Latest Articles

Or Are You Just Happy to Sue Me?

U.S. prosecutors compare “eco-terrorists” to KKK In its unyielding quest to root out terror at its terror-y roots, the U.S. government is battling to have 10 eco-activists sentenced as terrorists. At a hearing in Eugene, Ore., yesterday, attorneys argued that 10 members of the loosely coalesced Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front deserve the […]

What would you like to ask him?

Tomorrow, I’m sitting down for a chat with Paul Hawken, author, entrepreneur, and environmental legend. We’ll be discussing, among other things, his new book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. (If you’re in Seattle tomorrow, you can see Hawken at a Grist-sponsored […]

Friday music blogging comes to Grist

I’ve decided that green or no green, I’m going to start getting some music up on this blog. Every blog needs some music, right? I’ve been digging on the new Modest Mouse album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Here’s “Parting of the Sensory,” from which this post’s title comes. And in other […]

Making public transit work

Greater Vancouver leads the Northwest in transit ridership, with somewhere between two and three times as many annual bus and train rides per person as Portland and Seattle.

So the obvious question: How come? Why does Vancouver do so much better in transit statistics than its southern neighbors?

An interview with renowned climate scientist James Hansen

James Hansen. Photo: nasa.gov James Hansen, NASA’s top climate expert, believes scientists have an obligation to speak out when their findings have important implications for the public — and he certainly put that belief into practice last year when he told The New York Times that the Bush administration was trying to muzzle his calls […]

How best to pitch the climate change message?

Mike Hulme of the UK’s Tyndall Centre says — yet again — that the language of "catastrophe" and "disaster" used by climate-change scientists and advocates is having the opposite of its intended effect: it’s making people numb and apathetic. I more or less buy this — I did, after all, write a five-part series arguing […]

Live Aid guy disses Gore’s Live Earth concerts

Here’s what Live Aid and Live 8 organizer Bob Geldoff had to say about Gore’s Live Earth concerts: “I hope they’re a success,” De Volkskrant newspaper quoted Geldof as saying in an interview. “But why is (Gore) actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody’s known about that problem for years. […]

Making a market for solar in Eugene, Oregon

Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) offers to buy solar power produced by customers at 15 cents/kWh.

The weather will matter more and more

Energy dependence seems to be the topic of the day, or at least the last two days. David Roberts posted a link yesterday to an eye-opening article about the surge of interest among the Amish of Ohio for solar PV panels. I had always assumed, wrongly, that the Amish eschewed electricity, period. Actually, they just don't like depending on the outside world.

Meanwhile, renewed violence in Nigeria, a major petroleum producer, is giving oil markets the jitters.

So is home-produced energy always better?

Green the Pope way

That’s the Vatican’s green vision.