Forsmark and Several Fears Ago

Sweden shuts down four nuke reactors after near-meltdown of one The near-meltdown of one of Sweden’s 10 nuclear reactors has...

Rag report

It's de rigeur for Mother Earth News and Plenty to feature sustainable living on their covers, but the past few months have seen major glossies such as Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and Forbes doing the green thing.

Now in a September issue devoted to low impact living, Dwell (for those of you unfamiliar, it's a popular home & design magazine) is joining in. And they've done VF one better, actually printing the issue on post-consumer content recycled (PCR) paper -- a practice they pledge to continue in the future. Very few magazines have yet adopted PCR, even though -- as the Dwell issue demonstrates -- the result is stylish and indistinguishable from a virgin pulp product.

Sustainability visionaries see room for hope in our worry-filled world

Who’s afraid of the big, bad future? Al Gore, clearly — and pretty much anyone who has seen An Inconvenient...

Democrats must move to attract conservation-minded evangelicals before the Republicans do

The vast majority of green voters are Christian. Apparently, there just are not enough of them. One must also keep in mind that environmental issues have not historically split along party lines. Before their assimilation by the religious right, the Republican Party used to be the environmental party.

Here is an article from the Associated Press that pretty much sums up the looming "creation care" dilemma:

Dewitt said evangelicals will not call themselves environmentalists. They are going to call themselves pro-life ... But pro-life means life in the Arctic, the life of the atmosphere, the life of all the people under the influence of climate change ... Robinson said he voted for Bush in 2004 because of his opposition to abortion, but it was a tough decision, making him feel he was voting against the environment. If the conservatives want the Christian vote, they are going to have to address this ... The pastor feels like Noah cutting his first tree to build the Ark.

How ironic, cutting trees to build an ark. And there is this:

How a phony petition attacking global warming science gained a life of its own

The following is a guest essay by John Tirman, Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies.

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Recently I have encountered the counterattack on climate-change science, and it is a sobering experience.

When I was giving a talk at a book store on Manhattan's Upper West Side late last month, a young man began to pester me with hostile questions. My book, 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World, has "Altering the Earth" listed at No. 1, a chapter that briefly tours the science and politics of climate change. The young man (among other obstreperous comments) upbraided me for saying there was scientific consensus on climate change, telling the audience that he had a petition signed by 17,000 scientists denying the threat of global warming.

It was the first I had heard of such a petition, but in the days to come I noticed emails from people I'd never heard of on this same topic. The book, I knew, was bound to stir some passions, and it has. I have a dozen ecological topics listed, so anti-green zealots were bound to find me. And the main way they have attacked the book is by wielding this Global Warming Petition.

Meet the eco-model who’s changing the face of fashion

SUMMER SAYS GIVE Watch a video of Summer Rayne Oakes telling you to donate to Grist. It’s a strange scene:...

A guest essay from enviro legend James Gustave Speth

The following is a guest essay from James Gustave Speth, dean of the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and author of Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment. The opinions expressed here are his personal views.

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Thanks to an outpouring of first-rate science, excellent media coverage, and a resurgent Al Gore, the U.S. public may have turned an important corner in acknowledging global warming as a real and serious threat. To see Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in theaters alongside Nacho Libre and the usual fare is extraordinary indeed.

But if Americans take the next step and ask, "OK, what do we do now?" we encounter five other truths, most of them also inconvenient. They do tell us what we must do, however, and by when.

An interview with environmental scientist and evangelical leader Calvin DeWitt

No one has worked longer at the intersection of environmental science, evangelical ethics, and practical activism than Calvin DeWitt. Calvin...

Take Care, TCE

Top scientists call on EPA to crack down on drinking-water pollutant The solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) — the most common industrial...