Latest Articles
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Fate of PACE clean-energy programs about to become clearer
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have shut down most of the nation’s programs using Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), an innovative tool (explained here) that helps Americans finance green improvements to their homes. Here’s the latest news: The Federal Housing Finance Agency will say Wednesday whether it will allow a 30-month pilot project for Property […]
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Global CO2 emissions fall in 2009, but the past decade still sees rapid emissions growth
The temperature’s rising; can the big carbon-emitting countries take the heat? In 2009, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China — the world’s leading emitter — grew by nearly nine percent. At the same time, emissions in most industrial countries dropped, bringing global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use down from a high of 8.5 billion […]
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The debut of My Intentional Life: Somewhat true stories of attempted sustainability
Welcome to My Intentional Life, Grist’s first original comic strip. In this debut episode, you’ll meet Gabriel Willow, and his pals Josh, Hunny, and Tracie, real-life roommates who are trying to live a more sustainable life in a Brooklyn brownstone. They’re raising a few eyebrows while raising a few chickens, and tending a roof garden and […]
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How trains replaced solar-powered transport and gave rise to the Farm Belt
Greens like me tend to fetishize trains. And for good reason. Why risk your life in a private, energy-intensive pod, negotiating traffic and the dubious decisions of hundreds of other drivers, when you could be comfortably reading on a subway? Who would endure the indignities of the airport for a short flight, if a high-speed […]
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Help kickstart a documentary on Haiti’s agricultural rebirth
Since 1981 the United States has followed a policy until the last year or so … that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so thank goodness they can leap directly into the industrial era. It […]
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BP Fails to Make Top Ten
Fingers crossed. BP’s oil leak has apparently stopped shy of 200 million gallons spewed into the Gulf of Mexico and a few million more burned off into plumes of toxic smoke. Many have dubbed it the worst environmental disaster in American history. In my view, it’s not even close, but shares a great deal in […]
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Accept more poison to get less carbon? Kill this crazy idea NOW
With an increase in industry’s toxic pollutants, will this be the fate of our water sources? In exchange for cutting their carbon emissions, power plants want to undermine the EPA and get permission to increase other kinds of dangerous pollution. They even want the go-ahead to dump more sulfur and deadly mercury into our air […]
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Prairie Crossing in Illinois: The ‘urban’ farm of the future?
Matt and Peg Sheaffer run Sandhill Organics in Prairie Crossing.(Michael Hanson) For the final stop on the Breaking Through Concrete tour, we’re gettin’ all peri-urban on y’all. It takes almost an hour to drive from downtown Chicago north on I-94 to the town of Grayslake, Ill., home of the Prairie Crossing residential development — “A […]
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A conversation with pro-drilling environmentalist Amanda Little [AUDIO]
Amanda LittleAlison Stewart of PBS’s Need to Know speaks with Amanda Little, a Grist contributor and self-proclaimed “pro-drilling environmentalist.” Little describes her personal experience on an offshore oil rig, her argument for continuing offshore drilling, and her optimistic belief that American ingenuity can solve our energy problems. Little is the author of Power Trip: From […]
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Google Energy’s big green power purchase
A wind farm in Iowa.Photo courtesy Edith OSB via FlickrGoogle is officially in the green energy business. The search giant announced on Tuesday that its Google Energy subsidiary signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy. Google will begin buying 114 megawatts of electricity from an Iowa wind farm on July 30. Google, of […]
