Climate Culture

All Stories

  • Gregory Gipson reviews Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

    "Beauty is so much in demand," A. R. Ammons writes in his magnificent poem, "Garbage," that "it's a wonder natural / selection hasn't thinned out anything not perfectly / beautiful." Nature, he adds, "likes a broad spectrum approaching disorder so / as to maintain the potential of change with / variety and environment."

    Gregory Gipson Culture

  • Grants’ Tomb?

    The U.S. EPA has awarded more than $2 billion in grants to nonprofit organizations since 1993 through a process that the agency’s internal watchdog says is seriously flawed. Many grants were awarded without competitive bids, and some groups may have received preferential treatment. Some of the awards went to organizations that subsequently sued the EPA […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • The Secret Life of a Telecommuter

    Suzy Becker Culture

  • Katie Alvord, author

    Katie Alvord is the author of Divorce Your Car! Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile. She lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Monday, 11 Feb 2002 UPPER PENINSULA, Mich. It’s Monday morning and I’ve just completed my regular commute: strolling from bedroom to office, a journey of 22 steps, in my slippers. I […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Taking on the erosive cycle of contemporary politics

    Every day I try to protect my children from problems I didn’t create and cannot solve alone. I spread cream on their skin to shield them from the ultraviolet radiation that sneaks through our thinning ozone layer. I try to feed them food free of pesticides and hormones, but I know their bodies are exposed […]

    Elizabeth Sawin Culture

  • Area 51

    Fair-to-middling was the U.S. ranking in a new study, presented at the World Economic Forum last week in New York, that rated the environmental health of 142 countries. In the study, conducted by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, the U.S. […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Jonna Higgins-Freese reviews Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber

    I am an environmental activist, and for almost a year, my husband and I have struggled to understand how our environmental commitments bear on our decision about whether to have children. So when I picked up Sandra Steingraber's new book Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood,, I was immediately drawn in by the opening sentence: "Every woman who becomes pregnant brings to the experience her various identities."

    Jonna Higgins-Freese Culture

  • Strip-Trees

    Suzy Becker Culture

  • Humans are gobbling up too much of the sun’s energy

    The energy of the sun, captured by plants and passed on to animals, powers everything in our world — dolphins leaping out of the ocean, geese moving across the sky, people stirring their morning oatmeal. Set in our ways. Photo: Art Wolfe, Inc. This truth contains beautiful poetry: It teaches us that in our children’s […]

    Elizabeth Sawin Culture

  • Irish Eyes Are Smiling

    The Irish government has okayed plans to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm. The $630 million project will have three times the electricity-generating capacity of all current offshore wind farms worldwide; its 200 turbines will produce 10 percent of Ireland’s power. When completed, the project will help Ireland cut its greenhouse gas emissions by […]

    Grist staff Culture