Latest Articles

Big Cities Want Big Changes in Energy

Today I’ll focus on yet another community suffering from coal’s pollution – but this community is a little bit larger, and it’s on the front end of an emerging trend. The city is Chicago and it’s starting what could be a national movement to clean up dirty energy in the inner city. Some of our […]

Whistle while you work

  How does my garden grow? Quite well, but with lots of weeds to pull!(Steph Larsen) Living in a place where I can grow things makes me want to burst out in song. And I’m not alone — there’s a long and storied tradition in many cultures of making music while we work. Long before […]

Utilities are trying to pull off the scam of the decade

I’m technically on vacation, but there’s an extremely important fight going on in the background right now so I want to weigh in, even at the risk of irritating my long-suffering family. Here’s the deal: Right now, two things are happening in parallel. The first is getting all the attention, but the second is, in […]

California attorney general sues Fannie & Freddie over PACE clean-energy programs

Jerry Brown wants to face Fannie and Freddie down.California Attorney General (and candidate for governor) Jerry Brown sued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac today for blocking Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs. There’s a good chance that Fannie and Freddie’s legal costs from defending this suit will add up to more than they ever stood […]

Got a killer smart grid idea? General Electric’s got $200 million to spend on it

GE’s stylish WattStation electric car charging station.Photo: GE Jeff Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, flew into San Francisco to announce on Tuesday that GE was hooking up with prominent venture capital firms from Silicon Valley, the East Coast, and Europe to offer a supersized version of the X Prize for smart grid innovation. (GE […]

Grist president gets a pie in the face

Here at Grist, we are berry grateful to all our lovely, generous readers who donated during the May 2010 “Save our endangered journalists” fund-raiser. We were thrilled to hit our mark of 2,000 delicious donations. Behind the scenes, we set our own challenge: Our President and Founder, Chip Giller, offered to let us throw a […]

Has Congress run out of time for school lunch and food safety?

The reauthorization of the Childhood Nutrition Act, which includes the National School Lunch Program, took a major step forward today. The House Education and Labor Committee “marked up” the bill, which means it considered a set of amendments with the intention of moving the bill out of committee and to the House floor for a […]

Dear Old Spice Man, will using your product make me, um, less manly?

Dear Old Spice Man, I see you a lot on TV lately, running around with your shirt off telling me that I won’t be a man if I don’t use Old Spice Body Wash. I hate commercials that blatantly play at gender stereotypes. But I’m not gonna lie, these ads (and your response videos) do […]

How a river went from diversity to dumpsite

A sign near the Cal Sag channel, part of the Calumet River System, warns against “any human body contact.”Photo courtesy Tom Gill via FlickrThe Grand Calumet River is about 13 miles long and flows through one of the most industrialized areas in the United States. At one time, the river’s branches and tributaries flowed throughout […]

Fear of job losses and oil-industry incompetence feed debate over drilling freeze

A stormy debate is brewing over the offshore drilling moratorium.On Monday, the Obama administration unveiled its do-over plan to temporarily stop deepwater drilling. On Tuesday, the heads of the commission created by President Obama to investigate the BP spill told reporters that maybe the moratorium should be lifted sooner rather than later. “What’s up with […]