Latest Articles

It’s all about independents — and independence

The amazing table above comes from a new Allstate/National Journal/Heartland Monitor poll of 1200 Americans conducted January 3 to 7 .  Even after a multimillion dollar disinformation campaign funded by big oil and corporate polluters, the public still understands that the climate bill would help the U.S. economy (unlike their view of the bailout bills […]

Climate Policy Lessons From France

I loved French President Sarkozy’s carbon tax proposal, so it was disheartening to see it get mauled by lawmakers: “We will not touch households, hauliers or fishermen,” Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told reporters. Industries such as metals and refineries, seen as major polluters, were spared under the earlier tax plan… Borloo announced plans to launch […]

JP Green House intern dines with construction crew

Five construction workers and I crowd around a covered picnic table outside a run-down little house on the outskirts of Boston. Formerly a 100-year-old neighborhood store called "Jack's Corner Store," the place was abandoned for five years before current owners Ken Ward and Andrée Zaleska purchased it in 2008.

Coal ash first real test of Obama commitment to health and safety regulation

A critical test of the Obama Administration’s commitment to reviving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is teeing up behind closed doors at the White House. Once again, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is cast in the role of regulation killer, supported by a slew of state and other federal agencies that are polluters […]

A video for the Gourmet-nostalgic

For those nostalgic for Gourmet Magazine, a group in which I count myself, here’s a kind of cheerful wake: a video symposium (impossible to embed, damn it) on the fallen magazine featuring editor Ruth Reichl, restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, and senior editor Laurie Ochoa. Watch it and chuckle a bit at the earnestness, and weep […]

NYT’s Kim Severson on the value of school gardens

Anyone who has come home from school carrying a sprouting bean in a foam cup can attest that growing plants has long been used as a teaching tool. — Kim Severson of the NYT slips a full-throated defense of school gardens into a profile of a new Brooklyn Edible Schoolyard Project

Tales from a D.C. school kitchen: How foods that don’t occur in nature end up on your kid’s plate

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 second of a six-part series of posts about what he saw. Read parts 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest […]

Copenhagen Accord is the priority, says U.S. climate envoy. But what about a binding treaty?

U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern.A month after he rode herd at Copenhagen’s COP15 climate talks, Todd Stern is exhorting participants to make the outcome of the conference meaningful. “Life needs to be breathed into the Copenhagen Accord,” the State Department’s special envoy for climate change tells Grist. He insists that the three-page document represents a […]

Who will make the first move toward a clean energy future?

Last week several hundred investors huddled together at the U.N. with government officials and non-profit groups to discuss one thing — carbon. They heard from U.S. climate change negotiator Todd Stern, international political royalty, and a host of economic prognosticators about topics including the recent talks in Copenhagen, potential Congressional action, and whether new clean […]

Why are libertarian right wingers defending a dysfunctional, state-engineered food system?

Such scenes would not be possible without government policies that encourage cheap corn. Why do conservatives fetishize indsustrial food, again? Wikimedia commonsBack in 2002, in the right-wing National Review, Rod Dreher declared the rise of the “crunchy cons” — political conservatives who had come to value alternative food systems and reject the dreck served up […]