Grist List

Solyndra, schmolyndra: The Obama administration’s hit rate is better than the private market’s

Making loans is a tricky business — sometimes you bet on the wrong horse. For example, there's the Obama administration, which doled out 1.4 percent of its Recovery Act cleantech investments to failed solar company Solyndra, in a move that everyone and their uncle is now calling a giant embarrassment. And then there's private venture […]

Dangerous levels of warming could happen in your lifetime

It's easy for a lot of people to ignore climate change, because it's not going to affect them, it'll only affect their children. If they don't have children, all the better! Who cares! Well, two new research papers in the latest Nature warn that most of the world could be seeing dangerous levels of global warming […]

Climate deniers refuse to accept skeptical scientists’ results

So you know how we kind of use "climate change deniers" and "climate change skeptics" interchangeably, because news stories get super boring if you don't mix it up? We're not wild about doing that, because skepticism is in fact a great scientific value that people should embrace, whereas denialism is just sticking your fingers in […]

Universities try to out-green each other in bid for NYC science campus

New York City is fielding proposals from universities to build a new science and technology campus on Roosevelt Island, and the competition is showing how desirable green buildings are becoming. The two front-runners, Cornell and Stanford, are falling over themselves to offer all manner of green features in their plans: acres of solar panels, geothermal […]

Critical List: Earthquake strikes Turkey; ‘Environmental concierge’ exists

More than 200 people died in a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Turkey.

California finished its cap-and-trade plan with minimal drama. Here's how they did it.

If you are rich and worried about your environmental footprint, you can hire a whole other human being to screw in LED lightbulbs for you, run your errands on a bike, and buy cleaning products with fewer chemicals in them.

It is shockingly easy to own exotic animals in the U.S.

The depressing news from Ohio -- where the owner of a large and mismanaged personal exotic animal park let the animals loose to be shot by police, then killed himself -- has led a number of people, such as me, to wonder, "where do you even get 18 endangered Bengal tigers in this day and age?" Turns out it's easier than you might think.

New Scientist has rounded up info on U.S. exotic animal laws, from their comfortable position outside the U.S. where they can freely be appalled.

Occupy your money

The Occupy movement has been going green, so why not make your green get Occupied? Occupy George has some pretty stark money-based infographics, and templates for printing them onto your own bills. Chances are any bill in your possession will eventually end up in the pocket of the 1 percent, so why not let it […]

Electric vehicles improve fuel economy even if people don’t buy them

The first version of a radical new technology always gets off to a slow start -- remember what they said about the first iPhone? -- and so it is with the all-electric Nissan Leaf and plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt. Yet both vehicles are having an unexpected effect on their makers' bottom line. By getting people into the showroom, they’re helping to move other fuel efficient vehicles.

EPA chief tells GOP to STFU

That high-pitched whistling is the sound of EPA chief Lisa P. Jackson's hand knifing through the air on the way to delivering a righteous slap upside the head of the GOP. Here are the money quotes from her editorial in yesterday's LA Times, in which she patiently explains that the Grand Ol' Party wants to kill jobs by blocking critical air pollution regulations.

Using the economy as cover, and repeating unfounded claims that "regulations kill jobs," they have pushed through an unprecedented rollback of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and our nation's waste-disposal laws, all of which have successfully protected our families for decades.

If the house succeeds, says Jackson, it will mean the sickening or deaths of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens.