Got a few grand to spare for a $3,000 phone? Yeah, we didn't think so. Nobody does -- and that's a problem for the makers of luxury phones, such as Motorola, Bang & Olufson, LG and Vertu. After years of chasing the ultra-wealthy with exclusive devices that carry designer logos and promise craftsmanship from materials such as sapphire and stainless steel, luxury phone makers are now pulling back. "The culture has shifted away from conspicuous consumption, so if you are ...

Microsoft had trouble solving the problems with its Vista operating system, so what are its chances of fixing climate change? The global software firm has created an online tool called Project 2 Degrees for cities across the world to monitor their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, the hope is, then do something about them. While Bill Gates' company have tailored an online carbon accounting tool for cities, businesses are increasingly turning on to the benefits and need to ...

Tendai Biti is Zimbabwe's outspoken finance minister and MDC party Secretary General. The 44-year-old lawyer has openly criticized president Mugabe and his government, but was the main negotiator in forging a coalition government. As well as working with his political enemy, he now has the daunting task of rebuilding a collapsed economy that had an inflation rate of 500 billion percent in December 2008 and and unemployment at 95 percent. The global software firm has created an online tool ...

Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article. Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more. This may not ...

When the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26, it was a landmark moment for environmental politics. If the bill passes the Senate to become law — no sure thing, given the 60 votes needed in the upper chamber — it would establish the first national caps on carbon emissions. It would also create what would almost certainly be the world's biggest greenhouse-gas market, since companies would have the option to buy ...

When the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26, it was a landmark moment for environmental politics. If the bill passes the Senate to become law — no sure thing, given the 60 votes needed in the upper chamber — it would establish the first national caps on carbon emissions. It would also create what would almost certainly be the world's biggest greenhouse-gas market, since companies would have the option to buy ...

At the end of the year, governments from around the world will meet in Copenhagen hopefully to hammer out a new treaty — the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 — to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions. Their lack of time aside, diplomats face a very large, very immovable hurdle on the way to a new Kyoto. Developed countries like the U.S., which refused to ratify the original treaty, are responsible for most of the CO2 in ...

With a razor-thin margin of just seven votes, the House of Representatives on Friday evening passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act — the first bill to put a fixed and declining cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Republicans and Democrats in the House spent much of the day sparring in sharp language over the bill, which will reduce U.S. carbon emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below by 2050. In the end, the vote ...

Scientists in the United States are developing a "synthetic tree" capable of collecting carbon around 1,000 times faster than the real thing. As the wind blows though plastic "leaves," the carbon is trapped in a chamber, compressed and stored as liquid carbon dioxide. The technology is similar to that used to capture carbon from flue stacks at coal-fired power plants, but the difference is that the "synthetic tree" can catch carbon anytime, anywhere. "Half of your emissions come from small, ...

A former motor-racing engineer has unveiled a prototype of a new hydrogen-powered city car which claims to emit less than one third of the carbon emissions produced by its nearest rival. The creators of the 'Urban Car,' UK-based company Riversimple, say the vehicle emits less than 30 grams per kilometer of carbon dioxide, less than one third of the carbon produced by the Polo Bluemotion. Riversimple founder Hugo Spowers has spent nine years resesarching and developing the prototype car. "I ...