grist-georgia-psc-header-ai

politics

  •

    Planning politics: How Charlotte’s mayor championed light rail

    Pat McCrory, former mayor of Charlotte, speaking at a transportation summit in 2009.Photo courtesy Willamor Media via FlickrPat McCrory, elected mayor of Charlotte in 1995 at the age of 39, had no idea transit would be the defining issue of his tenure as leader of the city. “I did not run on the issue of […]

    Claudine Benmar Cities

  • Plurality of Americans Skeptical of Pro-Drilling Congressional Candidates

    The latest NBC/WSJ poll includes a number of interesting findings. Dave Weigel and Alex Seitz-Wald both took note of BP’s extremely low favorability ratings: Indeed, the poll shows that only 6 percent have a favorable rating of BP. In the history of the NBC News/Journal poll, Saddam Hussein (3 percent), Fidel Castro (3 percent) and […]

    Josh Nelson Politics

  • Supreme Court’s ruling on Monsanto’s GE alfalfa: Who won?

    Updated 2:20 pm Pacific, June 21 The sustainable agriculture world is abuzz today with news of the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding an earlier lawsuit, brought by alfalfa farmers, that sought to stop any planting of Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa seed. While the press coverage heralds the ruling as a decisive victory for Monsanto, […]

    Tom Laskawy Technology

  • One super-toxic chemical down, thousands more to go

    Last week, and capping at least a decades-long battle by consumer advocates, the EPA announced a ban on the pesticide endosulfan — one of the last legal organochlorine pesticides, a notorious group of which DDT is a member. Horrifically toxic (possibly more toxic to humans than DDT) and banned in the European Union since 2007, […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Extreme warming in Arctic will cause colder winters — and political gridlock

    The political (or at least the Senatorial) tides are running strongly against a muscular policy response to climate change. Now a top NOAA scientist tells us that even the winds are blowing in the wrong direction — actual winds, mind you, not political. Via Science Daily: A warmer Arctic climate is influencing the air pressure […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • Junk-food advertising moves online

    One of several games for kids on the Trix websiteHere’s more compelling evidence that food companies, putative key “partners” in the battle against obesity, aren’t exactly acting in good faith. They may talk about calorie-cutting partnerships and donate money to healthy-living initiatives — but they don’t put their real money where their collective mouth is. […]

    Tom Laskawy Technology

  • Why Whole Foods’ shoppers are thin and Albertsons’ aren’t

    A recent University of Washington study showed Seattle-area shoppers at Whole Foods are much less likely to be obese, on average, than shoppers at the less expensive chain Albertsons. I shrugged when I read this. From what I can tell, the study didn’t control for income: it’s well established that Whole Foods shoppers have higher […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • Thoughts on Pollan’s food-movement essay

    I want to add a few thoughts on the significance of Michael Pollan’s recent essay in The New York Review of Books to Bonnie Powell’s summary.  Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • The fight over salt: Big Food vs. Us

    Salty dog Alton Brown The biggest loser in Michael Moss’s New York Times exposé of the food industry’s fight against salt restrictions isn’t the food industry. It isn’t government, either. In my view, the real loser is television chef Alton Brown: With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food […]

    Tom Laskawy Technology