Climate Culture

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  • Could novels about climate change shake us to our senses?

    Cross-posted from Climate Progress. Sometimes, fiction is the best way to win friends and influence people – H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine and George Orwell’s classic 1984 come to mind. Each provoked a visceral reaction that galvanized the culture around it, changing forever the way issues such as class and totalitarianism were perceived. Neville […]

    John Atcheson Culture

  • Hop on the bus, texters

    A French lad texting in an appropriate venue.Photo: TopheeNearly two-thirds of Millennials, aged 18 to 29, admit to texting while driving, according to a new Pew Research Center report [PDF]. Texting while driving is “insanely dangerous,” Clive Thompson reminds us in Wired. “Studies have found that each time you write or read a text message, […]

    Lisa Hymas Culture

  • Ask Umbra’s pearls of wisdom on gardening

    Dearest readers, Ah, spring is in the air. Well, sort of. We’re still technically about three weeks out, but our unusually unwintry weather here at Grist HQ seems to be duping buds into bloom and setting off an outbreak of early onset spring fever, which has, in turn, caused mulch, seedlings, watering, and weeding to […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Asian carp: battle or bait?

    News of the impending Asian Carp invasion of the Great Lakes is sobering. But I have a solution. Are you listening, Maine Lobsterman’s Association? These fish have been clogging waterways and outcompeting native fish up and down the Mississippi River system ever since they escaped the fish farms where they were used to clean tanks […]

    Erik Hoffner Culture

  • Your car and your meat-eating: the biggest causes of climate change

    A new study coming out of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that when it comes to the net contribution to climate change on-road transportation, burning biomass for cooking, and raising animals for food are the biggest culprits. Since most of us don’t […]

    treehugger.com Culture

  • From staple to superfood: açaí goes industrial

    “The fruit was traditionally collected from wild palms. Now companies have açaí plantations, and collectors are raising more açaí palms on their land, according to Antônio Cordeiro de Santana, an agricultural economist at the Rural Federal University of the Amazon. With cultivation more concentrated, resistance to disease and productivity have decreased, he said, even as […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • The time has come to make delicious and easy bread at home

    Fifteen minutes wrestling with dough–who kneads it? A little more than two years ago, Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey got together and transformed home bread making for all time. In the kitchen of Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery, they shot a video illustrating Lahey’s simple method for making a top-quality loaf with no special equipment–and no […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • Ask Umbra on eating in

    Dearest readers, Look, Ma — no takeout!The sharper among you already know from yesterday’s video that HuffPost Green is exhorting us all to board the cooking-at-home train via its Week of Eating In experiment. Not one to ask of others what I myself am not willing to do, I have taken the pledge. That’s right; […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Hipster puppies hate on cars

    Hipupcracy What do you get when an insufferable breed of the two-wheeled species meets a fey brand of urban canines? Hipster puppies: Photo: elizabeth e via hipsterpuppies.tumblr.com lola bean believes “cars suck” and cyclists have a “right to the road” — but has no idea how mean and annoying she is to pedestrians. Furthermore, hipster […]

    Ashley Braun Culture

  • Inspired transit: Portland gets around

    Photos: flickr users b and Jason McHuff Portland, Oregon, is consistently ranked as one of the country’s most livable cities (and it was a Fast City in 2007). And it continues to show solid growth despite having the second lowest per capita transit spending of the 28 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. A system of trains, […]

    Fast Company Culture