Latest Articles

The L.A. Times covers the important debate over whom Laurie David should be dating

Gina Piccalo has a piece in the L.A. Times on the most vital issue facing the nation: green celebrity hypocrisy. It’s far more thoughtful and less glib than most discussions of that subject. Still, by the end of the piece I was ready to jump out the window. Somehow taking a serious journalistic approach to […]

Steve Irwin’s daughter launches Bindi Wear eco-clothing line

Bindi Irwin, the 9-year-old daughter of the late Croc Hunter (R.I.P., mate), has launched her own children’s clothing line: The T-shirts, jumpers, swimwear, sleepwear, hats, bags and shoes carry environmental messages. The tags are made from recycled cardboard, the soles on the shoes are made with recycled rubber and 100 per cent of the profits […]

Mattel recalls another batch of lead-painted toys

Toy giant Mattel on Tuesday issued its third round of major recalls in recent weeks for a variety of its toys that contained “impermissible levels of lead,” according to the company, including some Barbie play sets and Fisher-Price toys. In all, the most recent round of recalls covers some 840,000 items. “We’ve worked very hard […]

British reality show dumps participants into a trash-heap of trouble

This is an interesting concept for a reality show: Eleven unsuspecting volunteers are left marooned on one of Britain’s biggest landfill sites for three weeks. Their challenge? To survive off the rubbish the rest of us have thrown out. How will they react when they are delivered to a huge, smelly British landfill site instead […]

On the problem of carbon-offset projects in developing countries

[editor's note, by David Roberts] Important update to this post here.

It turns out that Climate Care, a major indulgence offset provider, is paying farmers in India to pump water with treadles rather than diesel pumps in order to offset plane flights.

I would hope that supporters of offsets would be as quick as opponents to see what is wrong with this. In case someone is reading this before their morning coffee, I will simply point out that it is one thing for rich, overweight Americans to substitute manual labor for energy use, and another for a poor Indian farmer who already has plenty of manual labor in his life to do so. It is paying poor people to suffer to offset plane rides for the rich.

Al Gore on making room for outrage

This quote from Al Gore is so apt I had to pass it along: I have a lot of friends who share the following problem with me: Our sense of outrage is so saturated that when a new outrage occurs, we have to download some existing outrage into an external hard drive in order to […]

Climate change is increasing the frequency of Category 5 storms

Global warming has long been predicted to make hurricanes more intense. Well, now we are seeing more intense hurricanes. Chris Mooney has a great post on the recent storm surge of Category 5 hurricanes, now that Felix has joined that once-elite club. He notes:

• There have now been 8 Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes in the past 5 years (Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean, Felix).
• There have been two Atlantic Category 5s so far this year; only three other seasons have had more than one (1960, 1961, 2005).
• There have been 8 Atlantic Category 5 hurricanes so far in the 2000s; no other decade has had so many. The closest runner up is the 1960s with 6 (Donna, Ethel, Carla, Hattie, Beulah, Camille).

Some people, especially the Deniers, think this is all a coincidence, or the result of incomplete data from earlier years. Here's why I don't:

National Park Service may ignore public opinion on snowmobiles in parks

Speaking of things we’ve been over and over, there’s the issue of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. (It’s another controversy Grist has covered since the early days while managing to not repeat a headline. Can we have a medal? Maybe a cookie?) Enough with the snowmobiles already? Not bloody likely! Today brings the news that […]

Congressional Research Service report bolsters California’s case for EPA waiver

As you know, California is all set to implement its tough tailpipe GHG emissions standards — and something on the order of 14 other states are ready to follow suit. All Cali needs is a waiver from the U.S. EPA, allowing it to supersede national standards. It first requested the waiver in Dec. 2005, but […]

Appeals court overturns ruling, allows Navy to test underwater sonar

It’s the controversy that keeps on controversing: The U.S. Navy wants to test underwater mid-frequency sonar. Marine advocates say such testing effs up whales and other marine mammals. Repeat. (Grist has been writing about this issue since 1999, and we have never reused a headline. Thank you.) Anyhoodle, here we go again: last month, a […]