Latest Articles

Terrorists drive wind power

The surge in residents at Guantanamo Bay (from 2,500 to 10,000 in the past three years) has driven up energy needs for the self-sufficient U.S. Navy base that is a small slice of Cuba.

The LA Times (free registration required) reports that four new windmills and turbines, producing 950 kilowatts of electricity apiece, will soon replace diesel generators as the base's primary source of energy.  The need to be water self-sufficient drives extensive desalination operations on the base, creating the need for all that wind power.

Now if the war on terrorism could only extend that drive for energy independence to the mainland as well!

The other axis of evil

"Poverty, disease and environmental decline are the true axis of evil," according to Christopher Flavin, head of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute. Speaking January 12 at the National Press Club, Flavin presented a global security agenda as described in the newly released State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security.

Unless the world takes action to improve economic and environmental conditions around the world, security officials will face an uphill battle in dealing with the many consequences of vulnerable societies -- from wars and terrorism to heightened impacts from natural disasters.

This year's State of the World takes on this "true axis of evil" with a range of arguments on how environment, health, and demography constitute a global security agenda.

The King and We

Grist to honor civil-rights leader by taking three-day weekend On Monday, Grist will honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy by, well, not working. We’ll be back Tuesday with more of the wit and wisdom you’ve come to know and love, or at least tolerate.

Power Corrupts; Renewable Power Corrupts Renewably

Guantanamo military base to be powered partly by wind We’ve got good news and bad news. Bad news first? OK: The U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is the alleged site of government-sanctioned torture, practiced on suspects whose guilt is at best uncertain, likely to leave a permanent moral scar on the nation’s […]

Uncritical Mass

Anti-nuke opposition muted even as U.S. nuclear industry expands Opponents of nuclear power in the U.S. have been having a rough time of late attracting attention to their cause, even as the nuclear-power industry gears up to build five new reactors by 2015 and as many as 50 by 2050, with enthusiastic backing from the […]

Clear Skies and Present Danger

Clean Air Act more effective than proposed Clear Skies bill, panel says A new report by the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the Bush administration’s proposed reform of current air-quality standards will effectively do less to reduce pollution than existing Clean Air Act regulations, much as critics, including John Kerry (remember him?), charged during […]

Christie Whitman’s forthcoming book assails GOP’s rightward lurch

When U.S. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman left the agency in 2003, she said she wanted to “spend more time with her family.” If you believed that, Bernard Kerik‘s got a tax-free nanny he’d like to sell you. Those skeptical of Whitman’s resignation excuse may soon have their suspicions confirmed. It seems she quit because […]

A special series on the alleged “Death of Environmentalism”

Environmental leaders were rather dismayed late last year when upstarts began offering high-profile obituaries of their beloved movement. Is environmentalism dead? We are reminded of a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which a wizened old man is offered to the collector of dead bodies in plague-ridden London. “I’m not dead,” the […]

An interview with authors of the controversial essay “The Death of Environmentalism”

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus stirred up quite a fuss when they unveiled their essay “The Death of Environmentalism” last fall, declaring the environmental movement kaput and calling for a more visionary and inspiring progressive movement to take its place. In an interview with Grist, Shellenberger and Nordhaus talk about their ideas, the responses they’ve […]

Green leaders say rumors of environmentalism’s death are greatly exaggerated

The leadership of the U.S. environmental movement took quite a beating in Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus’s “The Death of Environmentalism.” We invited four mainstream green leaders to respond: Carl Pope of the Sierra Club Phil Clapp of National Environmental Trust Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council Dan Carol of the Apollo Alliance […]