Latest Articles

Joe Romm’s strategy to lose the clean energy race

Jesse Jenkins, left, and Teryn Norris.Breakthrough InstituteOn Monday, Joe Romm of Climate Progress publicly attacked us for publishing an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle — called “Will America lose the clean energy race?” (a longer version was posted here at Huffington Post.). In that piece, we urged Congress to fully fund President Obama’s energy […]

Learning from past civilizations

To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early 21st century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond. As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of […]

The climate science fight club

So a guy writes in to our local paper saying climate change is a big scam, nobody ever shows the actual data, blah blah blah. I usually ignore these things like I ignore the moon landing deniers and the flat earthers, but this time I had a second in the morning and so I sent him […]

The amazing promise and many challenges of passivhaus construction

I’m in decent shape for 52, but it took everything I had to carry a hefty piece of welded steel plate out of the backyard — and I didn’t place it any too gently on the curb when I got it there. So I was impressed when John from Blue Scrap & Recycling casually flipped […]

Henry Waxman’s decade-long fight to improve the Clean Air Act

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee and coauthor of the ACES bill passed by the House in June. Naturally, political observers are curious about his thoughts on the fight to pass climate/energy legislation this year, but in media interviews he tends to be careful, measured, and fairly abstract. […]

On the origin of ‘superweeds’ and the chemical treadmill

“There is no telling how many articles I have written with the theme of ‘Roundup every Monday morning until there is nothing out there but soybeans’ or ‘the best tank mix partner with Roundup is more Roundup.’ That made soybean farming so easy that even I could probably have done it.”—Ford L. Baldwin of Arkansas-based […]

Solar chargers, real and imagined

The real news of the day: there’s now a solar-powered charger for iPhones. The more entertaining news: At Comic-Con this weekend, Jimmy Fallon dressed up as a solar-powered superhero called “Recharger” and tried to sell his idea to, among others, Jon Favreau, Stan Lee, Joss Whedon, and that hot guy from Lost. This skit is […]

Love in a time of cataclysm

Wanted: Experienced couples therapist, preferably also with degrees in theology and law, for fractious, passionate pair riddled with apocalyptic anxiety, burdened with love for their children (all of them), acutely conscious of the finitude of time and resources, and fearful that the world has gone mad. Must take insurance. Everyone told us that building a […]

Ask Umbra on solar pool heaters

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, With all the rain we’ve had this year, the pool water doesn’t get a chance to warm up in between rainstorms. We are trying to design a passive heating system. We’ve thought about flexible one-inch black hose (if we can find it) attached to the filter and […]

Larry Craig, oil lobbyist

Illustration by Tom Twigg/GristThis is an actual thing: Larry Craig, former punchline of Idaho, has opened a Washington consulting firm to work as an energy lobbyist. New West Strategies LLC offers “strategic advice, guidance, and advocacy” from Craig, the senator was arrested in 2007 in a sting operation against men cruising for sex at the […]