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Food giants pile on salt to tart up flavorless dreck

Piled on my desk on either side of my computer are several packages of convenience foods and one chocolate bar. The foods range from instant macaroni and cheese and cornbread mixes to canned soup, canned tuna, canned beans, and a Styrofoam container of instant, microwaveable macaroni and cheese. Of the eight items, only two – […]

Never mind what people believe — how can we change what they do? A chat with Robert Cialdini

When it comes to energy, policymakers are often confronted with human behavior that seems irrational, unpredictable, or unmanageable. Advocates for energy efficiency in particular are plagued by the gap between what it would make sense for people to do and what they actually do. Efforts to change people’s behavior have a record that can charitably […]

India, Italy, Brazil can fill America’s blanks

Americans pride themselves on being ________ (fill in the blank with something like “biggest,” “best,” or “first”). Especially in California, we think we lead the world on carbon-reducing advances like ________ (fill in blank with “solar power,” “energy efficiency,” or “suntanned, body-builder, movie star, Austrian-born governors”). Given Obama’s U.N.-busting initiative in Copenhagen last month, our […]

[UPDATED:] FDA’s food safety blogger doesn’t think meat safety is a problem

The WaPo and the NYT are now reporting that Michael Taylor has been officially named deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA. What remains fascinating is that both articles, like Taylor’s blog post at the Atlantic, continue to ignore meat safety. It’s only mentioned in passing in the context of Taylor’s past stint as head […]

Climate success in 2009 should inspire the new year

Co-written by Doug Kendall, founder and president of the Constitutional Accountability Center. For good reason, many climate activists view 2009 as a disappointing year, filled with bad news coverage and missed opportunities. The Senate seems a long way from passing a clean energy jobs bill, and the long-anticipated U.N. summit in Copenhagen has come and […]

America's Century-Long Love Affair with the Car May Be Coming to an End – Data Highlights

Between 1950 and 2008 more cars were added to our roads virtually every year as the total fleet expanded steadily from 49 million to 250 million vehicles. In 2009, however, 14 million cars were scrapped while only 10 million cars were sold, shrinking the fleet by 4 million vehicles, or nearly 2 percent. With record […]

Copenhagen revealed a new dynamic between the U.S. and China

This week, Seed magazine hosted a discussion on the Copenhagen climate talks — the outcome and the lessons learned — called Good Cop, Bad Cop. Contributing were K.C. Golden, environmental non-profit policy director, Mike Hulme, climate change scientist, Michael Levi, energy security expert, and yours truly. Click over to Seed to see all the contributions. […]

‘Water’ author Stephen Solomon talks resource intelligence

Author Stephen Solomon recently suggested we need an “Al Gore of water” — a public champion to raise the profile of water scarcity threats and opportunities, as Gore has done for climate change. Solomon, an economics journalist, makes a bid for that role himself with his new book Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, […]

Grist exclusive: A fiery battle over land in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest

On the Arapiuns River, barges of illegally taken timber smolder after being set aflame to protest logging in Gleba Nova Olinda, Amazon Rainforest. All photos: Brenda Baletti While world leaders were meeting in Copenhagen to address the challenge of climate change last month, indigenous and traditional Brazilians in the Amazon region were gathering to defend […]

Winter cold no match for spicy kimchi stew

Kimchi: king of condiments. Photo: April McGreger I love how my cooking business binds me to the seasons. The seasons change, and I fall in line. August provides me more work than I can complete in a day; late January cuts me some slack. Every year I seem to overdo it as the busy harvest […]