Articles by Grist staff

Al Gore and IPCC awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received their Nobel Peace Prizes this morning in Oslo, Norway. In his acceptance speech, Gore emphasized humanity’s role in the climate crisis, saying, “We are what is wrong, and we must make it right … We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred […]

Thousands of protesters in over 50 cities call for climate action, now

This weekend, thousands of people around the world protested for climate action in at least 50 cities, urging the governments meeting at the United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to get serious about curbing climate change. An estimated 10,000 people protested in London, marching through the streets to rally outside the U.S. embassy, emphasizing […]

Scaling back our energy-hungry lifestyles means more of what matters, not less

The work of recent Nobel Peace Prize winners Al Gore and the IPCC, along with a veritable mountain of other evidence, clearly lays out the reality and potential costs of human-induced climate change. Most analyses have concluded that we can and must keep our economies growing while addressing the climate challenge; we need only reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we produce. We can do this, they say, by using more efficient light bulbs, driving more fuel-efficient cars, better insulating our homes, buying windmills and solar panels, etc. While we agree that these things need to happen (and the sooner the better), it is clear that they will not be enough to solve the big problems the world faces.

The inconvenient truth is that to ensure quality of life for future generations, the world's wealthiest societies cannot continue our current lifestyles and patterns of economic growth. Further, the large proportion of humanity living in poverty must be able to satisfy basic human needs without aspiring to an overly materialistic lifestyle.

Does this inconvenient truth mean doom and despair? Absolutely not. Indeed, we think this seemingly inconvenient truth is actually a blessing in disguise, for our high-consuming lifestyles and western patterns of economic growth are not actually improving our well-being: they are not only unsustainable, they are undesirable.

Scientists are discovering a convenient truth: our happiness does not depend on the consumption of conventional economic goods and services, but instead is enhanced when we have more time and space for socializing, for nature, for learning, and for really living instead of just consuming.

Sweden best at addressing climate change, U.S. and Saudi Arabia worst, says report

You might want to sit down for this: A new report from a German environmental group says that Sweden does the most to address climate change, while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia do the least. Shocking, we know. The U.S. dropped two places from its fourth-worst position last year, while Sweden stayed up top for […]