Climate Culture

All Stories

  • Ask Umbra on holiday donations, green magazines, and more

    Dearest Readers, I write to you from Copenhagen, where I have come to witness the big climate conference. O the life of a Grist columnist gets more glamorous by the day! Be sure to check out our coverage, and follow my adventures on Twitter. Yes, dear readers, I’ve finally succumbed to the tweet hereafter — […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • On the message—not the arrests—at Copenhagen’s mass rally

    Demonstrators at Saturday’s climate-change march in Copenhagen.Grist photo/Jennifer PredigerI skipped Copenhagen’s large demonstration on Saturday for the same reason I missed the Bright Green expo and Desmond Tutu speaking at the Bella Center—there’s so freakin’ much happening here, so many events worth attending and reporting at every waking moment. I’ll post more soon about the […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Culture

  • From Big Ben to Brussels: Group walks to raise climate awareness

    Here are the stats on our walk from Big Ben to Brussels: 3 countries, 15 days, 250 miles, an estimated 500,000 steps. Me and 4 footsore, fantastic friends. Our final day seemed almost too easy. We woke up with less than 10 miles to go, and had to dawdle along to allow the camera crew […]

    Roz Savage Culture

  • This year, have a Slow Christmas

    This post originally appeared on SlowChristmas.org. Recently I have begun to wonder. Just when did Christmas go from this:         to this? USB Warmer Seat Cushion           The world is a fast place, filled with stuff, so I guess it makes sense that Christmas would reflect that. The […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • How to make healthy, safe food-bank donations 

    In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. ————— Time to green the canned-food drive.From the Grist Twitter feed: Looking for healthy safe nonperishable foods to donate to food banks. Ideas?  — […]

    Lou Bendrick Culture

  • Take a walk through the JP Green House [video]

    JP Green House walk-through from Ken Ward on Vimeo. Walk through of JP Green House, by Ken Ward, co-founder, and Simon Hare & Declan Keefe of Placetailor, showing materials, design and construction techiques being used, aiming to meet passivhaus standards and meet negative, net carbon impact objective.

    Ken Ward Culture

  • Study says green shoppers more likely to later cheat, steal

    Dearests, I know this won’t apply to any of you, but it is a curious phenomenon: according to a piece in Slate, a recent psychological study shows that a small group of shoppers who bought green products later acted badly in constructed situations — in one case, sharing less money with those in need, and […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Ask Umbra on globetrotting friends, thorium reactors, and more

    Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I have greatly cut back on my airplane trips because of my concern about global warming. However, I have groups of friends whose main conversation is about the overseas trips they have been on. When I don’t have an exotic place to talk about it seems like […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • A womb of one’s own

    Photo: Mahalie via Flickr So, why is my response ire and not panic? I guess I’m over the panic. During my pregnancy, I’ve been reading a lot about the toxics in my body and their potential effects on the fetus (and I’ll be writing a lot more about this stuff in this blog series). I […]

    Anna Fahey Culture

  • Umbilical Cords Strike an Off Note

    More than 200 toxic chemicals were found in the blood of umbilical cords sampled from racial and ethnic minority babies in a report coming out Wednesday. The analysis discovered for the first time in cord blood bisphenol A (or BPA), a perfluorocarbon used in non-stick and weather-proofing products, as well as certain forms of PCBs […]

    Lisa Stiffler Culture