Latest Articles

Matthews tells Obama to kill BP’s disaster capitalism

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. On Monday, May 17, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews erupted in anger at the oil disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Matthews expressed his rage at the profits BP continues to reap as it fails to fix the growing environmental apocalypse. He also criticized the behavior of the Obama administration, which […]

Kids Books and Rainforest Destruction

Imagine your horror if you picked up a copy of a book on rainforests to read to your kids, intending to teach them good environmental values, and discovered that the book about rainforests was printed on dead rainforests. Unfortunately, in many American bedrooms tonight, that horror is likely to be reality. A report released today […]

Palin critique latest twist in BP slop

Photo: WikipediaAlmost five weeks into the BP oil disaster and we’re way down the rabbit hole. None other than Sarah “Drill, baby, drill” Palin wondered aloud on Fox News Sunday whether oil company contributions to the Obama campaign are to blame for the president “taking so doggone long to get in there, dive in there, […]

Coal’s dirty secret

The December 2008 impoundment failure at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant inundated a nearby community with toxic coal ash.Photo: United Mountain DefenseA special Facing South investigation. When a billion gallons of coal ash broke loose from a holding pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant near Harriman, Tenn. in December 2008, registered […]

BP still stonewalling EPA on dispersant chemicals

BP’s oil spill size cover-up started to unravel on Friday as BP finally admitted its figure of 5,000 barrels a day lowballed the true size of the spill. But another of BP’s cover-ups is still going strong. BP has already dumped over 700,000 gallons of chemical dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico – America’s public […]

A taste test of greener milks

Full Circle’s ultra-pasteurized offering, versus small-farm Blue Hill’s raw milk: Which mooved tasters the most?(Photos by Jason Houston) Putting aside for a moment the dietary arguments against drinking cow’s milk — we’re not calves, it’s liquid meat, it’s snot-producing, so hard to digest, etc. — conventional milk deserves vilification for many reasons. Conventional dairy’s ethically […]

10 transportation steps for kicking the offshore-oil habit

One of the most depressing aspects of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is the idea that we’ve got no choice but to rely on offshore drilling and the stomach-turning dangers it carries. We know all the problems with importing oil from petro-dictatorships. Electric cars aren’t ready to replace fuel-combustion engines. The only option, political […]

Ask Umbra on eco-fiction and hair donations for the oil spill

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I hate to bother you, but I tried doing a Grist search to answer my question and nothing really turned up. I was hoping you could recommend some environmentally aware fiction writers or books. I love Barbara Kingsolver, but have read everything of hers twice already. :) […]

Underground green economy employing millions

UPDATE: Thousands more people are now being employed in the “restoration economy” to clean up the oil spill. Jobs are just one more reason why we need a national effort to restore the Gulf ecosystem. There’s a new economy springing up around the country — but it’s operating almost entirely in secret. It’s called “the […]

The National Academies study, from a global point of view

A few days ago, I got mail from a colleague at Climate Action Network International, a communications guy, asking for a comment on the US National Academy of Science’s recent climate reports, or rather on the US emissions budget that is recommended / affirmed in these reports.   It turned out to be quite an interesting […]