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Where the Sahara meets the Atlantic

Rising sea levels are threatening the island homes of Mauritania’s Imraguen fishermen. Above, child plays alongside flooded landscape on Nair Island.Tim Bromfield / Atlantic Rising The Banc d’Arguin, where the Sahara meets the Atlantic in Mauritania, is a staging post for over two million exhausted migratory birds from Europe and Siberia. Terns dive for fish, […]

Green-biz pioneer Ray Anderson says sustainability literally pays for itself

Ray Anderson set out to make his business sustainable long before green was the flavor of the month.  Reading Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce in 1994 literally changed his life, inspiring him to overhaul his carpet company, Interface, and aim for zero waste and zero environmental impact.  Now, with his new book Confessions of […]

Weatherization will save us all

Doug Letterman via flickrPop quiz: What saves money, saves energy, creates green jobs, fights climate change, can fix the economy, will make America great again, and is both a floor wax and a dessert topping? Answer: It’s weatherization! And both the U.S. government and the European Union are embracing its potential. In a report released […]

Ask Umbra on writer’s block

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I am starting an internship at a sustainability consulting firm and was asked to blog about relevant issues. I am blocked by a few mind obstacles: I can’t help but think that I’m stealing other writers’ ideas, or that my audience is in the same bucket as […]

Why Branson and SuperFreakonomics are wrong, in pictures

This week, as reported by Andy Revkin, entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson said something heroically, world-historically stupid: “If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem, then Copenhagen wouldn’t be necessary. We could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.” Sir Richard was talking about removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. […]

‘SuperFreakonomics’ will misinform readers on climate science

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post. The forthcoming SuperFreakonomics, written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, plays fast and loose with the scientific consensus on climate change. The book’s fifth chapter, “Global Cooling,” revisits a number of discredited arguments that misinform readers about the danger unchecked global warming poses to the United States and […]

What will you do for International Day of Climate Action on Oct. 24?

Get involved in the fight against climate change. Got plans for Saturday, Oct. 24?  Join up with climate-concerned citizens around the globe for the first-ever International Day of Climate Action, to demand that world leaders get moving in the fight against climate change.  More than 3,000 events in 170 countries are in the works, many […]

Is anyone in charge of food safety?

The fact that there remains no one in charge of food safety at the USDA has become a sick sort of joke among food policy types. It’s true that there is a second in command, Jerold Mande — but he’s a cancer doctor with no food safety background and, at best, a caretaker. He has […]

Climate-news poem: Strange bedfellows edition

This week brought news that made all sorts of people say, “Well, damn!”: The climate-bill support of one Senator Lindsey Graham. The damners on the left are thrilled that Graham thinks with his head. The damners on the right shout, “Lindsey, why’d you get in bed!” They’ve also had some more choice words, like wussypants […]

Does being hot make your green website hot, too?

Here at Grist, we like to think of ourselves as trendspotters. And this is one trend we didn’t mind spotting: hot actresses are starting green websites left and right. With the launch of the most recent addition from Alicia Silverstone, we thought we’d take a peek at what lies beneath the glitz and glamour. Oh, […]