Latest Articles
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Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1
More work than anyone imagined — watch a slideshow of the project unfolding.Leise JonesIt is worth noting that the original JP Green House budget for the first year of the project was $25k. In retrospect, this was woefully inadequate, but by no means out of line with the four previous rehabs I had completed. We […]
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Clean energy opportunities
Earlier this month, the Department of Energy announced $155 million worth of grants to clean energy projects -- specifically targeted to CHP, waste heat recovery, and district energy. There's an even better backstory.
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Reinventing the JP Green House
For the last year and a half, Ken Ward and Andrée Zaleska have been rehabbing a 100-year-old former neighborhood store in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. They’re converting it into a home for their combined family, a community gathering place, and a zero-carbon demonstration home to inspire others — and sharing their journey in […]
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No to Obama’s agrichemical industry man, yes to Bed-Stuy Farm
This post marks the launch of “Plate Tectonics,” a new feature that highlights ways that citizen action can move the food system in more sustainable directions. —————– How do we stop this thing?Like many people, I applauded when Michelle Obama broke ground on her organic garden–and jeered when Croplife America, the pesticide industry’s main lobby […]
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15 people worth watching in Copenhagen [SLIDESHOW]
So who will be the real power players in Copenhagen? The official estimate for official delegates attending the U.N. climate conference hovers somewhere around a gajillion. OK, seriously, it’s a mere 20,000. Then there are thousands of activists, journalists, business leaders, and NGO reps who will be seeking the delegates’ ears. Here are 15 people […]
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Climate talks timeline: From 350 to Kyoto to Copenhagen and beyond
Whether you’ve been hitting snooze each time a global climate conference rolls around or you’re looking for a refresher before the Copenhagen climate talks coming up, Grist has an interactive timeline to bring you up to speed. And don’t forget to keep tabs on all our juicy coverage of the Copenhagen climate talks. The road […]
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Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
For some people, climate change is a tough cause to rally ’round — even those who understand that it’s happening and that it’s human-caused get distracted by things like eating, working, having sex, watching TV, or watching people on TV have sex. While social scientists ponder the best ways to get the message out and […]
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Copenhagen 101: The essentials on the climate talks
Welcome! It’s not too late to get up to speed on the climate-change jamboree that begins Dec. 7. Here’s a short primer. What is this Copenhagen thing? It’s a gathering of negotiators from every United Nations member country who will try to come up with a plan to protect the world from catastrophic climate change. […]
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Inferno on Earth: Wildfires spreading as temperatures rise
The following is a Plan B Update by my colleague Janet Larsen, the Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute, about the connection between the increase of wildfires and rising temperature. Future firefighters have their work cut out for them. Perhaps nowhere does this hit home harder than in Australia, where in early 2009, […]
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A Penny Saved Is…
California is at it again. State regulators just set energy efficiency standards for new TVs, mostly the big flat panel models that gulp kilowatts. As a result, consumers will save about $8 billion in the next decade in the form of lower electricity bills and carbon pollution will drop equal to removing 100,000 cars from […]
