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Energy interests to fund ‘astroturfing’ efforts during congressional break

Courtesy Daquella manera via FlickrAstroturfing – the corporate practice of funding initiatives that mimic “grassroots” support for an issue – has been getting a lot of attention these days, after it came to light that a pro-coal group was ultimately behind forged letters to Congress on the climate bill. But the practice is neither new […]

Climate-news poem: Blank(enship) verse edition

Here at Grist, we occasionally visit Twitter and see pure poetry — and we’re far from alone in that. Earlier this week, colleagues suggested that the lyrical, insightful tweets of Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship might in fact be better read as haikus. Let’s give it a shot, paraphrasing ever-so-slightly where we must. Cash 4 […]

Disposable-bag restrictions around the U.S. and the world

Seattle voters will decide on Aug. 18 whether to impose a 20-cent fee on all paper and plastic bags from grocery, drug, and convenience stores. But it’s not the first U.S. city to restrict disposable bags — nor even the first in Washington state. In Edmonds, Wash., north of Seattle, the city council voted in […]

Controversy heats up over Seattle’s proposed disposable bag fee

Image: Tom Twigg/Grist UPDATED: 11 Aug 2009 When the Seattle City Council voted last summer to impose a 20-cent fee on paper and plastic bags, the Progressive Bag Affiliates (PBA) of the American Chemistry Council immediately sprang to action to block the move. The fee would have taken effect January 1, 2009, but the Coalition […]

Glaciers, cheetahs, and nukes, oh my!

Financial Times South Asia Bureau Chief James Lamont has written a flood of environment-as-political-dialogue stories this week! (Well, only two, but that constitutes a deluge in the world of environmental peacebuilding.) On Monday he wrote about India and China’s agreement to work together to monitor Himalayan glacial melt. The potential decline in water availability from […]

The top 5 ways the ‘birthers’ are like the deniers

The people who refuse to accept the reality that President Obama was born in the United States share much in common with those who refuse to accept the reality that humans are dramatically changing the climate. 5.  Both groups are impervious to the evidence. During the campaign, “Obama released a certification of live birth, which […]

Is this the fastest rebuttal of a denier study in history?

The deniers have been trumpeting an atrocious study that made it into the July 23 edition of Journal of Geophysical Research, “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature.”  The top anti-scientific blog, WattsUpWithThat, crowed, “Surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean”: A new peer-reviewed […]

Is a 4-day workweek inevitable? Utah cuts energy use 13%

Closing Utah state offices on Fridays has resulted in a 13 percent reduction in energy use according to an internal analysis of the nation’s most expansive four-day workweek program. Since last August, about 17,000 of the state’s 24,000 executive branch employees have been working 10 hours a day, four days a week in an effort […]

Tony Blair, Climate Group, and CAP call for strong technology deployment policy

Tony Blair and the Climate Group have written an excellent report, “Breaking the Climate Deadlock: Technology for a Low Carbon Future (PDF).” While they endorse strong investment in technology development – as the Center for American Progress (CAP) and virtually everyone else does – it is squarely focused on the crucial role that strong government […]

NOAA: “El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through” winter

NOAA’s National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center released its monthly El Niño/Southern oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion: Synopsis: El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through the Northern Hemisphere Winter 2009-2010. A weak El Niño was present during July 2009, as monthly sea surface temperatures (SST) departures ranged from +0.5°C to +1.5°C across the equatorial […]