead: “The government also placed Karyann Parkinson on its child abuse and neglect registry, where she will remain for seven years.” The distance to the Pond was half a mile.
I turned five in the Summer of 1952, and started kindergarten that September at Maywood Avenue School (where Mom would later become a beloved third- and fourth-grade teacher for many years). The walk from our house on Edel Avenue to the school was .7 miles:
On the first day of Kindergarten (Mrs. Roth’s class), Mom walked me the whole way, noting landmarks I should remember, because I couldn’t yet read. Over the first week, she would walk me progressively less of the way, so I could walk the rest alone. At the end of the week, I walked the whole way myself, sometimes alone, sometimes with other kids. (This was early in the Baby Boom, and there were a zillion of us. We often moved in herds.)
In 1953, we moved to Woodland Avenue, on the right side of the map above. I walked from there too. After school we’d often go play in Borg’s Woods, on the right edge of the map. It wasn’t a nature preserve then; it was just the Borg family’s woods, and they liked to let kids play in it. Mr. Borg lived on Summit Avenue in Hackensack and ran what was then the Bergen Evening Record, our region’s newspaper. (It’s now just The Record.) The Borgs also let kids sled on their steep backyard, which sloped down into the woods.
My point is that kids then were raised to raise themselves, kind of like wild animals. Parents were attentive and caring, but valued freedom for, and from, their kids.
It wasn’t much different when my oldest two kids were small in the 1970s. We lived in North Carolina (Chapel Hill, mostly). When they were small and could walk to places alone, they just did. Nobody freaked out. (We lived out in the country, so I did drive them to schools.)
It’s different now, in too many ways to describe. We live in a far more information-rich environment: one in which there is far less privacy, and an infinitude of digital distractions. Parenting is much more of a project. Schooling is almost totally different, except that most schools still sort kids by age into grades and test the shit out of them.
I don’t have a lesson to impart here. I’m just noticing the changes, the differences, the way lives knit together, then and now.
In June, Germany’s Manager Magazin reported that Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume had a plan to close four factories in Germany and eliminate 100,000 workers, both in Germany and around the world, by 2030. It said the plan would be made public at a company board meeting on July 9. The Volkswagen factories ... [continued]
The post Volkswagen Superviosory Board Approves Plan To Slash Models & Reduce Workforce By 100,000 appeared first on CleanTechnica.
If you are thinking about buying an electric car, just do it, buy a pure battery electric car! A battery electric vehicle (BEV) is more reliable, more convenient for local driving, smoother, and better accelerating. You can drive a BEV anywhere in the US on major highways without worrying about ... [continued]
The post Is Owning A Plug-in Hybrid Like Kissing Your Sister? appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Renewable energy and storage are credited with resolving longstanding grid reliability issues in Texas, even during extreme hot weather.
The post Renewable Energy And Storage Solve Massive Grid Problem In US appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Here is some stuff I’ve noticed, thought about, or wrapped up, while ending a summer of travel and work (the order is random):
The unprecedented event is predicted to reach tens of millions of people around the globe, as well as hitting food prices in the UK. MPs from across parliament are calling on the government to rethink Britain’s substantial aid cuts to Africa to Asia given the scale of the potential impact. Nick Ferris reports
A scandal-besieged Reform still has a loyal base that won’t budge. That should free up the PM to deliver some home truths
Despite the bright start to Andy Burnham’s premiership, and Reform UK’s sudden disarray, a shadow still hangs over British centre-left politics. Labour has a small poll lead, a cautious air of confidence and a leader who seems energised rather than overwhelmed by trying to solve the country’s problems. Meanwhile, Reform is having a terrible 2026: mired in deepening funding scandals, losing winnable byelections and, thanks to the drama and novelty of Burnham’s leadership coup and new government, no longer the freshest story around.
Yet Reform UK’s support has either held up or fallen only slightly in most polls since Burnham entered Downing Street. Even in the Makerfield byelection, where he beat it more decisively than expected, Reform’s vote share and total support actually rose. Nigel Farage may have spent the year uncharacteristically avoiding journalists, or in his prickly rather than jolly public mode, but the overwhelming majority of Reform supporters, almost a quarter of the electorate, remain faithful. “Power is within our grasp!” insisted Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, at its party conference in Birmingham on Friday, and they applauded with determined gusto.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Homeowners in Hispanic and Black communities nationwide are paying a disproportionate share of skyrocketing home insurance costs, according to a recent report. The disparities leave communities of color at greater risk as climate change increases the frequency of billion-dollar disasters.
A mistake in the federal documents offering public land in Wyoming for oil and gas leases has Cowboy State residents and environmentalists questioning whether government agencies are prepared to handle President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.
Hydrogen cost forecasts often borrow one of the clean-energy transition’s most useful empirical tools: the experience curve. If a technology has historically fallen by a given percentage in cost every time cumulative deployment doubles, analysts can estimate how many doublings lie ahead and compound the learning rate into a future ... [continued]
The post Hydrogen Learning Curves Are Counting The Wrong Doublings appeared first on CleanTechnica.
In a recent post on X, Elon Musk lauded Tesla Australia in reaction to this post from Tesla Australia and New Zealand: “For the first time ever, EVs outsold ICE vehicles in Australia 🇦🇺 Model Y was the #1 vehicle & Tesla the #3 best-selling brand overall for the month ... [continued]
The post Musk Congratulates Tesla Australia — August EV Sales Update appeared first on CleanTechnica.
What are crack spreads and why are they elevated? Crack spreads are indicators of the profitability of refining crude oil into petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel. One common crack spread is calculated by subtracting the spot market price of a gallon of crude oil from the wholesale price of ... [continued]
The post Elevated Crack Spreads & Crude Oil Prices Contribute to Higher Prices at the Pump appeared first on CleanTechnica.
States again failed to agree on a deal following pressure from a small minority of fossil-fuel producing nations and division among progressive states. Negotiations at the IMO have drawn a blank for the third meeting in a row, as US and Saudi-led efforts to scupper progress were successful. With delegates ... [continued]
The post Global Maritime Decarbonisation Stalls Despite the Accelerating Impact of Climate Change appeared first on CleanTechnica.
How to deliver resilient critical raw material supply chains, vital for Europe’s clean tech, with investment, partnerships and industrial policy. The EU is heavily dependent on imports of raw materials and is failing to catch up with investments globally. At the same time, the recent energy crisis has highlighted the ... [continued]
The post EU CRM Centre: How to Secure Critical Minerals appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Hyundai Motor Group Signs Historic Partnership Agreements with Oman’s Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology The Group Teams Up with Mwasalat to Launch Oman’s First Hydrogen City Bus in Muscat Oman Oil Marketing Company and EV Charging Brand EVO Join Forces with the Group to Build 240kW Ultra-Fast EV ... [continued]
The post Hyundai Motor Group Partners with Oman to Drive Green Mobility Transition under Oman Vision 2040 appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Hyundai Motor and KOICA launch ‘Hyundai-KOICA NextGen’ in Ghana to train skilled automotive technicians and strengthen the country’s workforce development system Under KOICA’s Inclusive Business Solution (IBS) program, which links corporate resources and strategies with official development assistance (ODA), Hyundai Motor and KOICA will jointly fund the KRW 5 billion ... [continued]
The post Hyundai Motor & KOICA Launch “Hyundai-KOICA NextGen” to Train Ghana’s Future Automotive Talent appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Energy Transfer, the Dallas-based pipeline giant facing a state-level criminal probe related to a jet fuel spill that polluted drinking water in a suburban Philadelphia neighborhood, is seeking to have part of Pennsylvania’s 89-year-old Clean Streams Law declared unconstitutional.
The volume of patients in Dr. Robert Brewer’s upstate New York emergency room isn’t always predictable, but when there’s a heat wave, he knows he needs to staff up.
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.
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