Latest Articles

Otto, Nacin at Grist

Last week we were lucky enough to play host to two members of the WordPress core team last week here in our offices in Seattle.  If you ever get the chance to work with/learn from Otto (@otto42) and Nacin (@nacin) … well just do it!  Grist would not be what it is without the contributions […]

Rep. Cliff Stearns doesn’t understand how government subsidies work

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.)Photo: Republican ConferenceCross-posted from Climate Progress. So far this week, four of the world’s top five oil companies have announced more than $24 billion in third quarter profits. And by the logic of Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), that should mean those oil companies deserve more subsidies, not less. Speaking at a town […]

Molson Coors explains why it decided to give a crap about the environment

The problem with corporations trying to do the right thing is that even if they were actually being socially and environmentally responsible, who would know? I mean, everyone knows that it's written into our country's laws that corporations must be sociopaths who care about nothing beyond enriching themselves. So it's refreshing to see Eric Roston, […]

Distributed solar power gets more affordable

Solar economies of scale seem to be improving as the U.S. market matures, opening the door for much more cost-competitive distributed solar power.

Hybrid power plant turns wind directly into automotive fuel

Enertrag is a new hybrid power plant whose parent company invites you to "drive to [your] local petrol station and fill up with 50 litres of wind … !!!" Three exclamation points! Renewable energy has made Germans so adorable. Their website even has a picture of German chancellor Angela Merkel showing off a tank of […]

Mexico City’s ‘earthscraper’ would be a 1,000-foot underground building

BNKR Arquitectura wants to build a pyramid that penetrates nearly 1000 feet into the earth below Mexico City's largest and most historic public square. Its upper floors will be illuminated through a glass ceiling that will replace the paving stones of the current square, and its deepest reaches will receive daylight piped in from fiber-optic […]

Treatment of circus elephants worse than you ever imagined

Mother Jones has a long investigation into the treatment of elephants at Ringling Brothers. In short, the conditions they live in are beyond horrible. According to records and testimony turned up in court, trainers: beat elephants with hooks and other tools, while maintaining the animals are trained using only verbal cues and tenderly cared for […]

Don’t bag your leaves — they just go in landfills

Awesome, an excuse to be lazy in the fall! Melissa Hopkins, a spokesperson for the National Audobon Society, is encouraging people not to bag up their leaves, because 8 million tons of them end up in landfills every year. (The leaves are biodegradable, of course, but the bags are not.) Instead, you can compost them, […]

How to feed 7 billion of us without ruining the planet

Now that we’re surrounded by 7 billion of our closest friends, it’s probably a good time to talk about how we’re going to feed them. The government, along with corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, and others who are part of our current industrial agriculture system, will tell you that feeding the world is all about […]

World’s only white kiwi pulls through surgery

Manukura, the world's only known white kiwi (not an albino!), had endoscopic surgery Friday to break up a large stone she'd swallowed. Kiwis normally eat small stones to help with digestion, but Manukura's eyes were bigger than her stomach, and the stone got stuck in her gizzard. Doctors operated using a laser that's usually used […]