Massachusetts

U.S. leaders, residents turn backs on impending coastal chaos

Don’t let Beantown become a has-been town. Buckle your seatbelts: it’s going to be a wet ‘n’ wild ride. That’s the prediction — or, rather, the certainty — that today’s global warming carries. Erratic and unpredictable weather is en route, and coastal areas are among the places destined to be hardest hit. So why are […]

David Cash, Massachusetts air-policy director, answers questions

David Cash. What work do you do? How does it relate to the environment? I’m the director of air policy for the state of Massachusetts in the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. EOEA is an umbrella agency that oversees and coordinates the activities of numerous other environment-related agencies such as the Department of Environmental Protection […]

Hot wind

Frequent Grist contributor Bill McKibben has a column in today's NYT saying that environmentalists should get behind wind energy. He is sympathetic to some enviros' objections and rather gentle toward them.

I fully agree with McKibben, but I can't say I share his sympathy.

Oil and gas exploration is ravaging the American West. The nuclear industry is resurgent. And oh yeah, the globe is frying.

If environmentalists take global warming seriously, and expect others to take it seriously, maybe they shouldn't become bitchy provincialists the minute you want to build a wind turbine that impedes the scenic view off the back porches of their vacation homes.

So Ted Kennedy? Shut up.

(Speaking of wind, there's breaking news on the hotly contested Cape Cod wind farm. Looks like the NIMBYs may win after all.)

Activists are split on a proposed wind project off Cape Cod

  Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where 30 or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed from off […]

Universities combat climate change

“Do it in the dark!” That’s the rallying cry at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., where an ambitious campaign is under way to cut greenhouse gases. Sure, climate change activism — conserving energy, using renewable fuels, and constructing eco-friendly buildings — isn’t as sexy as marching against Vietnam or burning bras. But in an increasingly […]

Boston Tree Party

Last Friday, the Boston Globe printed an angry letter to the editor from Todd Paglia of the environmental group Forest Ethics. The charge? That the Globe advertising department, without reasonable explanation, had refused to run a Forest Ethics ad critical of Massachusetts-based Staples, a major Globe advertiser, and that an ombudsman column backing the department’s […]

A Godsend for Enviros?

It’s all but official. Hollywood actor Warren Beatty may have hedged his bets somewhat in a New York Times op-ed last Sunday, but he already has a presidential campaign website, which is this column’s fin de siècle measure of candidatehood, be it virtual or actual. Leaving aside the question of why certain individuals with no […]