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The Love Vote

Grist wins Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Magazine! Thanks to all of you — our dear, beloved readers — for wading through the labyrinthine Webby Awards site to vote for us. It worked! We won the Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Magazine. Some outfit called “National Geographic” won the “official” Webby (whatevs!), but […]

Move over HGTV, here comes GBTV

PBS is going to start airing a show called Building green in September.

A green-building TV show sounds interesting, but also makes me nervous. Will it be more of the shallow consumerism that defines most home shows? Or will it actually seek to give average people the comfort and confidence to try green-building projects themselves.

Another action item for renewables

I just got an email from the Solar Energies Industry Association (SEIA) asking for people to let their representatives know they support extending the 2005 investment tax credits for residential solar power and fuel cells. The credits are set to expire in 2007, but there's a bill being proposed to extend it another 8 years.

The next big vote on renewable energy

The next big vote on renewable energy won't take place in Washington. It will take place in Phoenix.

Some time this summer, the five commissioners on the Arizona Corporation Commission will vote on a proposed rule to significantly expand renewable energy in Arizona -- 15% renewables by 2025, 30% of that from distributed-generation resources like solar. We are talking on the order of up to 1,800 MW of solar: a very big deal. The emissions reductions are roughly equivalent to removing 1 million cars from the road -- not to mention jumpstarting the clean technologies of the future.

There is a precarious 3-2 majority on the Commission right now, and the usual suspects are gearing up opposition.

There's a public comment period culminating in a public meeting on May 23. Demonstrating the public mandate for renewable energy is critical. We've set up a petition -- if you live in Arizona, here's your chance to stand up and be counted. Or no complaining later.

All mixed up

Everyone knows you have to be careful about taking more than one prescription medicine at a time, since drugs can interact in strange and dangerous ways. A Google search of "dangerous drug interactions," for example, yields nearly 10 million hits.

Apparently the same is true of chemical contaminants in the environment. From Scientific American comes this troubling but none-too-surprising story (only part of which is free, unfortunately) suggesting that mixtures of toxic chemicals are often more potent and damaging than the compounds in isolation.

The Culinary Institure of America sells out to Coca-Cola

Undeniably, haute U.S. culinary culture has been a boon to the sustainable-food movement over the past 20 years or so. From Alice Waters' Chez Panisse to Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns to the star-studded Chef's Collaborative, high-end foodie institutions have largely rallied round the cause of local, environmentally responsible agriculture.

While their wares are generally reserved for the expense-account-positive, these institutions invest in their local foodsheds and have been a valuable tool in the fight against flavorless, environmentally and socially destructive food.

All the more shocking, then, the brazen corporate flackery being performed by the Culinary Institute of America, the premier U.S. cooking school.

‘Eco-terrorism’: Motive matters

Seattle Times reporter Hal Bernton had an excellent story on "eco-terrorism" in Sunday’s edition. Most of it will be familiar to readers of my obsessive blogging on the subject, but a couple of tidbits were new (to me). There’s this: In making its 2003 recommendations, the FBI Office of Inspector General said that funneling those […]

Density is political destiny?

The Poor Man is one of my favorite blogs, but I rarely get a chance to link there, since they rarely discuss green issues.

But this post offers an ingenious (albeit largely wishful thinking) argument. It begins with this delightful 'graph:

OK, so, I'm not saying that this country won't devolve into a fascistic hellscape of race warriors and man-eating rats, disintegrating beneath the weight of its own reactionary isolationism. But even through the first six years of "WPE: The Quickening," I've been able to remain relatively sanguine about our long term prospects for one reason: if you're a Republican, demographics are against you.

("WPE," as PM fans know, is Worst President Ever.)

The argument goes like this:

Readers talk back about Wal-Mart, endorsing Republicans, stupid puns, and more

  Re: Don’t Discount Him Dear Editor: That’s good news that Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. is taking his company down a greener path. But if he really wants to reduce his company’s production of greenhouse gases, he’s going to have to get his customers out of their cars. Retooling the big box is […]

Monday link dump, part two

I've been swamped, blah blah blah, here's some more good stuff to read:

* Engineer-Poet yells at the American people about high gas prices. It's for their own good.

* RealClimate reviews the three big climate-change books of the past year. It picks Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe as its favorite. (Denis Hayes reviewed the book for Grist; I interviewed Kolbert.)

* The Singapore Environment Council created some clever ads about air pollution. (via TH)

* Watthead brings news of a new bill just introduced by a bipartisan (through mostly Democrat) group of senators: the Enhanced Energy Security Act of 2006 (press release here). It is focused on long-term reduction of American oil use. Amazingly, it does more than subsidize ethanol. There are real conservation targets in there, as well as some stuff with light-weight and electric cars. It almost seems like -- dare I speak the words -- a good bill. Naturally it will die in committee.

* Jerome a Paris writes a piece of fiction: The Day of the Oslo Warning. Read it. (via EnergyBulletin)

* Bill Clinton gives good speech: