Articles

Climate change skeptics try to seduce us to inaction

Every once in awhile, I'm struck by something that makes me realize how the ancient storytellers were terrifically acute observers of the human condition, and used metaphor brilliantly to convey their observations.

Perhaps the most salient example these days is the song of the sirens, the beauties whose songs would lure sailors toward them until they grounded their ships on the rocks and drowned. The modern-day sirens, Avery and Singer, are taking up the cause by trying to lure the world away from any action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Their song is that this is all just a natural cycle, and the skyrocketing CO2 concentrations can just be ignored.

JMG Climate & Energy

Discover Brilliant: Renewables and buildings

Now it’s "Moving the Technology Frontier," about technologies that are going to create "tectonic shifts" in the cleantech space, with Stan Bull, head of R&D at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Steve Selkowtiz, Building Technologies Program Leader at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Bull is first up. Says NREL’s budget is $200-$250 million. That seems […]

David Roberts Climate & Energy

DNA testing helps to settle claims of chemical exposure

Think you’ve been exposed to toxic chemicals on the job? Hand over your hair. A new DNA testing technique can help verify or refute claims of workplace poisoning by exposing a healthy person’s DNA to the chemical in question to see how the genes are affected, then comparing to the employee’s DNA. It seems like […]

Grist staff Uncategorized

Veganism: All or nothing?

The average American weighs about 170 pounds, eats about 180 pounds of meat, gets about 24 mpg, has about two kids, owns about one-third of a cat or dog, and lives in a 2,350-square-foot home. There are lots of ways to alter your carbon footprint. Depending on your personal proclivities, some ways are "easier" than others. You get to pick what is "easiest" for you. For some, the "easiest" thing to do is not have kids. For others it is to go car-free. Not having cats and dogs is easy for many. Choosing a small, energy-efficient home, condo, or apartment works great for some. Eating less meat or less environmentally destructive meats is also an option. This explains why a street person (being largely child-free, car-free, pet-free, meat-free, and homeless) would win any carbon-footprint pissing match. I suppose one could eat meat but still promote veganism, just as I support women's reproductive rights even though I have two children.

Here in America, corn ethanol is supposed to be about 13 percent carbon neutral, and soy biodiesel about 40 percent. Let's say just for the sake of discussion that the less meat you eat, the more vegan you are. Eating no meat makes you 100-percent vegan (100-percent meat neutral). Eating half the national average would make you 50-percent vegan, and eating the national average would make you 0-percent vegan. The beauty of this concept is that we all get to be vegans! I put together a spreadsheet to see how your degree of veganism compares to other choices when it comes to carbon neutrality:

Biodiversivist Culture

A strange and old-fashioned way to start a hip, cutting edge conference

I’m in a session about “Energy, Climate Change & Resource Nationalism” with General Bruce Wright, commander of U.S. Air Force in Japan, and Dr. Liam Fox, Shadow Secretary of State of Defence and Member of Parliament in the UK. These are old-school guys, fairly conservative, and they’re painting a grim picture. China is ravenous, buying […]

David Roberts Politics

A look at the Emmy’s eco-efforts

The carpet may still have been red at the Emmy Awards last night, but the entire production definitely had a tinge of green. As reported in Grist List on Friday, the event included a solar panel canopy over the grandstands outside, hybrid and alternative-fuel vehicles for transporting stars, locally grown and/or organic food in the […]

Grist staff Culture

Industry to Bush administration: “Please regulate me”

Long-standing shared love for voluntary standards aside, businesses and manufacturers have begun asking the Bush administration to begin regulating industry’s health- and planet-ruining ways. A variety of factors have contributed to the turnaround, including tougher regulations enacted by states, a Congress unafraid to crack down, publicly apparent failures of voluntary standards, and a flood of […]

Grist staff Technology

Discover Brilliant: Intro

I’m here at the introductory talk at the Discover Brilliant conference. The focus of the three-day event is on those areas where entrepreneurial energy and profit overlap with lower environmental impact. Everyone is here to figure out who’s making money, who’s investing where, and what the next big tech will be. The vibe is refreshingly […]

David Roberts Technology

A Grist special series on parenting and health

Got kids? Got thoughts on kids? Come on over to our parenting blog to chat. Among environmentalists, a common rallying cry is to protect the planet “for our grandchildren.” It’s a lovely sentiment, and a powerful notion — that the choices you make today affect generations yet to come. But what about the generation spattering […]