heroes

Bellingham’s biking nurse

Nurse practitioner Jody Hoppis makes house calls by bike. This is a very good thing.

Michigan woman faces down meat industry, wins [VIDEO]

Lynn Henning checks a stream for CAFO contamination. When government regulators toe the industry line, citizens have to fight back. Photo: Tom DusenberryIn “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related video from around the Web. ——— I write a lot about the meat industry’s nearly unbridled power in this country, which it uses to […]

Fred Kirschenmann, winner of NRDC’s Growing Green “Thought Leader” award

An April 13, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) announced the four winners of its second annual “Growing Green” awards, which honor leaders in the sustainable-food world. The  four categories are “thought leader,” “producer,” business leader,” and “water steward.” Over the next few days, I’ll be interviewing the winners in each category. First up: Fred […]

Time magazine names me one of the ‘Heroes of the Environment 2009’

I have to admit — sometimes Joe Romm ruins my mornings. As the author of Climate Progress, one of the most influential global-warming blogs on the Internet, few debates on energy or the environment get past his ravenous attention, and he takes particular pleasure in targeting mainstream journalists who’ve written something he deems stupid. That’s […]

Thoreau, Walden and civil disobedience in the age of climate change

On a frigid January night some years ago, a friend and I snuck into a Massachusetts state preserve, stripped naked, and charged into Walden Pond. For a few exhilarating, painful moments we swam, and I imagined some hard-to-name kinship with the pond’s most famous neighbor, the 19th century eccentric Henry David Thoreau. It was a […]

An interview with ‘Green Nobel’ winner Maria Gunnoe

Mountaintop, removed. Near Rawl, West Virginia.Courtesy of ILoveMountains.orgMaria Gunnoe.Tom DusenberyWest Virginian Maria Gunnoe won a prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize this week for her work fighting the devastating practice of mountaintop removal mining. It’s hard to think of someone more deserving of the prize, which includes a $150,000 award. Gunnoe, 40, has seen her family’s ancestral […]

Voting has ended: Grist readers have chosen top eco-hero and eco-villain of 2008

Way back before the holiday season, we posted our lists of green heroes and green villains for 2008. Because we are totally Web 3.7 participatorynewmediacroudsourcingcitizenjournalist types, we even opened it up to your votes!

So you voted. And voted, and voted. Then, on Jan. 8, we warned you: only 24 hours left to vote!

Turns out we really meant, er, 24 days. Give or take a week. So you voted some more. But now voting's really closed! For realz. And, without further ado (or delay), we're ready to declare winners.

With 730 votes ... the Grist 2008 Eco-Hero of the Year is ... [drum roll]

The Sierra Club's Bruce Nilles! [crowd roars]

Nilles is director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, which has helped coordinate the extraordinary grassroots movement that's sprung up in the last few years to fight against new coal plants. This victory for Nilles is really a victory for that movement, which has -- with very little help from the establishment or resources from big-money funders -- pulled off an amazing string of victories that is still going on. Nice job, movement. And nice job, Bruce.

And now, turning to less pleasant matters:

With 405 votes ... the Grist 2008 Eco-Villain of the year is ...

Flaccid Apparatchik Stephen Johnson! [boos, angry shouts]

Johnson, who most everybody thought would be a harmless technocrat, turned out to be one of the worst U.S. EPA administrators in the nation's history, blatantly ignoring the advice of EPA staff and scientists in order to carry out the political hatchet jobs handed down by Dick Cheney. We will miss writing headlines about you, Mr. Johnson. But that's about all we will miss.

Onward to 2009 [already in progress]!

Last chance to pick your top hero/villain of 2008

Just before the holidays, we put up a list of green heroes and green villains for 2008 and asked readers to vote for their favorite (or, um, unfavorite).

Readership is low around the holidays, so I just want to bring those lists to your attention one last time, because voting closes in 24 hours! At that point we will declare winners and start handing out prizes, as soon as we come up with some prizes.

Currently the top hero is Sierra Club's anti-coal activist Bruce Nilles, with 661 votes -- a healthy lead over the second place hero James Hansen at 437. (Guess it helps to have a very large club at your back.)

Third is Barack Obama with 399 and fourth is Michael Pollan with 258.

Dead last? Poor Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, with 6 votes.

Meanwhile, flaccid apparatchik Stephen Johnson, head of the EPA, is walking away with the top villain spot. He's got 397 votes, far outpacing second place Sarah Palin (240) and third place (and personal favorite) Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship (236).

Amusingly, Jim Rogers is losing this one too -- just 12 votes. Perhaps we should come up with a new category for this dude.

Anyway: Go vote now while you still can! We'll announce the final winners tomorrow.

Tardy reflections on the election of Barack Obama

It feels a little weird that Obama won the election and I haven’t written anything about it. Everyone with a platform apparently feels obliged to say something profound, but after several aborted attempts, I find myself drained and utterly inadequate to the historical moment. I just want to take the world’s longest nap. Rather than […]