Articles by Grist staff

Solar Eclipsed

Solar providers can’t keep up with growing demand Solar power may not yet be ready for the big time: The current spike in oil prices is causing a surge of interest in home solar, but supply of polysilicon (the stuff solar panels are made of) is unable to keep up with demand. It used to […]

We’d Do Anything for Love (But We Won’t Do That)

Republican gas-price pander disgusts even pander-lovin’ American people Hollywood producers like to say that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people. Hollywood producers, meet Senate Republicans. Their latest gas-price gambit, coordinated by Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) — a legislator who puts the “less” in “hapless” — seems to have […]

Look who’s changing the world now

Recently, contributor Deborah Schimberg had the chance to attend the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at the Saïd Business School in Oxford, England. She shares a few thoughts here.

Should we see our contaminated and warring world as cause for despair, or as a call to action? Social entrepreneurs choose the second, and big-time business is getting on board. And of the 16 award-winners recently announced by the Skoll Foundation -- which was created by former eBay president Jeff Skoll -- several had a green bent.

There was Jim Fruchterman of Benetech, who is working on several sector-changing businesses, among them a software program that will help conservation groups standardize data collection and management. And Mindy Lubber of Ceres, which helps shareholders pressure major corporations like Ford to adopt forward-looking policies. Another, Albina Ruiz of Ciudad Saludable, has worked to set up eco-enterprises in 20 cities in Peru. These folks are all addressing serious structural problems in the environmental sector with systematic, business-like methods.

An interview with retiring Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a GOP leader on environmental protection

Sherwood Boehlert. Photo: AP/Jim McKnight. When leading U.S. climate scientist James Hansen accused NASA earlier this year of stifling his public speech on climate change, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) sprang into action. Chair of the House Science Committee, Boehlert immediately fired off a stern letter to the NASA administrator, asserting that “when it comes to […]