Latest Articles

What the Keystone XL delay means for tar sands and the green movement

The Obama administration announced late last week that the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline is going to be reassessed and possibly rerouted, delaying the final decision on its fate until after the election. The coalition that fought the pipeline — enviros, indigenous communities, Nebraska farmers, etc. — is, naturally, over the moon. (See Bill McKibben here […]

Wind electricity to be fully competitive with natural gas by 2016

Photo: Vlasta JuricekCross-posted from Climate Progress. The best wind farms in the world are already competitive with coal, gas, and nuclear plants. But over the next five years, continued performance improvements and cost reductions will bring the average onshore wind plant in line with cheap natural gas, even without a price on carbon, according to […]

Has government spending on energy research been a waste?

Cross-posted from the Council on Foreign Relations. Steve Mufson had a piece in the Washington Post Outlook section this past weekend suggesting that the $172 billion that the U.S. government has spent on early stage energy research since 1961 has largely been a waste. (I say “suggesting” rather than “arguing” because Mufson doesn’t quite make […]

Letter from an imprisoned activist: Time to ‘play dirty’ for the climate’s sake

Delaying a decision on Keystone XL doesn’t redeem Obama’s failure to take advantage of his opportunity to turn the tide of climate change.Photo: The White HouseIt goes without saying that politics is a dirty system. It’s so dirty that I believe there are only three reasonable approaches to politics: apathy/despair, overthrowing the system, or playing […]

The trouble with urban farming: What if your turkeys are cute?

Kiera Butler is not a farmer. She and her friends have been raising their Thanksgiving turkeys in a backyard for six months, but they're not accustomed to killing animals for food, and they've gotten kind of attached to the little guys. Here's Kiera's story, originally Storified by Mother Jones, about the weirdness of knowing that […]

Hilton hotels recycle soap for charity

Pretty much nobody besides Eloise and Leonard Cohen stays in a hotel for long enough to go through a bar of soap. They can't put your slightly-used soap out for the next guest, though, so hotels throw out more than 2.5 million bars a day. Hilton Hotels have now realized how stupid this is, and […]

Grassroots pesticide fighter takes on the big polluters

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 […]

Why the right wing fears climate action (and it’s not because they’re crazy)

Conservatives have drummed up unprecedented devotion to climate change denialism by invoking the specter of anti-capitalism, writes Naomi Klein in The Nation, and they're not really wrong. Combating climate change will mean overhauling the free market economy and contracting the corporate sector, and people whose livelihoods depend on big business have a reason to be […]

Airlines race to be first to fly with biofuel

One day, maybe, planes will be able fly on electricity alone, but until then, the best chance they have to get off gasoline is to switch over to biofuels. And that's actually happening! Over the summer, two biofueled flights made it across the Atlantic, and now Alaska Airlines is pushing an ambitious commercial biofuel flight […]

Why cities should destroy their highways

America has a huge transportation infrastructure deficit, which means lots of our highways are due to be rebuilt. But according to Next American City editor at large Diana Lind, we'd be better off simply knocking them down, especially the ones that blight our cities. It's been done before, reports Andrew Nusca at SmartPlanet: After the […]