Latest Articles

Obama needs to take a stand on trade

When President Obama attends the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) meeting (or the more innocuous sounding, North American Leaders Summit) in Guadalajara he has the opportunity to keep some campaign promises. The SPP has been referred to as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on steroids. For good reason. As a candidate Obama was […]

Friday music blogging: David Bazan

David Bazan is an indie artist from Seattle (wo0t!). He fronted the beloved Pedro the Lion until he went solo back in 2006 with a stellar EP called Fewer Moving Parts. His first full-length solo album, Curse Your Branches, is finally coming out on Sept. 1. You can , and anyway, I’m too jazzed to […]

Yes, green jobs do exist and are good for the economy

Remember that transparently hackjob Spanish report titled “Green jobs are like negative jobs, only worse” (or something) that made the rounds of the fossil lobby (in and out of Congress) earlier in the year?  The one that George Will thought worthy of bringing to the nation’s attention the same week the House voted on Waxman-Markey? […]

Sanders & Merkley introduce bill to fund waste heat capture [with video of cats flushing toilets!]

Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.) have introduced a fantastic bill that deserves to be part of the climate/energy package the Senate votes on later this year. The Thermal Energy Efficiency Act (S.1621) “would dedicate 2% of revenues from climate change legislation to fund combined heat and power, waste energy recovery, and district […]

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 […]