The Santa Clara solar-panel manufacturer Miasole is about to be sold overseas, and possibly dissolved. Its technology is an innovative threat to some existing manufacturers. In fact Miasole’s thin-film manufacturing technique, which can reduce the amount of expensive materials needed by more than 90 percent from conventional solar cells, is a breakthrough technology that will be lost to the United States without immediate action.

Miasole is a very real, productive company, with a 150 million-watt-per-year production facility in California, and more than 60 megawatts already deployed in commercial operation. Miasole is, or was, the third largest thin-film solar energy producer in the world, and has achieved an industry-leading 16 percent efficient solar panels.

Miasole’s planned rollout of thin and flexible solar cells could revolutionize installation and expand market opportunities, further reducing costs. These achievements are based on their patented production process, in which the layers of the thin film are deposited onto a 3-foot-wide sheet of stainless steel foil as it passes around the periphery of large circular production machines.

As an economist trying to predict the costs of climate change for Colombia's government, Ana María Loboguerrero got a sense of what was at stake when torrential rains triggered floods throughout the country in 2010 and early 2011, killing hundreds of people and wiping out entire towns.

The disaster gave Ms. Loboguerrero a feeling of urgency when she was accepted last year to be part of the first group of Fulbright Nexus scholars. The Nexus program was started in 2010 by the U.S. State Department to facilitate academic exchange between the Americas and generate research on global problems.

CALGARY — Newly-elected President Barack Obama will look to Canada for co-operation in implementing new policies to combat global warming, predicts a U.S. environmental expert.

The topic of climate change — absent from much of the recent American election campaign — appears to be back on Obama’s agenda after the president directly referenced global warming in Tuesday’s acceptance speech.

“We want our children to live in an America ... that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet,” he said.

California starts the ball rolling Wednesday on a controversial scheme to keep the planet from overheating. Businesses will have to get a permit if they emit greenhouse gases.

Some permits will be auctioned today; the rest are free. The big idea here is the state is putting a ceiling on emissions.

It's a gamble. And for this top-down climate plan to work, it has to usher in a greener, more efficient economy.

Read full article for Kammen's response.

A big auction ended here in California. On offer, more than 60 million tons of carbon pollution. Sort of. The state auctioned millions of permits to emit carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases. And with that it launched one of the biggest markets for pollution in the world.

Read full article for Kammen's response.