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Food Studies: Are you a super-taster?

Food Studies features the voices of volunteer student bloggers from a variety of different food- and agriculture-related programs at universities around the world. You can explore the full series here. Imagine a taste test that is based on genetics — on a person’s genotype — and how the results of that test could confirm or […]

We Did It! Americans Cheer EPA for First-Ever Protections Against Toxic Mercury

Are you one of the over 800,000 people who submitted a comment to the Environmental Protection Agency supporting proposed mercury pollution protections? Are you one of the hundreds who attended a public hearing in Chicago, Atlanta, or Philadelphia to support the draft standards? Are you one of the hundreds who attended a hair testing event […]

The world’s first solar menorah

Chanukah is all about fuel efficiency, so it seems appropriate that the town of Woodstock, N.Y., now has a solar-powered menorah. The menorah, one of the big electrical kinds that progressive towns put up next to their Christmas trees in order to be inclusive, has always spent the holiday season standing around unlit, because there's […]

Frame-out: Why reporters can't admit that Keystone Pipeline is a job-suck

Allow me to bury the lead. The Keystone XL pipeline is a climate disaster. I reiterate this, at the risk of what David Roberts calls “public flatulism,” because this post is about jobs, and I don’t want anyone to infer that any amount of jobs would justify committing climate suicide. IEA’s warnings against imminent climate […]

Bigger subsidies make bigger solar a bad bet

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Americans seem unable to resist big things, and solar power plants are no exception. There may be no reasoning with an affinity for all things “super sized,” but the economics of large scale solar projects (and […]

Keystone cave? No, Keystone Kabuki.

The payroll tax cut extension deal, approved by the Senate 89-10 this morning, is being widely reported as including a requirement that the State Department act on the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days. Talking Points Memo labels it a GOP win on Keystone, and Politico reports:Greens call out Keystone XL deal. However, David Dayen at […]

Truthy consequences: A world without Grist

It’s a cruel world out there, but at Grist we work hard to keep it habitable — or at least to keep you chuckling as it goes to hell in a carbon-colored handbasket. Yes, you could blow your cash on other things (Shake Weights!) instead of donating to Grist. But imagine a future without Grist […]

As Economic Growth Fails How Do We Live? Part I: The Four Horsemen of the Economic Apocalypse

As recently as a year ago it was considered heresy to suggest economic growth would not soon resume. Now, however, as The Big Engine That Couldn’t has faltered for several years, it is becoming increasingly clear the economy is running off the tracks.  Both investors and the public are beginning to realize the long-revered goal of endless economic growth […]

21st Century Activism: Why big business doesn’t always have to be the bad guy

Today is a great day for the future of the IT sector.   Over the past few years, we’ve campaigned hard against Facebook to get them to commit to clean energy – specifically, we wanted them to change their siting policy-the decisions that they make about how to power their massive football-stadium-sized data centers. When […]

Solar power can fit on existing land use

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. While large-scale solar creates contention between environmental advocates and renewable energy proponents, the truth is that there are thousands of acres in already developed land where solar can easily fit.  This infographic explains a few of […]