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GOOD magazine’s profile on the black green activist

What Grist readers might have predicted over a year ago, when David interviewed Van Jones, is quickly becoming reality. In October, Thomas Friedman, in a gushing editorial, called Jones a "rare bird" who "exudes enough energy to light a few buildings on his own." Now he's appeared on the Colbert Report where, despite the always-awkward position of Stephen's interviewees, he managed to land "green jobs" in the mental dictionary of millions of young viewers.

I had the privilege of speaking to Jones last month as he cabbed it from Capitol Hill back to the airport. The profile appears in this month's issue of GOOD magazine, and is now online here. Despite seeming a bit exhausted, he was patient, articulate, and just plain kind. Something I wasn't able to include in the piece, but which he took great joy in telling, was how his grandfather, a bishop in the Methodist Church, was a huge inspiration to him, as were the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr. When asked if celebrity, and schmoozing with the big dogs in Washington, might divert his attention from grassroots activity, he responded, "On any given day, I might be in a public high school or in a prison, in D.C. or at a funeral. My life has a lot of sunshine and a lot of shit." On the other hand, he added, "That's what it takes to make a strong plant -- a lot of sunshine and a lot of fertilizer."

Student charges that textbook downplays climate change

“[S]cience doesn’t know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all,” says a random climate skeptic the widely used 2005 version of Advanced Placement high school textbook American Government. The text, written by two prominent conservatives, goes on to imply that […]

VBS.tv sails out to witness the garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean

This is the first episode of 12 from VBS.tv on the vast, Texas-sized stew of plastic and garbage floating in the North Pacific Gyre. They sailed out to see it with their own eyes.

The hog giant CAFOizes Poland and Romania to gain access to Western Europe

Farmers in Iowa and North Carolina — the two states that together house nearly half of U.S. hog production [PDF] — won’t be surprised by this report, from the International Herald Tribune: The American bacon producer, Smithfield Farms, now operates a dozen vast industrial pig farms in Poland. Importing cheap soy feed from South America, […]

Umbra on video games saving the world

Dear Umbra, Does the increasing use of video games as a form of recreation bode well for the environment? Fewer people using real resources means less of an impact on the world. Tadeusz Rockville, Md. Dear Tadeusz, Now that is an interesting spin on things. No one knows the complete answer, and we won’t know […]

Al Gore at TED

Al Gore addresses the TED conference, March 2008: Pretty intense. You can see how he is consciously attempting to transcend politics — he’s shooting for something bigger now.

Climate change affects — noooooooo! — beer

If dire warnings about the fate of global health and security don’t move you to care about climate change, maybe this will: Climate change could make beer more expensive. (No! Anything but that!) Malting barley will likely be harder to grow in a warming world, especially in Australia, says climate scientist Jim Salinger. He warned […]

BP-powered no more

Remember that new environmental blog at The New Republic that was "powered by BP"? Apparently it is no longer thus powered. As gratifying as it is, in a schadenfreudey sort of way, to see that other small media operations can be as dysfunctional as, er, some small media operations I’m familiar with. I’m glad this […]

U.K.’s Labor Party embraces nuclear but is slow to move on the big climate challenge

Ben Tuxworth, communications director at Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

The British press swooned over the visit of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni to the U.K. late last month. We're suckers for the idea of French romance, particularly mixed with wealth, sophistication, and the sort of impetuosity we "rosbifs" can seldom muster. Apparently, Bruni saw Sarkozy on TV and said to a friend, "I want to have a man with nuclear power." And what Bruni wants, Bruni gets.

It's unclear whether Sarkozy knew it was his big machinery that attracted Bruni, but a man who is willing to wear high heels to appear as tall as his glamorous spouse clearly has security issues high on his agenda. As it happens, the new entente cordiale between Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is based, amongst other things, on a shared passion for the atom.

Together, Britain and France will supply the world with nuclear technology, simultaneously saving the industry, creating thousands of jobs, and sorting our energy security issues. I've already explored why these arguments don't really stack up. The Labor Party's newfound zeal for nuclear power -- and Business Secretary John Hutton's recent speech in which he said expanded nuclear power could be akin to North Sea oil for the British economy -- make these interesting times to ask what the legacy of New Labor will be for the environment. It still seems as if, at some fundamental level, they just don't get it.

Ford lays out how it will reduce fleet emissions

Ford Motor Co. has laid out specific plans for reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions of its vehicle fleet at least 30 percent by 2020. The announcement comes in response to shareholder resolutions filed by members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (representing about 300 religious investors) and the Investor Network on Climate Risk, organized by […]