Latest Articles

How to actually deliver green-collar jobs to those who need them

Over the next few decades, converting the Pacific Northwest to a place of compact, walkable communities that run on superefficient, renewable energy system — a climate-safe economy — will be a lot of work: paid work. But for all the exciting announcements of solar jobs and green-tech investment that pepper the newspapers, the skill sets […]

CNN reports on the battle for Coal River Mountain in W.Va.

In August, we brought you the story of Coal River Mountain, one of the last mountains in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley that hasn’t been destroyed by mountaintop-removal coal mining. Residents are lobbying to build a wind farm on the mountain, but Massey Energy is moving ahead on plans to strip-mine a 10-square-mile area of […]

Feds will designate critical habitat for polar bears

The U.S. government will designate critical habitat for polar bears off Alaska’s coast as part of a partial settlement of a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity. The Interior Department declared polar bears a threatened species in May, but neglected to make any stipulations for habitat […]

Fascinating L.A. Times article on racial and coal politics in Virginia

“We’re all black in the mines.” — Jerry Stallard, a coal union organizer in Virginia, arguing to his fellow miners that Obama’s support for unions and for coal is more important than the color of his skin

McCain or Obama should attend global climate talks in December

This is a guest post from Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and author of a dozen books, most recently The Bill McKibben Reader. McKibben serves on Grist’s board of directors and is cofounder of 350.org. —– There have been moments in the last few weeks when it seemed like the world […]

Committed environmentalist Stéphane Dion faces uphill fight in Canadian election

The delegates had worked for 36 hours straight at the international gathering in Montreal in 2005 intended to keep the Kyoto Protocol from stalling. The deadline to adjourn had passed, and so had a long night of high drama and low obstinacy. Stéphane Dion. In the bleary dawn of 6 a.m., as the translators threatened […]

New Jersey moves to become premier U.S. offshore wind-power hub

New Jersey this week opened a new front in its battle to be a leader in renewable energy generation. Gov. Jon Corzine (D) announced an ambitious goal to triple the amount of wind power the state plans to use by 2020 to 3,000 Megawatts, or about 13 percent of the state’s total electricity. The wind-power […]

E.U. parliament to vote on climate proposals amid financial crisis

Members of the European Parliament’s environment committee on Tuesday will vote on key green initiatives proposed earlier this year, among them plans to alter the European Union’s emissions-trading system, ramp up spending on carbon capture and storage technology, and eventually ban construction of new coal-fired power plants. The proposals are all part of the E.U.’s […]

Enviros suggest questions for Tuesday’s townhall-style debate

Eleven days after their first matchup, John McCain and Barack Obama will meet again in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday night for a “townhall format” debate. NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw will be the moderator, but it will be crowd members asking the questions, all of whom are supposedly undecided voters. There will be between 80 […]

Christine MacDonald on Big Green NGOs and soy expansion in Brazil

Cargill and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have a long-standing relationship dating back to the 1980s. Cargill and TNC share a mutual interest in developing science-based, improved agricultural management practices that guarantee the productivity and enduring health of the ecosystem and landscape.  — From a joint Cargill/TNC document [PDF] dated February 2006 — In her new […]