Latest Articles
-
Consumers shunning hefty hybrids
Automakers may have assumed that hybrid SUVs would be a hit with the eco-minded-soccer-mom market, but drivers aren’t buying it — literally. Analysts are seeing a tepid reaction to SUVs like the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid and hybrid GMC Yukon, both launched in fall 2007. Concern about climate change and fuel prices has attached a stigma […]
-
![]()
![]()
Umbra on water conservation
We need to live now as if the future has already happened.
-
Obama wins the endorsement of United Mine Workers of America
The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) endorsed Barack Obama for president today, after a unanimous vote of the union’s National Council of the Coal Miners’ Political Action Committee. In a press release on the endorsement, the UMWA said they chose to endorse Obama over John McCain because of his plans to help working-class Americans […]
-
A new generation pilots the farm’s operations as it transitions to training others
Some Grist readers may have noticed that I’ve been writing on the blog nearly every day, while keeping up the Victual Reality column. How can I do all of that and farm, too? The truth is, I went full-time at Grist last November, when I took on the position of food editor. And to maintain […]
-
Green group highlights biz innovations
The Environmental Defense Fund has produced a new report highlighting processes, products, and technologies that are making the biz world more eco-friendly. The green group’s Innovations Review 2008 draws attention to developments good for both business and the environment. The report focuses specifically on innovations on the cusp: not yet widely implemented, but not still […]
-
Wired magazine bursts a blood vessel doing its contrarian thing
To your right, you’ll see the cover of this month’s Wired magazine. The premise of the issue is that climate change is now the only eco-problem that matters, but to solve it, we’ll have to slaughter the sacred cows of environmentalism. (2001 called. It wants its framing device back.) So what are these heresies that […]
-
Waxman is going to punch somebody
Wow, it looks like House oversight committee chair Henry Waxman is getting a little sick of EPA head Stephen Johnson: More here.
-
Small-town politics meets big-time energy crisis
Last night I went to the town meeting where I live, which — well, if you’ve never lived anywhere podunk enough to have a town meeting, you’re missing out. This one was just as I remember them from my childhood, though PowerPoint has replaced mimeographed pages: ambition, exhaustion, confusion, and the one crusty, bearded guy […]
-
Biofuel-bound grasses are often invasive species
As biofuel sources go, weeds and grasses are looked on with more favor than land-ravaging, food-price-raising corn and palm. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch-in-your-tank, says a paper presented by green groups at a United Nations meeting Tuesday: “Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive […]
-
South America’s industrial-ag powerhouse eyes rainforest potash deposits
I’ve been writing for a while about industrial agriculture’s fertilizer problem — about how mass-scale food (and biofuel) production relies on finite, geopolitically problematic, and environmentally destructive resources to maintain soil fertility. (See posts here, here, and here.) Well, that story is heating up down in Brazil, an increasingly important hub in the global industrial […]
