Latest Articles

If you want a green building, make it out of wood

The third little pig might have staved off disaster, but the second little pig was the greenest, according to the USDA. The agency looked at dozens of studies comparing wood to concrete and steel and declared wood the winner when it comes to emissions. Attempts to use materials other than wood in construction yield, on average, 2.1 tons more greenhouse gases per ton of material. 

Laugh at the crying Indian all you want — the joke’s on us

Remember the crying Indian in the 1970s TV commercial? Well, he's back, and this time, he's not sad -- he's pissed.

The most beautiful anti-GMO T-shirts you'll ever see

Threadless, which has long been the thinking person's purveyor of silly T-shirts, just ran a design contest with an anti-GMO theme. Artists submitted designs that conveyed a "no GMO" message, and 25 percent of profit from sales of the winning design will go to the Institute for Responsible Technology, which fights GMOs in the United States.

Australia is so, so screwed

It's possible that the 19th century British powers-that-be were just running a really, really long con when they sent their convicts to settle Australia, because anyone who lives there now is royally screwed. In Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell chronicles exactly how screwed. (Answer: Royally.)

In the few weeks he was there, Goodell encountered:

a record heat wave, a crippling drought, bush fires, floods that swamped an area the size of France and Germany combined, even a plague of locusts.

And in the longer term,

What water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, long a major food exporter, will be able to feed itself in the coming dec­ades. The oceans are getting warmer and more acidic, leading to the all-but-certain death of the Great Barrier Reef within 40 years. Homes along the Gold Coast are being swept away, koala bears face extinction in the wild, and farmers, their crops shriveled by drought, are shooting themselves in despair.

Can you raise chickens in a one-bedroom apartment?

Well, it's not a good idea, but you can, according to the New York Daily News. They've got a story about Robert McMinn and Jules Corkery, who are raising three hens in their one bedroom in Queens.

Living off the grid: SUPER FUN

You know that fantasy you have where you move to Maine, go off the grid, and raise your children to know what nature and good old American values are like? Well, one family is living that fantasy, and writing about it for The New York Times.

All summer, Craig and Susannah Hopkins Leisher have been living with their three sons in a cabin in the Maine woods.

South Pacific islands are in water crisis

Man, Tuvalu just can't catch a break. The island nation is getting slowly submerged by climate-related sea level changes -- and now, in addition to having too much water, they have not enough water. Tuvalu and nearby Tokelau have declared water emergencies because of fresh water shortages; they're relying on bottled water for drinking, but some areas have no more than a two-day supply. Samoa is starting to ration water as well. Maybe they can get some from Fiji.

Critical List: E.U. could ban tar-sands oil; solar industry ‘a real mess’

Yesterday, an E.U. commission got behind environmental standards that could keep tar-sands oil from being used in Europe.

Another nuclear reactor in Japan shut down.

Clean energy investments can only go so far in keeping China's emissions down. The country will meet its environmental goals in the short term, researchers say, but it’s growing too fast for its emissions to stay manageable for long.

Can you build a house for less than a Macbook?

MIT challenges architects to design a house that costs $1,000. Here’s how one student came tantalizingly close.

Sen. Lamar Alexander on making bipartisan energy progress

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) tells Grist why he's crossing party lines to slash energy company subsidies and pour money into cleantech research.