Latest Articles

How malls can save both the Earth and your ears

Photo: Carol LinWe’re big fans of anything that saves energy while generally improving your life — biking, for instance, or gardens. So we were psyched to hear that malls could save 1.18 gigawatt-hours of energy every year, and cut back 3,000 metric tons of CO2, just by turning off the Muzak. Enterprising Stanford students crunched […]

Snappy answers to stupid questions about smart meters

Smart meters are a revolutionary technology that could save money, save the planet, and enable a switch to renewable energy, so you’d think they’d be really popular with Californians, right? Except that California is also full of right-leaning tin-foil haberdashers and left-leaning hypochondriacs, says the New York Times. The two groups have formed an unholy […]

Why new dietary guidelines can’t solve the obesity crisis

Ahh, breakfast.Photo: Elana’s PantryThe USDA released a new set of dietary guidelines this week and the updated guidelines were enough to put nutritionist Marion Nestle in “shock”: I never would have believed they could pull this off.  The new guidelines recognize that obesity is the number one public health nutrition problem in America and actually […]

Bay Area hands out $3 million to install home electric car chargers

20 Blink commercial charging stations will be installed around the Bay Area.Photo: BlinkHere’s a mid-week dispatch from the green evolution in California. The Bay Area Air Management District on Wednesday granted $3.9 million to four companies as part of an effort to roll out electric car charging stations in 2,750 homes, as well as 30 […]

Costs of inaction: the economics of high-end warming

Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between the science and economics of climate change as great as in the dueling metaphors governing the impact of high-end warming: “collapse” (following scientist Jared Diamond) vs. “reductions in the rate of growth” (following all standard integrated assessment models in economics, including those of Nicholas Stern and the IPCC). By […]

Ask Umbra Book Club: Next week the discussion begins about Bill Bryson’s ‘At Home’

Dearest readers, I hope you’re reading this from the warmth of home. If where you are is anywhere like where I am right now, you’re glad to have good insulation, heat, and a roof over your head to keep the freezing rain off. But human beings have not always been so cozy. This and many […]

How the next farm bill could plant a new crop of farmers

Microloans could encourage young people to become farmers.Photo: Chewonki Semester SchoolUSDA Secretary Tom Vilsack recently called for 100,000 new farmers — a recognition that the U.S. farm population is aging rapidly. To create a revitalized, sustainable, and socially just food system, we need to cultivate a new generation of farmers — and quickly. But starting […]

Community wind projects still require financing acrobatics

Wind projects shouldn’t require financial acrobatics.Photo: Chris GawThis is part of a series on distributed renewable energy posted to Grist. It originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Community wind projects deliver larger economic returns and encounter less local resistance, but a new report released last […]

How to make sure there will be enough food

We shouldn’t be getting so much of our energy from cornfields.Photo: Ben HusmannToday there are three sources of growing demand for food: population growth; rising affluence and the associated jump in meat, milk, and egg consumption; and the use of grain to produce fuel for cars. Population growth is as old as agriculture itself. But […]

Senators support polluters over asthmatic children

National health organizations are not scoffing at the link between pollution and asthma.Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. As my colleague David Doniger explained, there’s a new pollution promoter on the scene, and his name is Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). Barrasso has introduced a bill (S. 228) that would allow unlimited carbon dioxide pollution […]