Latest Articles

Ask Umbra: Living up to a New Year’s resolution for meatless Mondays

How can a dedicated chicken-wing lover make his way through 52 Meatless Mondays? Umbra arms the goal-oriented Wing Man with inspiration and tips from the author of The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook, Kim O'Donnel.

Top five forest stories of 2010

In the context of an overall bleak 2010 for the planet, forests offer a bright point for some celebration.

2011: The year we’ll hit 7 billion

Sometime in the latter half of this year, the world population will hit 7 billion people. Already? Didn't we just hit 6 billion? Yep, a mere dozen years ago.

2010: The year childfree went mainstream (thanks, Oprah!)

Childlessness is nothing new — for as long as we’ve had parents, we’ve had people who are not parents. Across centuries and cultures, at least 10 percent of women never have children, writes Elizabeth Gilbert. But it is relatively new to have a cohort of people who are deliberate, outspoken, and even proud about being […]

Dark days for solar? Huge California project sold off

A setback for efforts to meet California's mandate to obtain a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

The 10 most popular Grist posts of 2010

From Audi ads to BP coffee spills, with locavore ball-busting and Obama-baiting in between, here are the stories you loved to debate this year.

The urban landscape from A to Z

We’ve covered a lot of urban ground in the past year, so we thought it would be fun to take a look back (and a couple of peeks forward) by going from A to Z in the urban alphabet. Here are some of the things we’ve been watching, and will continue to school ourselves on. […]

iPadding into the future

The iPad has been one of the most hyped gadgets of 2010, and I have to say, after just a few days of using one, the buzz is mostly deserved. But what has really grabbed me is the iPad’s potential as a green machine — to the extent it makes the printed page if not […]

Obama calls NFL Eagles owner about clean energy (oh yeah, and Michael Vick)

Did Obama call Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie to praise his decision to let Michael Vick return to the team ... or to discuss clean energy?

Farmer-scientist group wants to 'hack society' through open-source technology

The Open Source Ecology team's ambitious first project is the Global Village Construction Set -- a sort of life-size Erector set of the most essential machines for building a "small civilization with modern-day comforts."