Grist List

How extreme weather almost aborted this year’s Thanksgiving meal

It’s a miracle Thanksgiving is happening this year at all, given all the extreme weather we’ve had. If you’re wondering when climate change will start affecting us in ways that are heartbreaking as well as economically painful, here’s how this year’s feast almost didn’t happen.

Christopher Mims Food

Report: Homeownership is keeping unemployment high

The U.S. is suffering crushing unemployment, yet workers can't move to where the jobs are because they are trapped in underwater mortgages, explains a new report from Brookings. This, it turns out, is the ultimate fate of the "ownership society" that our government has been pushing for so long through Fannie, Freddy, and tax policy: […]

Christopher Mims Technology

Here’s a house made of newspaper and lottery tickets

Texas Tech engineering students are testing out Building Blox, cinderblock-style construction materials that are basically bulletproof papier mache. The blocks are made from a slurry of recycled newspapers, phone books, and lottery tickets, but they're twice as strong as cinderblocks despite weighing a third as much. They also improve a home's energy efficiency by insulating […]

Jess Zimmerman Culture

No National Climate Service for you, says Congress

Can Congress say no to an innocuous, zero-cost request for a government agency to reorganize itself so that it contains a National Climate Service? The answer — in our anti-science, post-truth, batshit crazy America — is yes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wanted to create what it calls a "one stop shop" for climate […]

Christopher Mims Politics

Chevron on Brazil spill: ‘Oh whoops, our bad’

Earlier this month, an oil well that Chevron was drilling off the coast of Brazil sprung a leak, and as many as 110,000 gallons of oil have spread over the sea bed and into the ocean. Chevron didn’t even notice at first — Brazil's state oil company had to sound the alarm about the spill, […]

Sarah Laskow Energy

Watch Jamie Oliver say something unprintable to McDonald’s on TV

One of the greatest things among the many great things about British accents is how classy they generally make swearing sound. This works best if you're, say, Stephen Fry; it's a little less effective for Jamie Oliver and his mockney pronunciation, but it's still pretty funny to watch him cuss at McDonald's on Jimmy Kimmel […]

Jess Zimmerman Food

Climate change pantry raid: Oysters

Here's the current list of delicious foods that climate change is going to take away: pecan pie, chocolate, coffee, wine, bacon, peanut butter. Now, a new addition: oysters. This list does sound like the grocery list of a 1 percenter who shops only at a Dean & Deluca in Park Slope. (Wine-filled, coffee-flavored, bacon-flecked chocolate […]

Sarah Laskow Science

Critical List: Ozone fix is warming planet; weighing Thanksgiving’s environmental impact

To fix the ozone, manufacturers of fridges and other products replaced ozone-busting CFCs and HCFCs with HFCs. But now the U.N. is warning that HFCs do a number on the climate. In other words, the solution to the ozone problem could be creating a climate change problem. Oh, and no one thinks that the world […]