Latest Articles
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‘End of Oil’ author warns enviros not to exploit Gulf oil spill
Paul RobertsPaul Roberts, author of the influential 2004 book The End of Oil, cautions that we can’t expect the end of oil spills any time soon. Environmentalists are using the ongoing Gulf of Mexico disaster to argue for a permanent stop to offshore drilling, but reality check: the U.S. is decades away from shedding its […]
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A new café owner forages and finds a fresh take on sustainability
From activists to politicians, everybody loves to talk about the promise of green jobs. But in reality, who the heck actually has a green job, and how do you get one? In our new column, “I Have a Green Job,” Grist will be regularly profiling one of the lucky employed who has landed a job […]
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UNC Decides to Move Beyond Coal; Plus Bonus Coal Ash News
Great news out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Today the University of North Carolina (UNC) announced that burning coal has no place in our clean energy future and is transitioning away from using pollution-rich coal power to power this nationally-ranked university. I attended the press with UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp as he outlined how they […]
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Municipal Energy Financing is Expanding: Is It Working?
Twenty states now allow cities and counties to finance energy efficiency retrofits and on-site renewable energy generation, with property owners repaying the loan with a property tax assessment. Five municipalities launched Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs in the past two years and these programs have spent $37.5 million to help enable close to 2,000 […]
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Against a torrent of oil, a trickle of responsibility
Of the many things lacking in the response to the BP spill, responsibility ranks pretty high on the list. From President Obama’s reluctance to reverse his decision to expand offshore drilling, to BP’s shameless attempts to play the innocent victim card, and the far right’s attempts to pin the blame on environmentalists, responsible words and […]
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Jon Stewart slams BP, oil-defending politicians, more usual suspects
Our customer research department tell us that some of you enjoy humorous video, watchdog journalism, holding politicians accountable, and biting media criticism. If that’s the case, we think you should know about this guy Jon Stewart: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Beyond Awful www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes […]
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What’s in your food that’s destroying orangutans?
Photo: Wikimedia Commons.Have you bought soap in the past week? How about lipstick? Cheerios? Soy milk? Today, a new report reveals that the nation’s largest private agribusiness company — Minneapolis-based Cargill — is a major culprit behind rainforest destruction. It turns out that Cargill, who both owns their own palm oil plantations and buys and […]
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Corn industry brazenly turns Gulf disaster into marketing opportunity
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (the dull gray color southeast of the Mississippi Delta) seen by satellite on May 1 Photo: NASAAs if being bombarded with oil from below and chemical dispersants from above weren’t enough, the Gulf of Mexico also has to endure marketing rhetoric from a long-time tormentor: the corn industry. Industrial corn […]
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Choosing sustainable sushi more important than ever, post-spill
In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related videos from around the Web. ————- There are lots of reasons to choose your sushi carefully: most salmon, shrimp, tuna, and eel come hooked to ecological disaster. Now, with the Gulf oil spill threatening the entire marine ecosystem that provides the bulk of U.S. shrimp and […]
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Away from the oil spill, signs of local progress
The Gulf oil spill story is too big to ignore right now. It’s a massive, toxic indictment of our dependency on fuels that fill our atmosphere with heat-trapping pollutants even when everything goes right. But there are other stories too big to ignore, including the story of people finding creative ways to escape the death […]
