Latest Articles

Scare trade: Halloween candy you can feel good about

Photo: Nina HaleFor most of us, Halloween has a strong association with candy. When you’re little, you get to dress up and run around your neighborhood collecting it for free. When you’re a bit older, you get to dress up, get drunk, and buy it steeply discounted on Nov. 1. And when you’re a parent, […]

True confessions of a bicycle scofflaw

Photo: mad driversOkay, confession time: I’m one of “those” cyclists. You know, the ones who are giving us all a bad name, the ones who think we’re above the law, who regularly pass through stop signs without stopping — even without slowing down very much. I even ran a red light or two in my […]

Obama administration hires former TransCanada lobbyist

Apparently the Obama administration has given up on even pretending it can make an unbiased decision on Keystone XL. After hiring a TransCanada-affiliated firm to do the environmental assessment for the pipeline — a move so corrupt that even Congresspeople noticed — the administration has now taken on a former TransCanada lobbyist as a senior […]

China pours money into smart grid technology

Cross-posted from Center for American Progress. There is no way to get around this fact — China aims to modernize its energy infrastructure at home and dominate clean energy technology markets abroad. At the 2011 Smart Grid World Forum in Beijing late last month, China’s State Grid Corporation announced plans to invest $250 billion in […]

Happy warrior: Fighting coal where it’s hardest

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 […]

Students and campus food workers unite for Food Day

Northwestern University dining hall workers celebrating new contract as part of the students’ living wage campaign.“They took our knives and gave us scissors to open bags of frozen food. I want my knives back so I can cook again.” That’s what a kitchen worker at a prominent university told me recently at one of a […]

Solar airship is most efficient way to fly, ever

How can you carry huge amounts of cargo thousands of miles with no fuel and no infrastructure? By combining an airship with an airplane, of course. The resulting wing-shaped blimp requires less helium than a conventional dirigible, but has a shorter takeoff than an airplane. Hybrid Air Vehicles has been proposing this for years, but upstart […]

Why are all the ‘most efficient states’ blue states?

    This year's list of the top 10 most energy-efficient states looks an awful lot like the map of red and blue states from the 2008 election. (Data were compiled by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.) We're not sure why. Got an opinion? Share it in the comments.

Let’s cover Mt. Everest with solar panels

Less atmosphere between solar panels and the sun equals more power converted into electricity, says a new map of global solar irradiance. That means high-altitude communities — like every mountain chain from the Andes to Patagonia — could be the next frontier in producing solar power. In addition, the cool temperatures at altitude make panels […]

7 billion, unpacked — a comic

The world population is hitting 7 billion. But what does that really mean? In this comic, we unpack some of the numbers and nuances. Click the image below to view the comic, and then click on each page to go to the next one: For those without javascript enabled, here are links to each page: […]