Latest Articles

Look, We Made a Book!

Grist hawks its first book, Wake Up and Smell the Planet Attention Grist fans: we’re pleased to announce that we’re making our first foray into fiber-space. This fall, your favorite bits of Grist — including sage green-living advice, creative ideas from readers, and all manner of educational and entertaining prose — will be printed in […]

That’s a Mighty Full Circular File

Faced with rampant pollution, China reports increase in citizen protests The sorry state of air and water quality in China has led to rising public protests, says a top environment agent there — and citizens and officials alike are urging the country to crack down on polluters. In the first five months of 2007, the […]

Real World: Havana

Cuban conference addresses climate and development This week, an international conference of 800 brains is addressing climate change, environmental education, sustainable development, and other green topics — in Cuba. Yes, offering further proof that the commies have the right idea, Cuba got credit from U.N. Environment Program Director Achim Steiner for solving its energy crisis […]

Global warming cancels 4th of July celebrations

Global warming threatens our White Chistmases with winter heatwaves and our Arbor Days with record wildfires. And now it imperils our Independence Day fireworks with ever worsening droughts.

The Drudge Report headline blares "No Fireworks." As USA Today reports:

Dozens of communities in drought-stricken areas are scrapping public fireworks displays and cracking down on backyard pyrotechnics to reduce the risk of fires.

"From a fire standpoint and a safety standpoint, it was an easy call," Burbank Fire Chief Tracy Pansini says. He recommended calling off fireworks at the Starlight Bowl because they're launched from a mountainside covered with vegetation that's "all dead."

The record droughts around the country have nixed fireworks in a half dozen states. What will happen to 4th of July celebrations over much of the country if, as predicted in an April Science, article, we have "a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest"?

Here are some of the places canceling fireworks this year:

Grist in NYT

How did we neglect to shamelessly self-promote mention that Grist honcho Chuck Gilla got some props in Sunday’s New York Times?

Emphasis on the ‘rare’

Trees are terrific in every way but one: they make lousy carbon offsets. That was the point of the "First rule of carbon offsets." But a number of comments and some media queries have led me include two rare exceptions: certified urban trees and certified tropical forest preservation. The word "certified" is key in both cases.

For these two rare cases, I would allow trees to comprise no more than 10 percent of an overall offset portfolio (which should be heavily weighted toward efficiency, renewables, fuel switching, and perhaps carbon capture and storage). Also, their offset value should probably be discounted over time (because urban trees are unlikely to be permanent and tropical forest accounting is quite uncertain).

Mind your (fo)odometer

Check out a new video on food miles from The Nation: You can also check out the accompanying article here.

Why we may one day bitterly regret GM crops

Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web. I spent the weekend in Atlanta at the first-ever U.S. Social Forum — an extremely interesting event, but not the place to go for someone needing to catch up on rest. Now I’m laid up with a sore throat, which […]

Gathering data in the U.S.’ largest temperate rainforest a heroic and necessary task

Hiking part of the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska a few summers ago, I was utterly wowed, but knowing that it accounts for nearly one-third of the old-growth temperate rain forest left in the world seemed incredibly incongruent with the fact that my government was working so hard to wreck it (thanks to some truly absurd subsidies).

An excellent story in the new National Geographic retells the tale and shines light on new efforts aimed at allowing the Tongass to continue its majestic reign, including a heroic grassroots effort of the Sitka Conservation Society to "ground-truth" those parts of the nearly impenetrable Tongass scheduled for the saw. Without SCS and others, this jewel would look mightily different, and they deserve our support and our thanks.

A glimpse of environmental policies to come from Gordon Brown

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

Britain has a new prime minister. After leading the country for 10 years, Tony Blair has stepped down. Gordon Brown, Blair's number two for the past decade, takes up the reins.

Brown is viewed as solid and dependable, if a little dour. He is slightly to the left of Blair on most issues, though he has also pushed through a lot of business-friendly policies.

Gordon Brown is notoriously difficult to read; he gives very little of himself away. So what can we expect on the environment from a Brown premiership?