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AOL celebrates Earth Day

AOL is celebrating Earth Day with a special website that features 11 ways to "save the planet & your wallet" (ubiquitously sponsored by GM's "Live Green, Go Yellow" campaign).

Topics include: driving, wear, home, yard, appliances, careers, investing, travel, eating, partying, and kids.

Several of the categories are accompanied by 30-second video clips featuring Peter Horton, Bradley Whitford and, of course, Laurie David (she's everywhere!).

And for all you AOL instant messenger users, Earth Day buddy icons!

And they even list Gristmill under their green blogs recommendations. Gee, thanks AOL!

It’s All in the List

The First Ever List of Grist Superlatives is now live. Who's the hottest eco-model? The mustachiest geo-green? What's the kinkiest eco-innovation? The most self-defeating anti-Kyoto argument? Check out our picks, then tell us what we botched, missed, or totally nailed.

Chip in the news

Still more laudatory press coverage for our Maximum Leader, this time in the form of a story from the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), in which Chip participated lo many years ago.

It's a great story, but if I can raise the question on everyone's mind: Why must every story about Chip feature him standing on his head? What's up with that?

We’re So Vain, We Think This Party’s About Us

A dispatch from the launch party for Vanity Fair‘s green issue In case you haven’t noticed, we’re pretty dang excited that our own Chip Giller made the glossy green pages of the latest issue of Vanity Fair. And Vanity Fair‘s pretty excited to exclaim to the world that they’re turning an environmental corner. This week, […]

It’s All in the List

Our list of environmental goodies, oddities, and inanities We thought about being earnest this Earth Day — compiling some sort of inspiring list of in-the-trenches eco-heroes who need recognition and encouragement — but then we remembered: we’re Grist. So we bring you instead a capricious rundown of our favorite highs, lows, and wacky bits of […]

Canadian tar sands

Everything you ever wanted to know about the burgeoning efforts to suck oil out of the Canadian tar sands in an enormous, magisterial story by Marianne Lavelle in U.S. News & World Report.

Really shameless plugging

Turns out CSPAN2 will be carrying our Climate & Culture panel live on Thursday at 12:30 pm EDT. Tune in or watch it here. It's not Vanity Fair, but it's a start ...

A bipolar solar disorder

Last night, Nova tackled an interesting, less-discussed danger from pollution: global dimming. It hasn't gotten that much attention (outside of Grist, of course) but Nova presented a very compelling and rather harrowing picture.

Basically, while the earth has been getting warmer due to greenhouse gases, it has simultaneously been getting cooler due to a layer SP50 sunblock made up of smog particles in the air. As a result, the globe is like a guy who drinks fifty cups of coffee a day and then pops five Valium and proudly declares he's "in the zone."

It's easy to imagine how the distraction faction would use this to cast doubt on the whole idea of global warming. "What's with these egghead scientists? Is the globe getting warmer or colder? Make up your mind!" Well, we know it's getting warmer. So here's the scary part: the dimming of the sun has been masking the full effect of global warming, which may be much further along than we previously realized. We've been reducing the particulate smog that causes dimming for the past few years, and we're starting to see an accelerated shift. Once this guy gets off the Valium, he's going to be on one hellish caffeine kick.

An eco-pentathlon puts students to work on Earth Day

As your Outlook/Blackberry/secretary administrative professional has no doubt alerted you, Saturday is Earth Day: a celebration of all things green and, um, earthly? A celebration not lost on the youth of today. And since lists of the best ways to help the planet on Earth Day are all the rage these days -- hell, even Vanity Fair's green issue has one -- I've decided to compile one of my own.

Or rather, I'm reprinting one put forth by the University of Montana - Missoula. And this isn't just any list of five things you can do to help the planet. This is an eco-pentathlon! I'm serious! It appears to be a tradition at the school. A series of service events are set up at various locations on or near the campus on Earth Day, and eco-pentathletes ride their bikes from one event to the next, working about an hour at each.

Here's the line-up for Saturday's events:

• 9 a.m. - noon: Help clean up the Clark Fork River.
• 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.: Work on prairie restoration at Mt. Sentinel.
• 1-2:30 p.m.: Dumpster dive and sort recyclables.
• Noon - 4 p.m.: Build a bike at the Festival of Cycles.
• 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.: Do farm chores (make compost, plant trees) at the PEAS farm.

Whew! What a (Earth) day!

Know of any other cool Earth Day related events happening at a campus near you? Post 'em in comments!

Gas prices

Since everybody else on the planet is commenting on the issue, I suppose I should as well:

No, high gas prices are not the result of oil-company price gouging or nefariousness. It's the market balancing supply and demand (i.e., you, dear consumer).

Yes, politicians -- mostly Democrats -- attempting to substitute oil-company bashing and demagoguery in the place of real energy proposals deserve only snorts of derision.

No, it would not be a good thing for gas to be cheaper. It's been artificially cheap in the U.S. for a long time, but it's inevitably going to rise. Get used to it.

That is all.