Latest Articles
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Come hang out with us in Austin
Any readers planning to travel to Netroots Nation should be sure to check out Grist’s Austin offerings. We’re partnering with ReGeneration.org to produce video from the event, and we’ll have a booth in the exhibitors’ hall where you can come register to win a Dell Inspiron laptop. Our videos will be posted both here and […]
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Gulf dead zone likely to be more gigantic than ever
The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico may be vaster than ever this year, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists predicted Tuesday. Thanks in large part to recent Midwest flooding, the oxygen-starved zone — caused when fertilizer runoff from upstream ag spurs growth of algae that suck oxygen as they decompose — could measure […]
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Some school fundraisers start hawking greener products
Some school and nonprofit fundraisers recently have turned to greener options to generate needed cash. Instead of sending youngsters out into the community to hawk items of questionable greenness like candy, magazines, and virgin-forest wrapping paper, some schools have instead turned to greener wares such as fair-trade coffee, metal water bottles, hand-made soaps, and recycled-content […]
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Nuke-power company Exelon announces big emissions cuts by 2020
Nuclear-power company Exelon today launched a program it says will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by over 16 million tons a year by 2020 — more than the company’s current total annual emissions. The company’s plan calls for buying renewable-energy credits to offset some of its emissions, generating a small amount of electricity from alternative sources such […]
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Plasma TVs and solar cells not so bad after all
A recent Grist article shared a bit in some of the panic about NF3 and plasma TVs. If all the NF3 manufactured were released, it warns, it would have a warming effect equivalent to that of Austria.
It turns out that is mighty big "if," one that Eli Rabett manages to blast into smithereens.
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Car camping with a Prius
Just returned from the annual five-day camping trip with about a dozen other families. This is a photo of a fully mature male Western fence lizard, also known as a blue belly because of the blue spot under the male's throat (my youngest daughter is the hand model). The spot is used to impress the ladies and as a warning to other guys trying to horn in. It only works for lizards, young male Gristmill readers, so don't get any ideas.The propensity for chickens, lizards and alligators to fall asleep when you turn them on their backs and rub their bellies is a bug in their evolutionary programming. It's an operating envelope rarely encountered in nature, which may explain why they go off line when it happens.
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Using doubt to compete with a scientific body of fact
This will come as no surprise to Grist readers, but it's nice to see it in mainstream print. The Chicago Tribune had a nice piece in the Sunday paper articulating how those on the wrong side of science have consistently used doubt as a strategy to maintain a scientifically-uninformed policy.
In particular, note that:
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Dancing
In Salzburg, one person made — and several people subsequently reiterated — the point that all this work and struggle on behalf of future generations should be undertaken in a spirit of joy. It’s the human capacity to transcend circumstances, to love and laugh and be goofy together no matter how oppressive the context, no […]
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Transportation sector lies at the root of U.S. energy problem
This is a guest essay from Jack D. Hidary, chair of SmartTransportation.org and the Freedom Prize Foundation. It was originally published on the Huffington Post and is republished here with the author's permission.
The price of oil struck an ominous chord for the U.S. economy with yesterday's record trade of $147 per barrel. At these prices we are sending more than $1 million every minute of every day to oil rich countries. As oil hits a new high the dollar has hit a record low against the euro. Our equity is draining away and flowing to foreign hands.
How can we get ourselves out of this mess? This crisis will take nothing short of a restructuring of our core industrial and transport sectors. Just as a turnaround CEO comes in to fix a troubled company, we need a retooling to rid ourselves of oil dependency. We do not need politicians looking for fake fixes such as a summer gas tax holiday.
We do not need the President of the United States of America to beg sheiks for a bit more of the black gold. Keep your dignity, Mr. President.
The problem is clear -- 55 percent of all the oil we use in the U.S. is guzzled by cars and SUVs. Not planes, not trains, not big trucks. To find the problem look no further than your driveway. Yes, the fleet of 245 million cars and SUVs that we drive in the US -- that is the main problem.
