Climate Culture
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Turkey trove: Grist’s greatest Thanksgiving recipes
Looking for creative and sustainable fare for your Thanksgiving feast? The Grist archives are a treasure trove: Check out some of our favorite recipes from years past. Bon appétit! The main dish Deep-fried turkey Headed for Thanksgiving in the flyover? Lest you appear too coastally elite with your heritage turkey, you can deep-fry it for […]
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Stuffed to the gills: How crap took over my life — and how I intend to take it back
Photo: Peretz PartenskyIt’s hard to put a finger on the exact moment the crap took over Americans’ lives, but I know exactly when it happened to me. And as we head into a day of national gluttony followed by a collective, orgiastic display of shopping, I’ve resolved to do more than weather the onslaught. I […]
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Pepper spray is not messing around
If this weekend's attack on students had you wondering how bad pepper spray really is, science writer Deborah Blum has you covered. Answer: It's five times more intense than the hottest natural pepper in the world. (Commercial pepper spray is twice as intense, but the police-grade stuff is supercharged.) That's because it's made of capsaicin, […]
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Here’s a house made of newspaper and lottery tickets
Texas Tech engineering students are testing out Building Blox, cinderblock-style construction materials that are basically bulletproof papier mache. The blocks are made from a slurry of recycled newspapers, phone books, and lottery tickets, but they're twice as strong as cinderblocks despite weighing a third as much. They also improve a home's energy efficiency by insulating […]
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Ask Umbra: Is it safe for Occupy groups to use wooden pallets?
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Our Occupy group is looking for information regarding the safety of using wooden pallets. They want to use them under tents, to help stay drier, and possibly to burn (for heat only, not for cooking). I found a Grist article on pallets from a few years ago, […]
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Live your tiny house fantasies by renting one on AirBnB
The highest-rated listing on AirBnB, the site that allows you to rent homes, apartments and other temporary quarters as an alternative to staying in a hotel, is a tiny house. The Mushroom Dome Cabin in Aptos, Calif., sports a loft bed under its geodesic dome roof and is in walking distance of a grove of […]
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Discovery says they’ll be airing climate change show after all, sort of
We were pretty irritated at the news that Discovery Channel, which bought the BBC's spectacular Frozen Planet documentary for airing in the U.S., would not be showing the series' final climate change episode. Turns out we should have instead been irritated that they're dissing Sir David "So Cool Penguins Nest In Me" Attenborough. Discovery says […]
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Guerrilla bike lanes and asphalt devils: Remaking the streets with protest art
Photo: c/o Peter GibsonWhen Peter Gibson first set out with spray paint and stencils into the streets of Montreal, he had protest on his mind, not art. He had little sense that his small act of sabotage would usher him into the boundary-pushing realm of street art — or land him in the back of […]
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Minneapolis house gets by without a furnace or fireplace
A lot of people talk a good game about passive heating, but are they willing to face getting through a Minneapolis winter with no furnace and no fireplace? Paul Brazelton is. He recently finished retrofitting his home to become one of less than two dozen passivhauses in the U.S., which will mean facing 20-below winters […]
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Go, fight … green? Can sports teams save the planet?
Photo: IscanWhen the 2011 Major League Baseball season got underway last April, teams rolled out the usual promotions for fanatical fans: giant foam fingers, T-shirt giveaways, beer in unbreakable, aluminum bottles. The Seattle Mariners took a slightly different tack. At two separate Monday night home games, 5,000 fans were given bags of gardening soil, composted […]
