Climate Culture

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  • Ask Umbra on engagement rings, straws, and napkins

    Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, My boyfriend and I are talking seriously about marriage, and he knows I don’t want a diamond ring (at least not a new one) because of the social and environmental impacts. You addressed this topic in 2003, saying the only good options were no ring or a […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Ask Umbra’s pearls of wisdom on Valentine’s Day

    Dearest readers, Sometimes when I’m down in the stacks researching answers to your latest dilemmas, I enjoy taking a stroll down Ask Umbra archives lane. Here are some sparkly tidbits I culled from my past advice on lessening your impact on that sweet little romantic holiday, Valentine’s Day. Have any of your own sustainable loving […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Fish for Thought

    Editor’s Note: Anna wrote this post (and several others) before leaving on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl in December. To eat fish, or not? If you’re pregnant, nursing, or even thinking about becoming pregnant, it’s a Catch-22. Seafood is the best possible source of the long-chain omega-3 fatty acid DHA, […]

    Anna Fahey Culture

  • My whiz-bang light rail is your pain in the asphalt

    Seattle light rail. Photo courtesy LeeLeFever via Flickr One train, two views: Getting to the airport from Seattle’s north side — its wealthier, whiter half — on public transit first involves a bus ride downtown. From there, as of two months ago, you can take a new light-rail line, instead of another bus, to Sea-Tac […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Culture

  • On talking to our kids about the future

    Now that the first month of the new year in the new decade has come to an end, a first month that has brought much to mourn and not much to celebrate, I’ve been thinking again about hope. What some were calling “Hopenhagen,” did not, as we all know, and perhaps should have known from […]

    Nadia Herman Colburn Culture

  • How personal actions can kick-start a sustainability revolution

    Step it up! Small is the new big.The environmental movement is divided over the importance of small steps — are they a critical starting point or a distraction from needed policy and institutional changes? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but will small changes add up to the kind of […]

    Kai Chan & Cathryn Clarke Murray Culture

  • Oscar smiles upon ‘Food, Inc.,’ stiffs ‘Mr. Fox’

    Food, Inc., Robert Kenner’s hard-hitting exposé of the food industry, has snagged a Academy Award nomination in the “best documentary” category. (Full list of nominess here; Food Inc. is up against another food politics-themed film, The Cove.) This is a significant development. I know people in the food world who have taken a blase approach […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • Obama’s budget proposal serves up thin gruel for school lunch reform

    Twenty of these won’t even get you an apple a day to keep the doctor away. As most readers of the Grist food section know by now, school lunches draw a meager share of the national budget. The federal government reimburses school cafeterias at a rate of up to $2.68 per student per day–a level […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • A teacher’s blog takes a withering look at school lunches

    Where does your food come from? In this Illinois public school, the answer is: plastic. Photo: Fed Up: School Lunch Project blogI normally don’t have much time for blog stunts–you know, I’m going to cook my way through such-and-such famous cookbook in a year, or stop using toilet paper, and then roll out a book […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • Ask Umbra on sustainable manufacturing jobs, sexless fish, and matches

    Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I am wondering if you can help me with this question: What makes jobs in sustainable manufacturing “sustainable” (as opposed to just “manufacturing” jobs), and what do employers look for in determining whether a candidate is right for a “sustainable” or “green” job? And while we’re thinking […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture