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Conoco Your Own Way

First major U.S. oil company joins coalition to limit greenhouse gases You thought the times were a-changin’ in the ’60s? Meet 2007, baby! This week, ConocoPhillips became the first major U.S. oil company to join the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of green groups and corporations begging Congress to impose federal limits on greenhouse […]

Umbra on baby gifts

The first step is to know what you want.

Psst, LNG, We Hear Florida’s Easy

Natural-gas projects denied in California, let pass in Maryland If liquefied natural gas is the beleaguered suitor, California is the popular girl who keeps turning down earnest proposals. Yet another LNG terminal, this one off the coast of Ventura County, is off to the bar to drown its sorrows after a state commission voted Monday […]

Will Johnson Stand Firm on Emissions?

EPA finalizes renewable-fuel standard, evaluates emissions ruling With much fanfare, the Bush administration has finalized a renewable-fuel standard for cars and trucks. The rule, mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, requires 4.7 billion gallons of motor fuel — a little more than 4 percent of the total produced — to come from renewable […]

Read it all, yo

The piece on Grist in Outside magazine — which we mentioned here — is now online. You’ll want to read every last delicious word! And while you’re at it, enter their contest: send a funny Gristy headline for the piece to mesofunny@outsidemag.com and win a two-year subscription. One thing I wanted to say about it, […]

Dry As a Slightly Moist Bone

Aral Sea restoration project nets $126 million more from World Bank When is a sea not a sea? When it’s a desert. Over the last five decades, the inland Aral Sea — which straddles the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan — has shrunk to a fraction of its original size, thanks to Soviet policies that […]

Maybe the Manatees Would Do Better in the Arctic

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers fate of two beloved critters The proposal to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act inspired more than 500,000 emails and oodles of snail mail before yesterday’s public-input deadline. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will read what could be a record number of comments; activists […]

Career Fields of Gold

An overview of the growing options for green-job seekers T.S. Eliot once wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” Not so for environmental-job seekers, says Kevin Doyle of the Environmental Careers Organization. In fact, he says, this April could almost be certified “cruelty free.” In the latest installment of his recurring column for Grist, Doyle reviews […]

Calamitous climate projections from U.N. panel, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: We Hear Mars Is Nice This Time of Year Grinding to a Halt Drown and Out X Marks the Pot How Do You Like Them, Apple? Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Rogers and Me The Warm on Terror Good Grooming […]

Umbra on water conservation

Dear Umbra, Your general drift has been to get us to focus on the big stuff instead of the little paper-or-plastic issues. So what’s the big picture of household water use and overuse? I have a clothes washer and a dishwasher, I wash dishes in the sink, I take showers and flush every time I […]