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Fact-check sound-bites from tonight’s VP debate with Ameritocracy

Call us optimists, but we’re expecting tonight’s much-anticipated vice presidential debate to be littered with sound bites on energy and the environment. After all, Sarah Palin, who “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America,” will be making her national debut against debate heavyweight Joe Biden. But politicians are […]

This year’s top 10 climate blogs

Last summer, I put together a list of the top 10 climate blogs. For the sake of objectivity, I used Technorati, which ranks all blogs by “authority” (the number of blogs linking to it). The lower the rank, the better. One of the blogs on that list, It’s Getting Hot In Here, has updated it […]

An interview with Wikia’s Jimmy Wales about his new green venture

Jimmy Wales. Jimmy Wales, best known as a cofounder of Wikipedia, is now channeling some of his energy and ambition into the environmental realm, aiming to build “the world’s handbook for going green.” Wikia, Inc., Wales’ for-profit company (not to be confused with Wikipedia, a project of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation), announced this month that […]

Ecoflip offers a twist on online classifieds

Buying something used and local is already a fairly green way to consume (if consume you must) so I was curious what Ecoflip, which calls itself a “green craigslist,” would entail. The categories are fairly standard but have a splash of hippie: Fuel-efficient vehicles get their own section (along with the more expected green living […]

Online game ‘PackMan’ tries to give ‘Pac-Man’ a green spin

Joining the ranks of online games with varying eco-plausibility like “Ocean Survivor” and “Catstration” is “PackMan,” or Packaging Man, a creation of the Dogwood Alliance. The organization aims to protect Southern forests from packaging-heavy (and tree-hungry) corporations; the game takes aim at fast-food execs in particular. The intro of “PackMan” depicts colorful villains wielding phallic […]

Netroots Nation pledges to cut footprint … in 2009

Five pounds of stuff.

That's what greeted me at this year's Netroots Nation '08 conference in Austin, Texas. As is the case with most conventions, registration came with a schwag bag loaded with magazines, pamphlets, and assorted trinkets from sponsors.

I took the bag back to my hotel room and unpacked it one piece at a time, spreading the contents on my bed. (I actually had to stand on a chair to get a wide enough view to get all the schwag in one shot.) While most liberal and green conventions these days make at least token efforts to ease impacts -- an organic cotton bag, green trinkets -- the NN08 schwag bag didn't do anything to distinguish itself.

Organizers of NN08 went out of their way to include the best and brightest voices of the environmental movement, not just as panelists but as keynote speakers. They've also pledged to green the event next year, holding it at Pittsburgh's convention center, a green building certified to LEED's gold level.

But the schwag bag was only the first sign that NN08 would miss some key opportunities to cut the event's environmental footprint and direct dollars to green businesses.

Netroots Nation needs a reboot

Netroots Nation was a blast. It’s great to meet and hang out with people you spend all year interacting with as names on emails and blog posts. (As a side note, it’s been my experience that most people are more pleasant, interesting, and funny in "meatspace" than you would think from their online personas. I […]

Event planners announce location, greening plans for next year’s conference

Near the end of this year’s Netroots Nation, event planners announced that next year’s gathering will be held in Pittsburgh, Pa., a spot selected for its green merits. One of the main reasons is that Pittsburgh has the first and largest LEED gold-certified convention center in the country. “We have a goal of making 2009 […]

Grist downtime

You may have noticed that Grist.org was inaccessible for most of the day today. On the bright side, none of us could get our email either, so we weren’t burdened by all the complaints people were sending in. Yeah, that’s really all I’ve got for bright side. The problem was not with the site but […]