Grist List

Chicago goes coal-free

Activists have succeeded in getting Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to shut down the city’s two coal plants — one of them by the end of the year. That doesn’t mean the city is off coal power entirely, of course, but banishing coal plants from within the city limits will have a massive effect on urban […]

Jess Zimmerman Energy

New Center for PostNatural History is a museum of human influence on nature

It makes sense that there would be a museum to chronicle just how much we’ve messed with plants, animals, the climate, and in general the world around us. The Center for PostNatural History, opening this week in Pittsburgh, is that museum.

Christopher Mims Science

Mexico City’s urbanization threatens ancient ‘floating gardens’

Chinampas, or floating gardens -- small artificial islands full of crops, built up on shallow lake beds -- once sustained the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, producing multiple harvests every year. They still exist in Mexico City, for now.

Christopher Mims Agriculture

Economist smacks down skeptics for misreading his research

William D. Nordhaus — economist, Yale professor, serious person — has taken to a serious publication, The New York Review of Books, to put the smackdown on climate skeptics. The back story: Nordhaus has done working analysis of the economic impacts of implementing climate policies. In that awful Wall Street Journal op-ed we wrote about […]

Sarah Laskow Accountability

Mailbox-sized libraries bring book-lending right to your yard

Running a library is easier than you think. Forget the degree in library and information science and the carefully chosen prudish getups with easy-pull ripcords that turn them into sexy outfits. All you need is a box on a stick and a bunch of books to set up a Little Free Library, a front-yard stash […]

Jess Zimmerman Culture

Woman arrested for burning down 3,500-year-old tree

This is the Senator, the largest pond cypress in the U.S. and, at 3,500 years old, the fifth-oldest individual tree in the world. Or anyway, this was the Senator, because on Jan. 16, the Florida tree burned from the inside out. Authorities initially ruled out arson, saying that friction or smoldering lightning damage may have […]

Jess Zimmerman Climate & Energy

Heartland ‘expert’ taught climate denialism at a Canadian university

Hey, remember yesterday, when we told you about a video that imagines a world in which climate skepticism is taught in schools? It turns out that that world is not imaginary — not at all. It exists today, and it is named … Canada. For two years, Tom Harris, a man who according to the […]

Sarah Laskow Accountability

How to turn one piece of recycled cloth into 14 outfits and a bag

So the Lorax movie may be effing up left and right, but take heart, nostalgia-trippers: you can still own a real-life Thneed! The Versalette is a cylinder of domestically sourced, domestically made, recycled, organic fabric, whose ingenious construction allows it to turn into a dress, skirt, top, poncho, scarf, or bag. You can also almost […]