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Stopping the Murkowski Amendment

I suppose it might be sad to say that we were and were not surprised to hear this week that two dirty energy lobbyists helped craft the effort to neuter the Clean Air Act, which could next appear as an amendment to the Senate’s debt ceiling vote next week. If you missed it, the Washington […]

Mom-powered politics

Editor’s note: Anna wrote this post (and a few more) before she left on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl — Audrey — in December. All moms have a stake in public policies that affect the health and safety of their families. But as I’ve found throughout this series, pop-culture resources […]

Drought drives Middle Eastern pepper farmers out of business, threatens prized heirloom chiles

Editor’s note: This marks the launch of Climate Change and Food Culture, a series of posts by Gary Nabhan about how climate change threatens to stamp out some of the globe’s most celebrated foodstuffs, and along with them the farming and cooking cultures that created them. ————- Dazzling diversity under threat: a woman sells peppers […]

Dispatches from the Phoenix Green Building Conference

Recently, an interior designer and massage therapist named Becky Anderson helped me certify an Aspen Skiing Company building (Sam’s Restaurant) to LEED Gold. As a reward for her remarkable work, we sent her to the U.S. Green Building Council’s enormous, happening-like, and increasingly burning-man scale annual conference, which took place in Phoenix this fall and […]

Anti–school garden campaigner Caitlin Flanagan, on Colbert back in ’06

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Caitlin Flanagan www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy Okay, this post means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I really should have my nose buried in a report on consolidation in the agriculture sector, or be working on a real article. But ever […]

Raj Patel on Colbert

[vodpod id=Video.5067665&w=425&h=350&fv=] Raj Patel, author of the food-politics tome Stuffed and Starved, has a new book out on the failure of neoliberal economics. It’s called The Value of Nothing, after the immortal Oscar Wilde quote about how “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” A couple of nights ago (above), […]

Everyone wants a piece of Belize

One day in December, the residents of the seaside village of Punta Gorda in Belize looked out to the horizon and saw something unexpected: Jamaican fishing boats. They had arrived, unannounced and without permits, to fish in Belize’s diverse waters. Many of Punta Gorda’s local fishermen still work the shallow waters inside the Belize Barrier […]

Win a signed copy of ‘Antarctica 2041’! [updated]

Update: The contest is over–congrats to our five winners! Look for more literary competitions and lots of great reading tips at our new books page. Welcome, dear readers, to Grist’s first book review contest. There are prizes to be won, so listen up. We’re giving away five autographed copies of explorer Robert Swan’s arresting new […]

Past decade the hottest on record

The first decade of the twenty-first century was the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880. With an average global temperature of 14.52 degrees C (58.1 degrees F), this decade was 0.2 degrees C (0.36 degrees F) warmer than any previous decade. The year 2005 was the hottest on record, while 2007 and 2009 tied for […]

From dominant Monsanto to ‘innovative Med-American,’ tasty morsels from around the web

When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. —————- Get ’em while they’re hot.  • NPR delivers a blunt report on Monsanto’s dominant position in the seed industry, complete with farmers complaining about monopoly pricing. With this sort of straight talk in mainstream media, one […]