The "ozone hole" is not closing, and new industrial chemicals now threaten it.

1987 was before the World Trade Organization; the dominion of business over states was not as strong then. If the ozone hole were first discovered today, I don't think anything like the Montreal Pact would be possible, because chemical businesses would veto it.

Robots that can make t-shirts at high volume might put millions of garment workers out of a job in poor countries.

It's great to make things with high efficiency using automation provided everyone gets to share the benefits.

Burning the frozen methane hydrates from the ocean bottom would make it possible to push the world's temperature even higher.

It is good news that there is little chance of a catastrophic release of methane into the atmosphere from those deposits. But if that is because the methane gets converted to CO2 in the ocean, that replaces one danger with another.

Mozilla's free database of recordings of English speech could be crucial for free software for speech recognition.

Speech recognition done by by companies usually involves sending your audio to the company's server. It is foolhardy to allow such a device into your home.

Republicans in Pennsylvania want to make all protesters convicted of any crime in connection with a protest pay costs that no one could afford.

Governments must not have the power to make people pay for the privilege of saying controversial things.