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SmartPlanet is not going green

SmartPlanet is a newish venture from CBS Interactive. It promises to cover many of the topics that Grist readers (and staffers) care about. But there’s no mention of “green” on its About page, and barely a mention of “eco.” That would not have been true just a year or two ago. Finding ways to talk […]

Palin urges America to stay addicted to oil

In 2006, President Bush famously said in his State of the Union:   Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology … By applying the talent and technology […]

U.N. scientist refutes Daily Mail claim he said Himalayan glacier error was politically motivated

In an exclusive interview  — “exclusive” in the sense that many of the people smearing Dr. Murari Lal haven’t bothered to ask him whether the original story was accurate — Dr. Lal asserts that the “most vilest allegations” in the Daily Mail story are utterly false. Sunday, the Daily Mail’s David Rose wrote a sensational piece supposedly based on direct […]

Pseudo-science begets pseudo-insurance — and another phony attack on the IPCC is debunked

Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man. It is jointly responsible for the rise in severe weather-related natural disasters, since the weather machine is “running in top gear”. The figures speak for themselves: according to data gathered by Munich Re, weather-related natural catastrophes have produced US$ 1,600bn in total […]

And the winner of the USDA food safety sweepstakes is …

Dr. Elisabeth Hagen! No, you’re not expected to know who she is. Suffice it to say that, as anticipated, USDA Chief Tom Vilsack turned to an under-the-radar choice for Under Secretary of Food Safety. Hagen, currently the USDA’s Chief Medical Officer, will, if confirmed, take charge of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which […]

Would you trade a bigger house for more happiness?

In New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s column on Sunday, he recounts the story of then-14-year-old Hannah Salwen and her dad Kevin, and how a chance encounter with a homeless man catapulted their family into swapping their high-end home for a more modest abode and donating half of the proceeds to charity. Just reading that […]

Washington Times puts screws to city’s food provider, Chartwells

By some sort of crazy coincidence, a reporter for the Washington Times was investigating Chartwells, the contracted food provider for D.C. Public Schools, at the same time that I was spending a week in a school kitchen discovering just how bad our school food is. Times reporter Jeffrey Anderson, meanwhile, reveals in a report today that Chartwells […]

Tales from a D.C. school kitchen: Better school food — can we get there from here?

Ed Bruske recently spent a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School in the District of Columbia observing how food is prepared. This is the last of a six-part series of posts about what he saw. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest […]

Is there anything left for America to manufacture?

Growing up in the 1950s, “Made in Japan” was synonymous with “cheap junk.” Responding to the needs of a world that hungered for more labor-saving devices, Japanese manufacturers shifted to higher-value products and quality improved. Today, “Land of the Rising Sun” companies like Honda boast the hydrogen-powered Clarity automobile and Toto makes high-tech toilets that […]

Supreme Court ruling increases importance of local energy

The vision of a massive nationwide superhighway of high voltage transmission lines may have died last week in the Supreme Court. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.   Overshadowed by the (terrible) Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court essentially upheld the right of states to block high voltage transmission wires. At issue was the […]