Climate Culture
All Stories
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Don’t bag your leaves — they just go in landfills
Awesome, an excuse to be lazy in the fall! Melissa Hopkins, a spokesperson for the National Audobon Society, is encouraging people not to bag up their leaves, because 8 million tons of them end up in landfills every year. (The leaves are biodegradable, of course, but the bags are not.) Instead, you can compost them, […]
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Critical List: 7 billionth baby born; OWS to use green generators
The world's 7 billionth baby has been born in the Philippines. (How do U.N. arbiters know she's the seven billionth? They don't: it’s just symbolic.) It snowed on the East Coast, and "virtually every site north of Maryland to Maine … recorded their greatest October snowfall on record." An energy storage company that received a […]
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Ask Umbra: Can toxic pollutants escape from my body fat?
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, If I ever manage to lose these rolls and handles, will the toxic stuff I’m storing in my fat be released? Will I get sick in the process? Theodora S.Angel Fire, N.M. A. Dearest Theodora, Yours was the closest I could find to a Halloween question this […]
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Climate change is our biggest challenge, says McKibben — but we need to keep working on population
Photo: TakverIn the late ’90s, environmental activist and author Bill McKibben wrote a book about his and his wife’s decision to have only one child, connecting their personal choice to global issues of population growth and sustainability. These days, McKibben is intently focused on fighting climate change, kick-starting a clean energy revolution, and, as a […]
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This is the weekend we hit 7 billion
Well, the 7 billionth baby is expected to arrive around Halloween. Spooky! Here's what you should read to prepare. "I am the population problem." It's easy to blame developing countries, but if you want to find the source of the population problem, check the mirror. Population isn't just about counting heads. The impact of humanity […]
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What can trick-or-treaters tell you about the health of your neighborhood?
When my brother and I were little, around this time of year we loved to watch The Halloween Tree, an animated feature based on a Ray Bradbury book of the same name. The movie opens with Bradbury himself narrating: It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small […]
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Live chat on population 7 billion — ask your questions and have your say-so
Sandeep Bathala and Carmen BarrosoJoin a Grist live chat on population issues on Monday, Oct. 31, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 a.m. Pacific, marking the occasion of the world population hitting 7 billion. We’ll have two experts on hand to answer your questions: Sandeep Bathala of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, formerly […]
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The Northern lights as you’ve never seen them before
As the International Space Station orbits Earth, it snaps images from a still camera affixed to its underside. String them together, and you get views of terrestrial phenomena as you've never seen them before. In this case, it’s the Aurora Borealis. The sun is in an active phase right now, leading to displays of "Northern" […]
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Critical List: EPA comments on Keystone XL coming soon; Moscow catches the green bug
The EPA is going to release its comments on Keystone XL soon. Also, John Kerry's on the case. America at last launched a NASA satellite to observe the weather and climate of all the earth. And Al Gore rejoiced. No pesto for you! Pine nuts are the latest food to carry salmonella. Environmental laws aren't […]
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Would you wear fish-skin shoes? Manolo Blahnik thinks you would
Designer Manolo Blahnik, who makes wildly expensive footwear, is launching a line of shoes made with sustainable or recycled material, like "raffia, cork and tilapia skins." Ooh, this is a good idea! What about tin foil? What about banana skins? What about Kleenex boxes? They are already practically shoes! In all seriousness, it's kind of […]
