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The do-nothing energy tax: $3 gasoline dead ahead
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. The mounds of snow blackened by auto exhaust have barely melted in Washington, D.C, yet the Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook already predicts that average gas prices “will exceed $3 per gallon” in coming months: Average U.S. pump prices likely will exceed $3 per gallon at times during […]
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We all know how bad it can be. How good can it be?
A few reader comments worth highlighting from this story on envisioning a sustainable future: davefinnigan: We need a film, 2 hours in length, with a plot and story line, that shows the world in 2050 if we do what we know we should to solve environmental problems. Who could produce that? George Lucas, James Cameron? […]
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A messy but practical strategy for phasing out the U.S. coal fleet
By 2030, we have to stop emitting greenhouse gases from coal. That conclusion is most famously associated with NASA’s climate chief James Hansen, but Hansen is not alone. In a recent paper, nine other climate scientists — David Beerling, Robert Berner, Pushker Kharecha, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark Paganini, Maureen Raymo, Dana Royer, Makiko Sato, and James […]
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Farm lobby’s lawyer appointed as Ag Committee’s counsel
Here’s object lesson No. 452 in the ongoing corrosive handover of government power to corporate interests. And no, I don’t think I’m exaggerating. Over at Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard details the high-speed revolving door permanently located between the offices of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and several top energy lobbying […]
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Citizens gather in Washington to end 'mountain bombing' of Appalachia
More than 200 citizen lobbyists from across the nation gathered in Washington, D.C. this week to urge Congress to pass legislation curbing mountaintop removal. This especially destructive form of coal mining involves blasting off the tops of Appalachian mountains and dumping the waste into headwater streams below, a practice known as “valley fills.” The activists […]
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500 Words for Change in America
Folks across the country know something is wrong. There’s just something about the system we’ve created over several decades that is inherently flawed. Some blame the government, others big banks, still others blame political parties, but all agree that there’s something that’s just not quite working the way it should. People are losing homes, jobs, […]
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Your street is fat
These California designers and their imaginations. Steve Price shows people what their towns might look like if they were rebuilt along Smart Growth principles. At Narrow Streets: Los Angeles, David Yoon takes comically overbuilt streets in L.A. and Photoshops them down to a human scale. Here’s his reinvention of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park: On […]
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Tasting five organic French roasts leads to buzzkill
Photos: Jason Houston To say that I love coffee is a big, fat lie. I need coffee in a chemically dependent way. Its effect upon me is essentially the reverse of those faces-of-meth photos. There are two things that can really screw up a good coffee buzz (OK, three if you count skim milk). First […]
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A Cleveland mall turns lost retail space into farm stand
Photo: Fast CompanyShopping malls, those bastions of American consumerism, have not been immune to the recent economic downturn. In a recent piece by our own Greg Lindsay, we looked at the impending decline of the mall, which is part of the “single-use environment” category of real estate development that will slowly disappear over the next […]
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Grist’s rejected punny headlines from the week of 1 March 2010
If you’ve ever wondered how Grist’s famous (and mysterious) pun machine works, wonder a little less. We present you with a glimpse into its inner workings: a list of rejected punny headlines scooped up from the last week’s digital cutting room floor. Please, enjoy the witticisms and groan at the miss-icisms. Story: James Cameron: I’m […]
