Latest Articles

The Big Green Bus rides again

Witness the Big Green Bus. Hard to miss, even amid the glaring sun and smog at Bonnaroo. I happened upon the crew of Dartmouth students at the festival last year and got just a few minutes to chat with them. This year, I sought them out on the festival grounds and then met up with […]

Don’t let the one color your feelings on the other

I don’t think it’s politically or substantively wise to set ourselves up as dogmatically opposed to any given source of energy (except coal!) (just kidding!) (only not!). The key is to set up low-carbon standards and benchmarks and say, "if you can meet these without ginormous subsidies, have at it." This is true of biofuels […]

Learning from masters in other fields: What a concept!

David Mamet (author of The Verdict and Glengarry Glen Ross, among other fine things) writes this in his new book Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business (a great book just loaded with great snark:

Paris bike rental scheme takes off

But wait, I thought bikes were impractical! Taxi drivers and other critics said that it would never work, but three weeks after Paris was sprinkled with 10,000 self-service bicycles, the scheme is proving a triumph and a new pedalling army appears to be taming the city’s famously fierce traffic. Bertrand Delanoë, the city’s mayor, and […]

Is a lot more solutions like this

This is what the world needs more of: a focus on implementing soft technologies rather than a mania to design ever more complex ones.

15 Green Fashion Finds

Does your summer need a little sartorial splendor? Of corset does! We’ve put together a head-to-toe eco-ensemble that proves innovative designers are giving green a new look. (Of course, the greenest route is to shop secondhand, and those fashion finds you’ll have to dig up yourself.) Shaun Deller Wheely cap Cyclist — or rather, recyclist […]

An interview with Hillary Clinton about her presidential platform on energy and the environment

This is part of a series of interviews with presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside. Update: Clinton suspended her campaign for the presidency on June 7, 2008. Hillary Clinton. Photo: SEIU True to form, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has done her homework on environmental and energy issues. A member of the Environment […]

This store takes its green role seriously

Last month, we reported on a few regional grocery chains that are earning organic certification. I went to one of them, a Hannaford, the other night, and have been meaning to publicly praise them ever since. Not only do they have huge, clearly marked organic sections (none of this shy, tucked-away business), they also had […]

Hansen gives a talk in Iowa about climate change impacts

Hansen writes faster than I can blog. He has posted a "talk given at Des Moines last Sunday, with description of Declaration of Stewardship slightly edited for clarity." He talks about the "three major consequences of global warming, if we go down the business-as-usual path, with fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions continuing to increase":

TV watching inhibits learning

Neil Postman and Jerry Mander have said that educational TV is a fraud for decades -- what you learn watching television is how to watch television. Period.

The conceit of "educational TV" is the same one that sells "eat all you like" diet books and "think yourself rich" plans to fools: the idea of something for nothing (someone else, smarter than you, will handle raising your kids -- just pop in the video).

You learn to be human by interacting with humans, not appliances.