Latest Articles

Green policies in California created 1.5 million jobs

A detailed new economic analysis “Energy Efficiency, Innovation, and Job Creation in California” [PDF] finds: Over the past thirty-five years, innovative energy efficiency policies created 1.5 million additional fulltime jobs with a total payroll of over $45 billion. Looking forward, the report finds that if California improves energy efficiency by just 1 percent per year, […]

McCain ‘is not serious about clean energy and he has increasingly walked away from climate issue’

Andy Revkin has written a very fair-minded New York Times piece, "On Global Warming, McCain and Obama Agree: Urgent Action Is Needed." He notes: Both candidates say that human-caused climate change is real and urgent, and that they would sharply diverge from President Bush’s course by proposing legislation requiring sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions […]

Finance is valuable to the ‘real economy,’ but the system needs to be replaced

Some Grist readers in comments seem to think we should ignore the financial aspects of the crisis to focus on the “real economy.” The problem is, finance is part of the real economy. Credit was invented before paper currency; there are records of debt in ancient Babylon. Try and imagine life without currency, or checkbooks, […]

Snippets from the news

• GAO says EPA overstates its enforcement record. • Climate change linked to tiger attacks and increases in waterborne diseases. • Landfills making cash off carbon credits through what they were already doing. • Panel recommends canal to divert water around Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. • Oregon Cascades hold a lotta water. • Escaped lionfish devastating […]

Vital realism

Bryan Walsh: “Shellenberger and Nordhaus have injected a vital strain of realism into an issue far too critical to founder on green dreams.” Discuss.

Nuke bites man

The Nuclear Energy Agency — an international agency created by the OECD to "assist its Member countries in maintaining and further developing, through international co-operation, the scientific, technological and legal bases required for the safe, environmentally friendly and economical use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes" — issues a report claiming that nuclear power is […]

Idle thought of the day

I sure hope Californians are smart enough to vote yes on Prop 1A so they can get some SUPERTRAIN up in this b*tch.

Migrating pollock could endanger Alaskan fishery, international relations

Showing a distinct lack of American patriotism, Alaskan pollock are reacting to climate-changed warmer waters by swimming northward into Russian territory — potentially endangering both the U.S.’s billion-dollar pollock industry and U.S.-Russia relations. Climate-related pollock migration “will be a food security issue and has an enormous potential for political upheaval,” warns Andrew Rosenberg, former deputy […]

A roundup of environmental news from the presidential race

• The Wall Street Journal spazzes out about Obama adviser Jason Grumet’s assertion that a President Obama would fight climate change under the Clean Air Act if Congress doesn’t move to address the issue within 18 months. Obama, the paper fears, would wield the EPA’s “so-called ‘endangerment finding’ on carbon … as a political bludgeon” […]

Republican foot soldiers prepare to push for reduced public participation in dirty energy projects

If you want to know what the far right is up to, you should check in with the Heritage Foundation periodically. A post this week offers a preview of what they’ll be pushing for on the energy front in coming years: rules and laws to fast track energy projects, or to put it another way, […]