Latest Articles

Tainted peanut butter and our troubled food system

An email from a PR person recently hit my inbox claiming that by high-school graduation, the average American has consumed 1,500 peanut butter sandwiches. I certainly did my bit to hold up the average; to this day I revere the unctuous paste of crushed, roasted peanuts.

Now, of course, comes news that a large producer of this protein-packed national treat (widely reviled, for reasons I can't fathom, by people in other nations) has been sending out product that's tainted by a particularly nasty strain of salmonella.

The New York Times' Kim Severson has a good piece on how the suspect peanut butter moved through the industrial food system, working its way into products as diverse as Clif Bars and Famous Amos Cookies.

News accounts don't typically mention that good old peanut butter has been tainted for a while now -- by sweeteners and dodgy industrial products. Look at Jif (not implicated in the salmonella outbreak), which is owned by Smuckers, which also owns Crisco, Pillsbury, and Hungry Jack. Merely roasting peanuts and pureeing them with a little salt isn't enough for the makers of Jif peanut butter. Its ingredients include: roasted peanuts and sugar, plus "2 PERCENT OR LESS OF: MOLASSES, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN), FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (RAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES AND SALT." Yuck.

Come to think of it, the PR person whose email got me thinking about this issue was actually peddling a smart solution: a high-powerd kitchen contraption that allows you to make your own peanut butter (among many other things). As our famously fragmented food-oversight system continues to fail and our industrial-food purveyors continue to pump unnecessary crap into our food, do-it-yourself solutions make more and more sense.

Grist grades the best/worst in climate change news

Today we kick off a regular feature in which Grist’s editorial team celebrates — and carps about! — notable climate-related steps taken by businesses, politicians, and individuals. Think we patted the wrong back or slapped down the wrong pol? Jump in the comments section to let us know. This week’s grades: A big green thumbs-up […]

Seeing the light in the Pew poll on Americans' top priorities

At first glance, the latest poll numbers from Pew Research Center on Americans' top priorities for the new president might appear worrisome to climate policy advocates.

Global warming is in last place in the top 20, and the environment in general slipped down in the list since last year. Andrew Revkin over at New York Times' Dot Earth blog goes so far as to say, "America and President Barack Obama are completely out of sync on human-caused global warming." (There are some startling new numbers from Rasmussen on that question ...)

But I'm convinced that's not the point. The fact is, solutions that will address the top two concerns -- the economy and jobs -- as well as several other top 10 concerns -- energy, terrorism, helping the poor -- are all wrapped up in the best solutions for combating climate change.

The fossil-fuel roller coaster has long whiplashed family budgets, and our economy remains shackled to its adrenaline-boosting unpredictability. Any economic recovery we muster in coming months will sputter if we fail to reduce our fossil-fuel dependence. As soon as the economy rebounds, oil prices are sure to shoot up again, negating the economic gains that we've made.

Our job now -- and Obama's -- is to encourage fellow lawmakers and citizens to connect the dots and stop seeing the economy, energy policy, and the environment as even vaguely separate issues.

Carl Pope stepping down from helm of the Sierra Club

The Sierra Club announced today that long-time executive director Carl Pope is stepping down. He'll be taking on a new role as chairman of the Sierra Club, focusing primarily on climate change.

"While I look forward to continuing to serve the Club in a new capacity, I am ready to turn the leadership of the organization over to someone new," Pope said in a statement today.

Pope, who has been at the helm of the organization since 1992, will move to the chairman post as soon as a new executive director is selected. The board of directors is preparing to launch a formal search for their new leader in the next few weeks.

"Over these years I have made many wonderful friends, and experienced both joyful victories and tragic setbacks in our struggle for a sustainable future," Pope continued. "I look forward to many more such victories as I continue this work. My decision comes at a very exciting time for the Sierra Club and the environmental movement. The election of President Barack Obama, and the increase in the number of environmental champions in the Congress, means that after eight years of bitter defense, it is time for America to resume its tradition of environmental leadership."

From Foxx to Foxy

Zircon man Now, we ain’t sayin’ Jamie Foxx is a gold digga. But he ain’t messin’ wit no blood diamonds, neither. Get down boy, go ‘head get down. Photo: Monica Morgan/WireImage Is that a green thumb, or are you just happy to see me? Attention men: We cannot stress the impotence, er, importance of this […]

Green(ish) news from around the Capitol

• The House Ways and Means Committee marked up the stimulus package on Thursday, adding lots of goodies that should make clean-energy fans happy. It added $20 billion in renewable-energy and energy-efficiency tax credits and related financial incentives. The committee inserted language to make the investment tax credit passed last year refundable. It also increased by 20 percent the research expense credits for renewable energy, energy conservation, fuel cells, batteries, efficient transmission and distribution, and carbon capture and sequestration. The alternative-fuel vehicle refueling property credit was increased from 30 percent to 50 percent through 2010, and the residential energy-efficiency and energy-improvements tax credit was raised from 10 percent to 30 percent. The Senate Finance Committee will now have to consider the changes.

• On Wednesday, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker (R) sent a letter [PDF] to his colleagues bashing the climate plan from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. "It appears their blueprint promotes many of the same problematic provisions that have plagued cap-and-trade bills in the past," wrote Corker. The lawmaker urged support for a carbon pricing plan that returns 100 percent of the revenue to consumers, and said he opposes the inclusion of international and domestic offsets.

• Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) has introduced a bill that would make it easier for homeowners and small businesses to install solar panels by allowing them to use both benefits provided by local governments and the full federal solar tax credit (the tax code currently prohibits this). The bill would also create a manufacturing tax credit for solar equipment, and allow federal buildings to enter into long-term solar-power purchase agreements. "These are the sorts of programs with short- and long-term economy benefits that should be considered for an economic recovery package," said Menendez.

Oval Office lights connected to mountaintop removal

When President Barack Obama's staff turns on the lights to the Oval Office this week, a signal will be sent from the Potomac Energy Company to the Chalk Point Generation Station, where the coal-handling facility service of the power plant will shovel in coal that has been strip-mined from the clear-cut, toppled-over, and exploded mountains of West Virginia.

At least, in theory.

In effect, President Obama and his administration are now connected to one of the most tragic environmental and human rights disasters in American history -- the employment of mountaintop-removal mining methods in Appalachia that have eliminated over 470 mountains and adjacent communities, 1 million acres of hardwood forests, and 1,200 miles of streams from our American maps.

This includes Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, the last great mountain in a historic range that has been on the forefront of the clean-energy movement. Citing the unique wind potential of Coal River Mountain, local citizens and coal miners have pushed for an industrial wind farm that would provide 200 jobs, enough megawatts for 150,000 homes in the area, and $1.7 million in tax revenues. Last week, however, as Obama visited a wind-turbine parts factory in Ohio, the first bulldozers arrived to clearcut the forest and open the way for the next mountaintop-removal tragedy.

If Michael Pollan ruled the world …

"If it had been President Pollan, I probably wouldn't be here right now."

-- USDA chief Tom Vilsack

Media Matters commenter provides one of the greatest snarks at the denier wingnut mentality

Craig C. Clarke made one of the all-time great comments about delayers and deniers over at Media Matters:

GAO: EPA's chemical oversight system is broken

Few Obama officials have quite as much mess to clean up as EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. As if to warn her of the gravity of her task, the General Accounting Office has just added a key EPA oversight area to its list of government functions that are at "high risk" of "fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement" (short HTML version here, massive PDF here).

The GAO added three areas to its "high-risk list" this year, making a grand total of 30. The EPA's "Processes for Assessing and Controlling Toxic Chemicals" was one of them. (The other two new areas added to the GAO "high-risk list" are the FDA's process for approving medical products -- anyone up for a dose of Vioxx? -- and, um, the "the Outdated U.S. Financial Regulatory System," an attempt to shut the barn door on a banking meltdown that will only cost your kids a few trillion, if we're lucky.)

The section on the EPA and toxic chemicals will make bracing reading for the new administrator. Here are some highlights: