Latest Articles

Which countries fail the most at climate leadership?

Sweden, the U.K., and Germany: The European trio leads the world in fighting climate change. That’s the finding of the most recent Climate Change Performance Index [PDF], which was released yesterday at COP 17 in Durban. But Swedes, Brits, and Germans shouldn’t cheer just yet; even their countries are not contributing their fair share. In […]

Study: The climate is changing faster than species can adapt

Whatever the Republican candidates for president may have told you, climate change and evolution are both realities of nature. But it turns out that in a fight-to-the-death throwdown, climate change would win by a mile. A new study published in the journal PLoS One has found that over the next 90 years, the climate in […]

U.S. 2020 climate treaty proposal isn’t a delay — it’s a death sentence

The U.N. climate talks desperately need a crisis. For the last 10 days, negotiations here in Durban, South Africa, have made little progress on the fundamental challenge these talks were set up to confront: how the world can come together to avoid catastrophic climate change. Instead, the pace of negotiations has been set by the […]

Is one of the top U.S. mercury polluters in your backyard?

I just came back from a trip to Illinois, where the state had the good sense to put mercury protections in place for coal-fired power plants back in 2006. Unfortunately, here in West Virginia and in most other states, there are no mercury protections in place whatsoever, because the coal lobby has spent the last […]

‘Organic water’ is a thing now

A German brand of bottled water called BioKristall has gotten the official go-ahead to market itself as organic water. That's right, not a single pesticide was used to keep away the insects that feed on water crops, and it didn't need any chemical fertilizer either. Thank goodness SOMEBODY cares about our health. Okay, now all […]

What are we made of? One word: Plastics

This story originally appeared in Urbanite. In What’s Gotten Into Us? Staying Healthy in a Toxic World, McKay Jenkins sounds an alarm on the chemicals that we unknowingly ingest and inhale daily.Photo: J.M. GiordanoAfter the discovery of a tumor near his hip, McKay Jenkins, married, father of two, began investigating the manufacturing and consumer use […]

Justin Maxson: An Appalachian trailblazer for sustainability

Grist is proud to present the Change Gang — profiles of people who are leading change on the ground toward a more sustainable society and a greener planet. Some we’ve written about before; some are new to our pages. Some you’ll have heard of; most you probably won’t. Know someone we should add to the […]

Durban dispatch: Fear of Kyoto commitment

An activist shows support for the Kyoto Protocol in Durban.Photo: Hollywood NorthCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. “Even if others are not, we are ready to take a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol,” said European commissioner for climate action Connie Hedegaard. Australia and New Zealand, which sponsor the most developed carbon markets outside Europe, say […]

Samsung’s new Zombocalypse-proof appliances

Samsung's new line of energy-efficient, even solar-powered appliances that are robust in the face of power fluctuations and outages were built for Africa (that’s why they’re called “Built for Africa”), but they have “catastrophist stocking stuffer” written all over them. And Samsung knows it — how else can we explain their promo shots? This girl […]

Potato chip advertising is a perfect metaphor for income inequality, says science

A study just published in Gastronomica proves that appealing to our tribal identifications is hardly the sole domain of liquor and cigarettes. The authors use "the language of food to examine the representation of socioeconomic class identity in contemporary America by comparing the advertising language on expensive bags of potato chips with that on inexpensive […]