Latest Articles

Enfant, Terrible

Most-polluted places in California see highest infant mortality rates The results of a San Francisco Chronicle analysis of infant morality rates in California zip codes are, while depressing as hell, not surprising: In short, pollution kills babies. Agricultural waste, toxic chemicals, smog — while these sources of pollution are difficult to link to any single […]

Ford Focus

Ford develops ambitious, private plan to reduce emissions Top executives at Ford Motor Co. have set an aggressive goal to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions — a goal that would require a roughly 80 percent improvement in the fuel economy of the company’s cars and trucks by 2030. The motives behind the goal, which the company has […]

Umbra on hemp fabric

Dear Umbra, You didn’t mention hemp as a fabric alternative. JordanMarquette, Mich. Dearest Jordan, No, I didn’t. Thank you for writing such a concise letter; it stood out among the 4 million other hemp letters and cut straight to the point. I apologize for the omission. Hemp is currently a narrowly available fabric with a […]

Joel Makower, environmental business expert, answers questions

Joel Makower. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’ve got several affiliations, all of my own creation. I’m editor of The Green Business Letter, which I founded in 1991; founder of the nonprofit Green Business Network, which produces GreenBiz.com, ClimateBiz.com, GreenerBuildings.com, and GreenBizLeaders.com; and cofounder of Clean Edge, Inc., a research and consulting firm […]

Disunderstandism

A new poll from the Program on International Policy Attitudes indicates that, despite all the incumbent's vaunted straight talk and the "core principles" in his "heart of hearts," Bush supporters don't fully understand what they are supporting.  

Leftovers Again?

New environmental trend: eating other folks’ leftovers Here at Grist we love reporting on new environmental trends, especially when there are gimmicky new terms coined to describe them. Herewith, we give you the “freegan,” someone who subsists entirely on food other people — usually restaurants or grocery stores — have thrown out. Though freegans can […]

Utah, You’ve Been Norton’d!

Interior Department protecting Utah rivers from wrong threat Last month, Interior Secretary Gale Norton splashily announced the Three Rivers Withdrawal: Nearly 200 miles of prized territory along Utah’s Green, Colorado, and Dolores rivers would be withdrawn from consideration for new hard-rock mining claims. The proposal had been on her desk for 18 months, so some […]

Hang Up and Hike

Cell towers and phones are invading national parks The swish of a breeze through the trees. The twittering of birds. The burbling of a brook. The … opening notes of “U Can’t Touch This”? Get used to it: Bleeping (and by that we mean fricking) cell phones are becoming more common in national parks, in […]

Who You Gonna Believe, Us or Some “Inspector”?

EPA inspector general blasts Bush admin’s power-plant rules The U.S. EPA came under harsh criticism yesterday from environmental fringe extremists … oh, wait, no … actually, from its own top investigative official. The agency’s inspector general issued a scathing report saying that enforcement of clean-air laws has been crippled by the Bush administration’s decision to […]

The environment and foreign policy

No presidential debate has ever provided much succor for environmentalists, but last night's was literally devoid of any mention of environmental issues, save one:  In a discussion of Bush's tendency to be "certain but wrong," Kerry wedged "global warming" into a list of subjects about which the president is ignoring facts.

What's significant is not just that green issues were passed over, but that they were passed over in a debate focused on foreign policy.  In the U.S., environmentalism is still considered a matter of domestic politics, a "special interest."  It is frequently portrayed as a lifestyle quirk, a preoccupation of the leisure class -- as when Dick Cheney notoriously dismissed energy conservation as a "sign of personal virtue."

But in years to come, environmental problems will likely manifest primarily as foreign policy issues.  Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief science advisor, got an avalanche of press recently for baldly asserting that climate change is a greater danger to the world than terrorism.  

It was an artless way of making a perfectly legitimate point.