Skip to content
Grist home
All donations DOUBLED
  • Gulf oil spill and Florida politics

    There’s been a lot of discussion about what the Gulf oilspill means for federal clean energy legislation.  The same thing has been happening at the state level as well. Take Florida.  The Florida Legislature has debated clean energy legislation in the last several sessions, and has come heartbreakingly close to passage several times, only to […]

  • Support Southern seafood with this Vietnamese-style caramelized catfish dish

    The addition of spring greens makes this Vietnamese-style caramelized catfish a complete meal.(April McGreger photos) Recently I visited my family in Mississippi, where I dodged tornadoes and lamented flooded fields of corn and soybeans and the many farmers who’ve gone bust. The one thing that distracted us from the immediate crises in the northern half […]

  • How environmental groups are protesting the oil spill

    Since the scale of the BP catastrophe began to register, there have been a lot of questions swirling around the political implications of the spill. Will it help or hinder efforts to pass a climate bill? Should environmentalists seize upon the opportunity to galvanize public support like never before behind an aggressive shift towards clean […]

  • Senate climate bill is coming Wednesday

    The big day is almost upon us. And the two amigos are confident about the Wednesday launch of their long-awaited climate and clean energy jobs bill. In a joint statement, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) write: We are more encouraged today that we can secure the necessary votes to pass this legislation […]

  • An oil spill looks a lot bigger in your (yes, your!) backyard

    The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is big. Twenty-five hundred square miles big. But that oily mess is out in distant ocean waters, not your backyard, making it difficult to relate to the scale of this petro-tastrophe. Helpfully, Google Earther Paul Rademacher makes it easy to imagine what the oil spill would look like in […]

  • Oil spill update: The ‘junk shot’ solution, BP’s poor safety record, right-wingers discredited

    “Eww.” A toxic-smelling trail of “dispersed” oil in the Gulf.Photo: National Wildlife FederationDown $350 million so far and its much-hyped containment dome done in by clumps of icy slush, BP is mulling other options to shut off the gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It might try again with a smaller dome.  Or […]

  • Oil spills and human health: Lessons from history

    Cleanup crews get the highest exposures to both the oil spill itself and chemical dispersants.Cross-posted from NRDC’s Simple Steps blog. Oil spill clean-up brings workers and volunteers into close contact with chemicals that are known to be hazardous to human health.  As we deal with the oil spill in the Gulf, it helps to brush […]

  • Obama’s failure on climate change

    Last week, Josh Green had an op-ed in The Boston Globe called “Even an oil spill won’t move Washington,” which points out the bizarre fact that the BP Gulf oil disaster seems only to have entrenched politicians in their pre-existing positions. They asked me to write a short response for their website. I did, and […]

  • Accident expert weighs in on Gulf oil spill

    Charles PerrowRegulation, regulation, regulation. Until the U.S. can make the switch to renewables, insists professor and author Charles Perrow, regulation is the best way to prevent disasters like the Gulf oil spill. Perrow is an organizational theorist, emeritus professor at Yale University, and author of Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies. He studies accidents. […]