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Popular thoughts about climate change

Weather you’re a conservative, an American, or everyone else, we fear you may feel like just another statistic in this wryly scientific graph. —————————————————————————————————————————————————– Like what you see? Sign up to receive The Grist List, our email roundup of pun-usual green news just like this, sent out every Friday.

Home Star advances in the House

The Home Star program, which could jumpstart a national revolution in residential energy efficiency, is one tiny step closer to becoming law. The House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment on Wednesday passed the Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010, which could create 168,000 jobs by investing up to $6 billion in residential energy efficiency […]

Food, Inc Director says "It's not just about food, it's about our right to know" (VIDEO)

Robert Kenner’s documentary about the industrialization of food got a plug from Oprah, was nominated for “Best Documentary” in this year’s Academy Awards and has its PBS premier on April 21st. He came to the Planet Forward studios to respond to questions posed by our members, including a fifth generation family farmer who’s intimately aware […]

How Energy Efficient is a Doublewide? (Not very)

Have you ever stopped to think about the energy efficiency of a doublewide?  DOE is about to do just that, having initiated a rulemaking to develop mandatory standards for manufactured homes (basically a building code) under order from Congress to finish by 2011.  I just drafted and submitted NRDC’s comments to the docket. Most people […]

How the West is Winning Against Coal

There is so much good news coming out of the western U.S. these days on coal and clean energy. First up – another domino fell for the Blackstone Group. Blackstone had been funding the construction of three new coal-fired power plants in the U.S. (I’ve written about them before). Last month the River Hill plant […]

Van Jones: “I feel like I’m just getting started”

Van JonesBy now the Strange Episode of Van Jones is well known in and outside of politics. Jones became White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs in March of 2009. Shortly thereafter began a summer of crazy, as Tea Party activists stormed congressional offices and the air waves, shouting warnings of incipient tyranny. In July, […]

LA Turns Lights on Deadly Coal, Bright Clean Energy Future

  As I drive down the crowded LA freeway this evening, I will consider these facts: According to a fairly recent study, California’s costly dependence on faraway coal-fired plants in Arizona and Utah results in an estimated 67 million tons of global-warming carbon–“the global warming pollution emanating from these smokestacks is equivalent to the emissions […]

Ask Umbra dives deep with ocean advocate Sylvia Earle

Water, water everywhere, but is it on the brink? Not if oceanographer Sylvia Earle has anything to do with it. Dearests, meet Ms. Earle, an aquanaut, author, and one of today’s greatest advocates of the ocean—also, I suspect, a direct descendant of Poseidon. (I’ve asked for funding from Grist for a DNA test to be […]

Weird and wonderful places to live

The New York Times Magazine did a photo spread of some rather extreme conversions of churches, shipping containers, water towers, and even caves. We do our own roundup of TreeHugger favorites: A chapel converted to residence by ZECC Architects. Churches ZECC Architects, beloved of their conversion of a water tower into a residence, are at […]

The health-care act requires calorie labeling at fast-food joints

  From Marion Nestle: The impossibly impenetrable health care bill that just passed the House has one little piece of good news buried in it: national calorie labeling. The provision covers chains with 20 outlets throughout the country and is supposed to go into effect in a year or so.  It also covers vending machines!  […]