Skip to content
Grist home
All donations DOUBLED
  • I'm testifying before House Ways and Means with Pickens, Sachs, GE, and US Chamber

    The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on energy tax incentives and the green job economy.  It will be webcast here. I’m on the 1 pm panel, the one The Hill says “will likely be a media circus because of the attention [T. Boone] Pickens usually draws.”  Here’s the full witness list for my panel:   T. Boone Pickens, […]

  • Wind industry growing in blue and red states alike

    Photo: NREL/Iberdrola RenewablesAs Paul Krugman’s New York Times Magazine cover story on environmental economics, “Building the Green Economy,” was ricocheting around the enviro blogosphere last week, the American Wind Energy Association released its annual report [PDF] on the state of the wind industry. It was an interesting juxtaposition — Krugman’s deep dive into the macroeconomics […]

  • The problem with a green economy: economics hates the environment

    Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Economics is critical to getting decent climate legislation passed, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discusses in a extended piece for the New York Times. Economists like me have always suspected that this was true, but then we also suspect that economics is critical to pretty much everything. The problem […]

  • Van Jones: “I feel like I’m just getting started”

    Van JonesBy now the Strange Episode of Van Jones is well known in and outside of politics. Jones became White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs in March of 2009. Shortly thereafter began a summer of crazy, as Tea Party activists stormed congressional offices and the air waves, shouting warnings of incipient tyranny. In July, […]

  • Continuing the Movement

    America is struggling. Families strive to make ends meet while facing an uncertain economic future. The deterioration of our environment – rather than slowing – continues to gain speed. At a moment when we need every opportunity possible, climate change threatens the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable people at home and around the world. 

 We […]

  • Is Copenhagen a ‘nothingburger’ to the Senate? ‘Not a chance in hell’ says Kerry

    First published at Wonk Room. Now that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have returned from Copenhagen with a draft accord committing China, India, and the United States to a new era of climate action, the onus lies on the U.S. Senate to pass ambitious clean energy legislation. “Not a chance in hell […]

  • One year after his election, Obama on verge of audaciously fulfilling his promise as the green FDR

    Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues: global warming and the clean energy transition. If the world doesn’t stop catastrophic climate change then all presidents, indeed, all of us, will be seen as failures and rightfully so. In that sense, what team Obama has accomplished in the year since he […]

  • Gucci Group commits to saving Indonesia’s rainforests

    Photo: Shi! There’s a new fashion trend this fall: saving Indonesian rainforests. The Gucci Group, the prestigious conglomerate of fashion and luxury brands that owns Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, and Balenciaga, has decided to eliminate all paper made from Indonesian rainforests. That includes everything from its letterhead to the pretty paper bags […]

  • Young, Green, and Out of Work

    by Rinku Sen & Billy Parish Last week, the Labor Department reported that youth unemployment stands at 18.2%, nearly twice the national average of 9.8%. The percentage of young people without a job is a staggering 53.4 percent, the highest figure since World War II. Looking deeper, the statistics for youth of color are terrible […]