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Deep thoughts from founder Chip Giller
Every year as Earth Day approaches, there’s a moment when we here at Grist stare at each other around a conference table and say, “What the hell are we going to do this time?” I imagine it’s the same way the window dressers at Macy’s feel when the winter holidays are approaching. How do you […]
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From tobacco to climate change, ‘merchants of doubt’ undermined the science
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world.”— Margaret Mead Because Americans are optimists we tend to see Mead’s observation as upbeat and life-affirming (as it was probably intended). Blinkered by optimism, however, we miss the dark flip side of her observation — that a few fanatics can do immense […]
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Who gets rich in a geoengineered world?
So yesterday was the official publication day for my new book How to Cool the Planet, an event that I’d like to mark by … taking a long nap. I’m only a few days into the book tour, but I’m already exhausted. Not that I’m complaining. Being worn out by your book tour is a […]
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Creative financing fuels California solar boom
Dropping my son off at school on Wednesday, I ran into Danny Kennedy, a fellow parent and veteran Australian Greenpeace activist turned solar entrepreneur. How’s business? I asked. Pretty bloody good, as it turns out. Kennedy’s startup, Sungevity, took in more orders for rooftop solar systems in March than in all of 2009. That solar […]
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Google climate change chief wants price on carbon
Dan Reicher, Google’s director of climate changePhoto: Steve Rhodes via FlickrGoogle wants a price on carbon and wants it now — both for lofty reasons like combating global warming, but also because it could be good for business. As the Senate inches closer to climate legislation that could give the Internet giant what it wants, […]
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Abercrombie & Fitch + Weight Watchers Make the CRO Black List (VIDEO)
CRO Magazine proves that at Abercrombie & Fitch only the models are revealing. What is corporate responsibility and why should we care? Richard Crespin of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association (CRO) answers this question and goes on to name names: the top companies on the CRO Black List, or companies for whom zero points of […]
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The Perils of ‘Green Watching’
Earth Day is coming, and with it, hours and hours of “green” television programming and print media coverage. People who hardly give the environment a thought all year will be “Green Watching” programs – and advertisements – about how to be more environmentally responsible. In the past, I always thought of this heightened awareness as […]
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A bee wrangler shows you how to mind your own beeswax
From activists to politicians, everybody loves to talk about the promise of green jobs. But in reality, who the heck actually has a green job, and how do you get one? In our new column, “I Have a Green Job,” Grist will be regularly profiling one of the lucky employed who has landed a job […]
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Taxpayer dollars subsidizing destruction
One way to correct market failures is tax shifting — raising taxes on activities that harm the environment so that their prices begin to reflect their true cost and offsetting this with a reduction in income taxes. A complementary way to achieve this goal is subsidy shifting. Each year the world’s taxpayers provide at least […]
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Wind industry growing in blue and red states alike
Photo: NREL/Iberdrola RenewablesAs Paul Krugman’s New York Times Magazine cover story on environmental economics, “Building the Green Economy,” was ricocheting around the enviro blogosphere last week, the American Wind Energy Association released its annual report [PDF] on the state of the wind industry. It was an interesting juxtaposition — Krugman’s deep dive into the macroeconomics […]
