Latest Articles
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Germany is building a park on top of a highway
Germany's A7 Autobahn is like a highway on steroids. The 500-mile, six-lane road runs the length of the country and handles 150,000 bat-out-of-hell drivers a day. That might improve life for traffic fetishists or people who regularly need to get from Denmark to Austria at 100 miles per hour, but people who live alongside the […]
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Durban dispatch: Climate deniers rip Tutu
Canadian climate deniers gave Archbishop Desmond Tutu flack for speaking out against Canada’s oil sands.Photo: Greater Tacoma Community FoundationCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Activists used hundreds of LED emergency lights to spell “climate fail” across the Canadian Parliament lawn in huge, illuminated letters to send Prime Minister Stephen Harper the message that he must listen to […]
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White House to make $4 billion out of $0 using energy efficiency
Everyone says energy efficiency can pay for itself, and now the White House is out to prove it, by spending zero money to produce $4 billion. Yeah, I'm not making that up. From the administration: The $4 billion investment announced today includes a $2 billion commitment, made through the issuance of a Presidential Memorandum, to […]
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Has dense living gotten too dense?
Thinkers like Ed Glaeser, whose ideas have been discussed frequently on Grist, assert that density is an unalloyed good, and even Manhattan isn't dense enough. But there is another strand of thought about cities, which is that they are neither green nor sustainable, and it's exemplified by everyone's favorite foul-mouthed catastrophist, James Howard Kunstler. In […]
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Fair trade lite: Fair Trade USA moves away from worker co-ops
Maya Vinic Co-op in Chiapas, Mexico. Photo: Courtesy of Peace CoffeeCompared to so many other purchasing decisions — like which humane meat label to trust, for instance — the “Certified Fair Trade” logo has made buying ethically produced coffee a relatively simple choice. Most of us either buy fair trade or we don’t. But […]
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New York City’s new plan to improve street safety: Throw haiku at it
Janette Sadik-Khan, DOT commissioner of New York City seems to think the main challenge to street safety is not enough short poems. Thus, her new campaign: Making bikers and walkers safer through haiku. Not good haiku, either. Certainly not as good as the ones I can write! A sudden car door, Cyclist’s story rewritten. Fractured […]
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IKEA will ship disposable furniture on disposable pallets
IKEA knows from disposable. So when the company realized it could save money and shipping space by using cardboard shipping pallets, it tossed out its traditional wooden pallets like last year's BILLY bookshelf. The new pallets can support loads as heavy as the wooden pallets could, but they’re only a third as high and weigh […]
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America and Germany Getting Their Clean Energy Just Desserts
Germany is the unquestioned world leader in renewable energy. By mid-2011, the European nation generated over 20 percent of its electricity from wind and solar power alone, and had created over 400,000 jobs in the industry. The sweet German success is no accident, however, and the following pie chart illustrates the results of a carefully […]
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Critical List: $4 billion for energy efficiency; SUVs rise again
President Obama and former President Clinton are announcing $4 billion to make buildings more energy efficient over the next two years. A fierce wind storm hit the West yesterday, taking down trees and fanning fires. Coke ditched those white, pro-polar bear holiday cans preeetttty fast. Apparently they confused Coke drinkers, some of whom thought the […]
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Farming: A New York state of mind [VIDEO]
Farms aren’t the first thing that come to mind when one thinks of New York City. But walk along its streets and you will pass hundreds of urban gardens; jump across its rooftops and you might find yourself in the middle of a commercial farm. Heck, drive just 20 minutes from downtown and you could […]
