Latest Articles

Hopes for energy bill this session fading

According to John Broder, things are not looking good for comprehensive energy legislation this session: The prospect of a comprehensive energy package’s emerging from Congress this fall is rapidly receding, held up by technical hurdles and policy disputes between the House and the Senate and within the parties. FWIW

Study says eating less red meat improves health, helps fight climate change

The British medical journal The Lancet published a study this week that advises people in rich countries to eat less red meat in order to help mitigate climate change and boost their health. Far from advocating citizens of the world entirely eschew meat, the study advised a climate-friendly cut in red-meat consumption of 10 percent […]

Demand for oil remains strong despite price increases

I was wrong.

Back in the summer of '05, when oil prices were flirting with $60 per barrel, I predicted that oil would surpass $70 before it fell below $50. That is, I thought that oil prices would continue to rise in the short term.

I got that part right. Oil prices on the futures market briefly touched the $70-mark that fall, and reached the mid-$70s by the following spring.

But I also predicted that oil would fall to $40 per barrel before it reached $80 -- on the theory that, over the course of several years, rising oil prices would put a crimp in demand, while goosing production a bit.

That part I got dead wrong.

Alex Steffen on individual action in context

The perennial debate over the value of voluntary individual action — recently revived by Tidwell’s piece and the sociologists’ response — reminded me that some of the best, or least my favorite, writing on the subject comes from Worldchanging’s Alex Steffen. Like this: And here’s the essential break between lite green and bright green thinking: […]

Desertification amplifies climate change, and vice versa

Here is yet another carbon-cycle amplifying feedback not in most climate models.

On the one hand, the United Nations' top climate official, Yvo de Boer, announced that:

Climate change has become the prime cause of an accelerating spread of deserts which threatens the world's drylands.

On the other hand, he pointed out that desertification would, in turn, accelerate climate change:

You'll see a sort of feedback mechanism ... quite a lot of carbon is captured in soil, so with more desertification (exposing the soil), you also get more CO2 emissions. They are two halves of the same coin.

Well, two sides of the same coin, anyway. But we get his point. He was interviewed at a U.N. desertification conference in Madrid. What's coming?

Bill to phase out incandescent light bulbs gains steam in U.S. Congress

Momentum is building in the U.S. Congress for a bill that would require phasing out regular incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescents and other, more efficient lighting technologies. The bill now in the works would require bulbs to be three times more efficient by 2020 and would require the phase out of 40-, […]

It’s a mistake to view the economy as an abstraction

From a Seattle P-I story comes this gem of a quote about declining housing affordability: "It's going to affect people more so than the economy."

Uh, what's that again? The economic outlook is still rosy -- it's just, y'know, people who are in trouble.

Cutting edge investment philanthropy from the search engine’s .org arm

Joel Makower brings news of an interesting and innovative initiative (an III, if you will) from Google.org, the search company’s non-nonprofit philanthropy arm. They’re sending out an open call asking inventors and entrepreneurs to pitch them on products and services that would speed the commercialization of plug-in hybrids. There’s $10 million in investment capital waiting […]

Children of the corn armed with movie cameras

This is a guest post by Nicole de Beaufort, a long-time advocate for local, sustainable, and accessible food systems. She is principal of Fourth Sector Consulting in North Oaks, Minn., which employs strategic communications to work with food system advocates and funders to mobilize the growing food movement. The film King Corn is set to […]

Tell us what to call our new news section

Our sharp-eyed readers will have noticed changes in Grist’s news section. Used to be, we had the Daily Grist: five (or so) news blurbs, sent out via email and published in the eponymous section of the site. Only five blurbs? you ask incredulously. Published once a day? That’s not very internety! We know. Thus the […]