In 1844, railroad magnate Isambard Kingdom Brunel had the sort of problem most technology developers would envy: his new technology worked. The idea was atmospheric railway propulsion. Take the locomotive off the train. Instead, place stationary steam engines along the route, use them to pump air from a pipe running between the rails, put a […]
OFFICIAL: Bring out your carbon! Bring out your carbon! (A FORESTER steps out from behind a bush, holding two pinecones.) FORESTER: Got some here! (The Official stops the cart, takes one of the pinecones, examines it through a magnifying glass, and pokes it with a stick.) OFFICIAL: That’s not carbon. FORESTER: Of course it’s carbon. […]
It’s an otherwise forgettable puddle by the side of Highway 2 in Iowa, just outside of Clarinda. I know, you’d rather look at the magnificent corn. But, let’s look at that little speck of algae, swimming toward the light. That one, over there, the green speck in the puddle, moving towards the light source outside […]
Off the Heathrow Express and into Paddington Station. London! Now, where the devil am I? Johnny’s on his first UK trip. Paddington is enormous: trains, platforms, soaring arches, and signs pointing toward other signs. Hotel first? Walking, driving, or the Tube? There are black cabs outside, which feels very British, but there is also an […]
In India, Gujarat and Assam chief ministers and the federal ports minister laid the foundation stone for the country’s first port based e-methanol plant at Deendayal Port in Kandla, Gujarat, where the 150 tonne per day facility will supply the fuel to ships on the Asia to Europe trade route. The almost $240 million project […]
When the Pittsburgh Penguins lowered Mario Lemieux’s iconic Number 66 from the rafters on a cold December night in 2000, it was not merely an athletic resurrection, but a masterclass in the quiet economics of unannounced capability. Lemieux had survived Hodgkin’s lymphoma, endured years of crippling spinal agony, and spent forty-four months in retirement while […]
From beaver pelts to pulp and paper to carbon, Québec’s forests keep finding something new worth carrying to market. Joachim LeBer has been paddling since dawn. Imagine him in 1685, twenty-one years old, his paddle finally resting across the gunwales of a birchbark canoe somewhere near Trois-Rivières. Behind him lies the St. Lawrence, the great […]
Six weeks before Election Day, the political clock is ticking, the diesel pump is running, and America’s bioeconomy is confronting an investment horizon measured in decades. It’s 6:30 in the morning here in Digestville, and time to read the overnight news releases, scan the headlines, check the latest project announcements, and see what the world’s […]
A young woman is tied to the railroad tracks. A villain, having twirled his mustache and completed his wicked work, has departed the scene. Rumbling nearer and nearer is a locomotive, its iron wheels screaming against the rails as its smokestack belches smoke into the desert sky. The heroine struggles. The ropes hold. The air […]
In Shenandoah, Iowa, where the corn rustles in the night, and in the towering timberlands of Washington’s Columbia River Gorge, the Senate Agriculture Committee’s proposed 2026 Farm Bill is a blueprint for survival. Between a statutory promise penned in Capitol Hill committee rooms and a real paycheck deposited into a small-town bank account lies an […]
