Tag Archives: grist

EPA employees speak out about the agency’s problems under Trump.

by TemekaStultz514 Posted on June 20, 2017

Two years ago, a paper came out arguing that America could cheaply power itself on wind, water, and solar energy alone. It was a big deal. Policy makers began relying on the study. A nonprofit launched to make the vision a reality. Celebrities got on board. We named the lead author of the study, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, one of our Grist 50.

Now that research is under scrutiny. On Monday, 21 scientists published a paper that pointed out unrealistic assumptions in Jacobson’s analysis. For instance, Jacobson’s analysis relies on the country’s dams releasing water “equivalent to about 100 times the flow of the Mississippi River” to meet electricity demand as solar power ramps down in the evening, one of the critique’s lead authors, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science, told the New York Times.

Jacobson immediately fired back, calling his critics “nuclear and fossil fuel supporters” and implying the authors had sold out to industry. This is just wrong. These guys aren’t shills.

It’s essentially a family feud, a conflict between people who otherwise share the same goals. Jacobson’s team thinks we can make a clean break from fossil fuels with renewables alone. Those critiquing his study think we need to be weaned off, with the help of nuclear, biofuels, and carbon capture.

Grist intends to take a deeper look at this subject in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

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EPA employees speak out about the agency’s problems under Trump.

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Trump still hasn’t decided whether to dump the Paris climate agreement or not.

by PriscilPapathan Posted on May 30, 2017

Born and raised in Oahu, Hawaii, Evan Weber went to the same K-through-12 school attended by future President Barack Obama. By the time Weber got to college, he was taking his fellow Punahou School alum to task for what Weber believed was an inadequate climate action plan.

Together, Weber, a college buddy, and one of their professors drafted their own climate agenda, a policy report they initially simply called “The Plan.” A direct response to Obama’s 2013 climate plan, this version called for the U.S. to go even further in reducing carbon emissions and proposed a set of financial and regulatory solutions to make it happen. Weber ran an Indiegogo campaign to drum up support around The Plan and started popping up as a climate evangelist in media outlets like the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and Newsweek. Now his goal is to build the political power necessary to enact it.

Weber’s organization, U.S. Climate Plan, pushes for climate legislation on the state level and organizes campaigns supporting climate justice. Weber supports young activists by building partnerships between grassroots organizations, teaching statewide strategy plans, and advising college students. This, in Weber’s eyes, is how you build a generational front against climate change. “And morally, we know that we are going to win.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Trump still hasn’t decided whether to dump the Paris climate agreement or not.

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The first GOP member of Congress to say “impeachment” after Trump’s latest scandal is a climate hawk.

by PearleneKfe Posted on May 17, 2017

Animal agriculture is a complex tangle of issues, all pulling in different directions: culinary tradition, animal welfare, methane emissions, deliciousness, deforestation. As a senior scientist at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to finding foods that will displace animal meat, Liz Specht looks for technological fixes to the beefy meat problem.

Specht spends her days researching ways to engineer plant-based foods that taste better, cost less, and consume fewer resources than animals. She then points startups toward the food technology that’s likely to work for them, and helps venture capitalists differentiate between companies proposing flashy BS and those who know their stuff. She’s an entrepreneurial matchmaker.

Specht lives in an RV, working remotely and roaming from state to state. Everywhere she goes, she steps into a store to see what plant-based products are available, where they are placed in the store, and how they are advertised. Making meat replacements might be a technical problem, but Specht is acutely aware that technology must move with culture. “I think of technology’s role as that of a dance partner to society, following its leads and anticipating its future moves,” she says. Time for the food industry to listen to the music.

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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The first GOP member of Congress to say “impeachment” after Trump’s latest scandal is a climate hawk.

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There’s a 25 percent chance your water system violated the Safe Drinking Water Act.

by MittieBennetts Posted on May 5, 2017

Kait Parker grew up the daughter of a math teacher and a storm-spotting firefighter, which likely explains her spitfire approach to explaining atmospheric science. Last year, when Breitbart attempted to disprove climate change by misleadingly poaching only a portion of her Weather Channel segment on La Niña, Parker fired back. She called out the alt-right site for its dubious methods in an online video. “Next time you’re thinking about publishing a cherry-picked article, try consulting a scientist first,” she zinged. The response brought a wave of social-media support and shout-outs from mainstream media like Elle.

Parker is currently doubling down on reaching her fellow millennials, producing and hosting shows on digital-only outlets like the Weather Channel app and Snapchat. Her YouTube series, “Science Is Real,” examines the consequences of a warming planet. And later this spring she’ll launch “The United States of Climate Change,” a massive 50-part series that will chart climate impacts in every state through short videos, written pieces, and even graphic novels.

“If 97 doctors told you you were dying of cancer, would you believe them, or the three that didn’t?” she says of climate change. “The more lives I can help save and communicate the risk, the better.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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There’s a 25 percent chance your water system violated the Safe Drinking Water Act.

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Alaska Natives are fighting Trump’s call to “drill, baby, drill.”

by HelaineMcGowen4 Posted on May 3, 2017

In 2012, Katherine Miller was frustrated that Americans weren’t really talking about issues of sustainable food and nutrition. She realized that chefs were in a position to restart those discussions. Restaurants, after all, are home to intimate and weighty discussions, all of it centered around food.

Miller decided to use her experience coaching community advocates to show chefs how to start conversations and discuss important issues with patrons and politicians alike. She founded the Chef Action Network to connect chefs with politicians and local organizations and, along with food education and advocacy group James Beard Foundation, organized a series of policy boot camps for chefs to sharpen their conversation skills.

After training ’em up, Miller puts chefs — prominent local business owners in their own right — in touch with representatives who will listen to their voices on issues like antibiotic overuse and catch limits. She also helps chefs get involved at the local level. In January, JBF partnered with NRDC and Nashville Mayor Megan Barry on the Food Saver Challenge, an initiative that aims to help Music City reduce waste.

Miller is hopeful that chefs can dish out common ground. “In a time when Americans have stopped talking to each other, chefs and restaurateurs are setting the table for all of us to have difficult conversations.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Alaska Natives are fighting Trump’s call to “drill, baby, drill.”

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Britain just went a whole day without burning any coal for electricity.

by ClaireRosensten Posted on April 24, 2017

Ten years ago, Mark Magaña was a D.C. lobbyist, when the Bipartisan Policy Center hired him to rally Latino support for an ill-fated bill to limit corporate carbon emissions. As Magaña soon found, there was no network to tap. Even within green groups in Washington, most Latino environmentalists didn’t know each other.

“The more I got into it, the more I saw the individuals in D.C. were very isolated,” Magaña says. “If I went to a green reception, maybe I’d be the only Latino in the room. Maybe there’d be one other, but I wouldn’t know them.”

In response, Magaña founded GreenLatinos, a national network of Latino environmental advocates that connects grassroots efforts with power and money in Washington. So far, the group has convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to close several contaminating landfills in Puerto Rico and brought attention to the Standing Rock pipeline protests in the Spanish-language media.

Diversity is the future of the environmental movement, Magaña says. “Now it’s investment time, investing in the communities,” he says. “They will be the environmentalists of the future.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Britain just went a whole day without burning any coal for electricity.

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Scientists say that human-caused climate change rerouted a river.

by AugustaHerndon Posted on April 17, 2017

Raj Karmani was a graduate student in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when his frequent trips to the neighborhood bagel store opened his eyes to food waste. Most of the unsold bagels usually went into the trash. Karmani’s obsession with efficiency got him thinking: What if there were an app that would sync up businesses with fresh, excess food and organizations in need of it? In 2013, he started Zero Percent, an online platform for food donation.

Here’s how it works: First, a food producer at a commercial kitchen, say a restaurant or bagel shop, opens an Uber-style app and drops in detailed data about the excess food: the amount, where to pick it up, when to pick it up, etc. Then, a delivery person, hired by Zero Percent, scoops up the food and drops it off at any number of youth groups, community centers, or nonprofits that have also signed up for the app and signaled a need.

Right now, Zero Percent operates in the Chicago area and in Urbana-Champaign (but plans to expand), and its biggest clients include the University of Illinois and the local Salvation Army. Karmani says Zero Percent has delivered more than 1,000 meals. As a well-educated and relatively well-off immigrant, the experience has been eye-opening for him. “Some of these kids have never seen strawberries.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Scientists say that human-caused climate change rerouted a river.

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Keystone XL is approved. Apply now for 35 permanent pipeline jobs.

by Angie41Mucm Posted on March 24, 2017

If you’re a typical American, you probably throw away too many clothes. But the companies behind those clothes have their own disposal problem, too. When a coat has a busted zipper or a truckload of dresses doesn’t sell, customers and retailers return the items — and those returns often end up in a landfill, contributing to the 14 million tons of textiles Americans toss out each year.

If Nicole Bassett has her way, that’s going to change. Bassett cofounded the Renewal Workshop, a tiny company with a giant goal: create a circular economy for the apparel industry (in other words, find a way to reuse perfectly good stuff).

A native of British Columbia who has worked on sustainability initiatives at companies like Patagonia and prAna, Bassett has secured a factory, five partner brands, and a hardy staff of eight. Her startup cleans and fixes clothes that have been returned to partners, then sells the like-new items on the Renewal Workshop website. Some companies have similar programs for their own products, but the Renewal Workshop is “trying to find a solution that works for the whole industry,” says Bassett.

With her outfit growing quickly, she wears every hat — with one exception. “You do not want me fixing a product,” she says with a laugh. “As soon as it involves a sewing machine, I run away.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Keystone XL is approved. Apply now for 35 permanent pipeline jobs.

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To reduce obesity and depression, we need more nature in our lives.

by AveryGrafton Posted on March 22, 2017

U.S. cities are packed with about 5 million medium-sized buildings — schools, churches, community centers, apartment buildings. Most use way more energy than they should. Many also have poor airflow and dirty, out-of-date heating and electrical systems. Those conditions contribute to high inner-city asthma rates and other health concerns.

“These buildings are actually making children sick,” says Donnel Baird, who grew up in such a place. His parents, immigrants from Guyana, raised their kids in a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, relying on a cooking stove for heat. Baird eventually moved to the South and then attended Duke University, before returning to New York as a community organizer in 2008.

In 2013, Baird launched BlocPower, which provides engineering and financial know-how to retrofit city buildings. The technical part is cool: Engineers survey structures with sensors and smartphone apps, figuring out the best ways to reduce energy use, like replacing oil boilers with solar hot water. But the financing is critical; BlocPower builds the case for each project and connects owners with lenders. It has already retrofitted more than 500 buildings in New York and is expanding into Chicago, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.

“The biggest way for us to reduce carbon emissions right now,” Baird says, “is efficiency.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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To reduce obesity and depression, we need more nature in our lives.

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Help Grist hold Trump and his media enablers accountable

by GiuseppeYrw Posted on December 13, 2016

Remember that time Donald Trump told the New York Times he would keep an open mind about climate change? It was just a couple of weeks ago, when he met with the paper’s top reporters and editors. Their tweets sparked a slew of news reports that Trump might be “changing his tune” on climate.

Except that Trump did nothing of the sort. When Grist’s Rebecca Leber pored over the full transcript, it became clear that the president-elect was his usual climate-denying self, and the pliant news media had once again been suckered into making him look mainstream.

“Trump spun his climate denial to the New York Times and lots of people fell for it,” our headline read. “Grist expertly called out” the mainstream media’s failure to hold Trump accountable, The Huffington Post proclaimed.

This real news is powered by you. Support Grist

We’re going to need a lot more headlines like that in the coming years. And Grist needs your support to keep up our honest reporting and commentary — the kind you won’t hear from this administration or the bamboozled media.

I joined Grist as executive editor nine months ago with a mission: Take a publication beloved for its irreverent and unorthodox approach to environmental journalism and fuse that sensibility with a focus on deeper reporting, sharp analysis, and stories that matter.

As part of Grist’s fall fundraising drive, we’ve just spent the past couple of weeks celebrating some of those results. We sent reporters to cover injustice in Alaska and Standing Rock, told the amazing true story of the slideshow that saved the world, uncovered black-and-white evidence of a huge Trump climate flip-flop, won awards for our fun video explainers, launched a mobile-friendly daily news product, even explored what it takes to be a non-judgmental vegan.

Now we’re asking for your support so we can do more. That’s what it takes to run an independent, nonprofit media shop that doesn’t answer to deep pockets and has the freedom to take on corporate and political power.

I didn’t anticipate the election of Donald Trump, but I’m proud to say that Grist has made significant headway in building a journalistic operation capable of providing tough, fearless coverage of the president-elect and his polluter pals, who are about to have all the power they ever wanted to gut environmental laws, plunder our natural resources, ignore the warnings of climate science, and increase the environmental burdens plaguing vulnerable communities.

It’s become a cliche in the past few weeks to say that strong, honest journalism is needed now more than ever — but cliches gain power because they’re true.

Grist doesn’t have the resources of the New York Times or Washington Post, or even Mother Jones or ProPublica. Those institutions will need your support, too, to cover the range of corruption and assaults on civil liberties that the Trump administration portends.

What Grist does have, though, is a dedicated and skilled staff that’s intensely focused on a set of issues that are about to come under immediate attack from the Trump administration. We understand them — and their impact on people and communities — like no other publication.

And don’t just take my word for it. (I am the editor, after all). Bill Moyers’ website tells readers that if they want “more and better media coverage of these issues” they should “contribute to specialized nonprofit online outlets like Grist. … Robust news coverage will matter more than ever during an administration led by the purveyors of fake news and anti-science propaganda.”

So if you care about safe air and water, sustainable food, livable cities, a clean, inclusive economy, a survivable climate, and environmental justice for all, Grist is the publication you’ll need to cling to in the coming years. We’ll ferret out fake news, seek and spotlight solutions, tell you where progress continues to happen and who is standing in the way, stand up for what’s right and just, reach across ideological lines, give you the tools and advice needed to make a difference, and bring big brains together to spark ideas and innovation.

This is the Grist we need now more than ever. And it can’t happen without your support. Please give today.

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Help Grist hold Trump and his media enablers accountable

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