Climate Culture

All Stories

  • Top 10 worst Christmas gifts

    The Jamaica Plain Green House today released its second annual list of “Top 10 Worst Christmas Gifts.” The list ranges from $2 stocking stuffers to baubles of the super-rich. JP Green House co-founder Ken Ward said, “These ten items achieved high scores on each of three criteria — profligate, unnecessary, and tasteless energy use — […]

    Ken Ward Culture

  • 'Chunking' Trash Out the Window, Texas Style

    People are unfathomable, what drives and motivates them to do things is beyond our imagining.

    Auden Schendler Culture

  • Ask Umbra on Christmas trees, broken lights, and naughty birds

    Dearest Readers, Now that I’m back from convoluted Copenhagen, I find I need a bit of a break. So I’ll be taking some time off to make gingerbread, sip cocoa, and knit myself a new compost bin, which means you won’t see my column next week. But I’ll be here on January 4 — look […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • The Great Diaper Debate

    Editor’s Note: Anna finished this post (and a few more) before she went on maternity leave. She gave birth to a healthy girl, Audrey, on December 13. Cloth or disposable? Clark wrote about this way back in 2005. I guess it’s a question that Sightliners, rightfully, agonize over as they’re gearing up for a diapering […]

    Anna Fahey Culture

  • A refreshing lack of green nagging in Copenhagen

    For all the words, images, and video coming out of Copenhagen this month, I’m not sure anything is so clear and helpful as an op-ed in the Dec. 6 Washington Post, “To really save the planet, stop going green all alone.” If you’re going to forward one climate article to your sister in Dallas this […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Culture

  • 5 fab bike solutions seen on the streets of Copenhagen

    The ‘hybrid’ electric bike Copenhagen wheel concept (retrofit to your own bike’s back wheel hub) shown at Hopenhagen’s Future Cities exhibit.By April Streeter for Treehugger.com: I went to Copenhagen because I could take a train, and I was really interested in what the mood would feel like on the streets (as opposed to what the […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Vindication edition: Obama declares insulation “sexy”

    Here at Sexy Retrofits, we’ve been pointing out for a while the absolute hotness of making buildings more energy efficient. Today, our President said this: “I know the idea [of investing in upgrades to inefficient buildings] may not be very glamorous, although I get really excited about it. Insulation is sexy stuff.” Know what else […]

    Katharine Wroth Culture

  • How about we stop claiming environmentalists are “anti-human”

    Know what’s really depressing? Dragging out old saws about anti-human environmentalists.In the dark of night yesterday — OK, at 8:02 p.m. — Slate published a piece by Anne Applebaum that calls out the “anti-human prejudices of the climate change movement.” Specifically, she is worried that the news coming from Copenhagen is turning her nine-year-old son […]

    Katharine Wroth Culture

  • Could AlertMe be the Apple of energy efficiency?

    AlertMe iphone app.Photo: Courtesy of AlertMeI’m sitting in a conference room at a PR agency on the San Francisco waterfront when the chief executive of AlertMe, a British energy management startup, pulls out his iPhone to check on a colleague’s kilowatt consumption back in the U.K. The executive, who has the Vonnegutian name of Pilgrim […]

    Todd Woody Culture

  • Sugar and Spice and…Lead and Mercury

    Sandra Steingraber is my hero. Her book, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood, chronicles her own pregnancy from both a scientific and personal perspective. It’s beautifully and lovingly written—yet for a pregnant woman it’s also a tough read. Trained as a biologist, Steingraber meticulously documents the toxic hazards we live with every day, and […]

    Anna Fahey Culture