Climate Culture
All Stories
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Mercury pollution from dental offices is contaminating your seafood
It seems innocent enough. Your dentist is giving you a new filling. You get some of those little metal slivers in your mouth and he tells you take a swig of water. Rinse and spit. No problem, right? Unfortunately, each one of those slivers is about half mercury. Multiply that simple routine millions of times, […]
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Ask Umbra’s pearls of wisdom on Memorial Day
Dearest readers, Ah, Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial kickoff of summer—even though we’re still rocking scarves and raincoats here at Grist HQ. To prep you for this glorious three-day weekend, I’ve sifted through the archives and found these handy holiday-appropriate tidbits, from flying the flag to drinking beer (both arguably patriotic acts). What’s going on […]
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When cyclists go uncensored
dustDesign Co.Now, we at Grist don’t like to encourage contests of “who art the greenest of them all,” but we think this tote bag (made of recycled cotton and soda bottles, natch) for the hardcore bike lover really makes a(n uncensored) statement about the iconic Prius and its pious following. On the other handlebar, it […]
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Couple buried alive under the weight of their own junk
Sure, most people living in the Western world could probably definitely do with consuming much, much less stuff. But this Chicago couple demonstrates the extreme: what can happen when a throwaway society like ours throws you away. Turns out you actually can be consumed by your own consumption. (Lucky for them, this pair survived.) [vodpod […]
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Public service announcement: Don’t spit on the people transporting you
ghmss via Flickr Creative Commons Bus drivers put up with a lot of crap: cranky commuters in the early morning, drunk partiers late at night, and would-be passengers breathlessly demanding that they open-the-doors-right-this-minute-I-didn’t-chase-this-bus-three-blocks-for-nothing. Maybe even witnessing the occasional fight. But, to my surprise, one of the spit falls of working in mass transit appears to […]
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Win some free ‘Dirt!’
Dearest readers, I’m giving away DVDs of Dirt! The Movie signed by the directors to eight lucky readers. Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, the film is a glorious ode to the “living skin of the Earth” we so often taken for granted—an homage to dirt, if you will. All you have to do is let […]
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Breaking Through Concrete: Day 1 — Seattle to Talent, Ore.
The Breaking Through Concrete bus on the way to Oregon.(Michael Hanson photos) Breaking Through Concrete team(Michael Hanson)The Breaking Through Concrete team — David Hanson, Michael Hanson, Charles Hoxie, and Edwin Marty — is taking a 21st century road trip to document the American urban farm movement. Driving across the country and back in a […]
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Kids Books and Rainforest Destruction
Imagine your horror if you picked up a copy of a book on rainforests to read to your kids, intending to teach them good environmental values, and discovered that the book about rainforests was printed on dead rainforests. Unfortunately, in many American bedrooms tonight, that horror is likely to be reality. A report released today […]
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Ask Umbra on eco-fiction and hair donations for the oil spill
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I hate to bother you, but I tried doing a Grist search to answer my question and nothing really turned up. I was hoping you could recommend some environmentally aware fiction writers or books. I love Barbara Kingsolver, but have read everything of hers twice already. :) […]
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Bike to Work Day and bike to work cities
Courtesy Billg1 via PicasaHere’s a late Bike to Work Day post. OK it’s a glorified retweet of Ezra Klein’s three-paragraph story about giving up his car in D.C., which is worth reading. Here’s the last two-thirds: The debate over auto ownership is unfortunately moralistic when, in my experience, the realities of auto ownership are almost […]
