Economy | Grist

A grow-your-own jobs program

[UPDATED] While the big cats cower, time to build robust food economies 22
Posted 26 Jan 2010 7:13 AM While the economy withers, Obama's caving in to the GOP and pursuing the path of Herbert Hoover. For Tom Philpott, that means it's time to redouble community-scale efforts build vibrant, jobs-creating food economies.
Going Luntz, going twice

Messaging that can save the clean energy bill 30
Posted 25 Jan 2010 3:51 PM David Roberts finally got around to reading through the latest polling and focus group results from messaging whiz Frank Luntz. Luntz, for those of you who don't already know, is infamous in green circles as the author of a 1995 memo coaching Republicans on how to win the environmental messaging war. Now he's been conscripted by the forces of good and light, and his latest results are geared toward helping to find a bipartisan path forward on climate and energy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Democrats are incredibly well-positioned to make climate/energy an electoral advantage.
Big bright green cleantech machine

Did China block Copenhagen progress to pave way for its own dominance in cleantech? 43
Posted 22 Jan 2010 5:30 PM One of the most frequently voiced excuses for Western countries failing to radically cut carbon dioxide emissions is that taking such action would hand a massive competitive advantage to fast-industrializing China. But the main challenge from the world’s new industrial superpower is not that it will continue to use the dirty, old technologies of the past, but that it will come to dominate the new, clean, green ones of the future.
It's about giving voters what they want

How Scott Brown’s victory can help get climate legislation over the finish line 9
Posted 20 Jan 2010 3:30 AM If you're a climate-movement activist, it's not hard to be bummed, big time, by Brown's victory. But the voter anger that led to his win might actually augur well for climate-change legislation.
Jumpstarting Clean Energy

Clean Energy Business Zones: A tool for economic growth 1
Posted 8 Jan 2010 1:43 PM America's leadership in technological innovation has made it the world's economic power for the last 100 years. Today, we're on the brink of the next revolution with the transition to clean energy. And while the change will cause some communities to initially suffer, it's an important and necessary transition.
TO CATCH THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KINGS

In Hamlet’s Castle, a royal court looks out for itself 4
Posted 14 Dec 2009 3:45 PM Business chiefs who gathered Saturday night at Hamlet's castle in Denmark presumably were there to put forth bold statements on the need to confront climate change and shift to a green economy. If only ...
Forget Polar Bears and PPM

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change 31
Posted 19 Nov 2009 5:50 PM So you're not moved by melting glaciers? Here are a few other reasons to pay attention to climate change, from supermodels to super-hungry rats.
More clunker debunkers

Cash for Clunkers brought us ... more clunkers! 29
Posted 5 Nov 2009 1:22 PM So how did Cash for Clunkers work out from an environmental standpoint? Don't ask. The most common deals swapped old pickup trucks for new pickup trucks that got only marginally better gas mileage.
Yeah, we said billion

A $4 billion push to make affordable housing green 0
Posted 21 Oct 2009 5:38 AM Today brings news of a major investment in making affordable housing greener, and an ambitious call for an even bigger national conversion. Find out who's behind it.
PONZICONOMY

Our global pyramid scheme 3
Posted 8 Oct 2009 12:20 PM Today's mismanaged world economy is like a giant global illusion. If we keep overpumping, overgrazing, overplowing, overfishing, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, how long before our pumped up Ponzi-conomy unravels and collapses?
Amigo, Can You Spare a BTU?

Mexican peasants pay the price for U.S. energy consumption 3
Posted 23 Sep 2009 7:36 AM Chances are, the average U.S. citizen has no idea that their demand for electricity might require that a Mexican village be flooded for a hydroelectric dam.
Placemakers

Stockton Williams on urban retrofits, Obama, and the sexiness of caulking guns 1
Posted 24 Sep 2009 9:17 AM What do you call a consortium of global foundations and banks intent on using energy retrofits to create jobs for low-income people? You could call it dreamy -- or you could call it Living Cities. We talk with the group's green-economy expert.
The clean-energy investment agenda 6
Posted 22 Sep 2009 10:18 AM The United States is having the wrong public debate about global warming.
Make way, wonks -- the rest of us are coming to the table

Climate change is a poverty issue 20
Posted 18 Sep 2009 11:07 AM
Why does an anti-poverty activist care about carbon emissions? Because climate change is an economic-justice issue. Regardless of how our government ultimately decides to handle climate change policy, poor people will be affected. They can be included in the new clean energy economy or they can be further pushed out in the cold.
Wonkeriffic!

An interview with Jason Burnett, who worked on EPA greenhouse gas regulations 0
Posted 15 Sep 2009 6:00 AM

The following is an interview with Jason Burnett, who worked in the EPA under President GW Bush, wherein we discuss efforts by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. Burnett quit the EPA in protest in June 2008, alleging interference from the Office of the Vice President.

The interview is meant as a supplement to the story, "Everything you always wanted to know about EPA greenhouse gas regulations, but were afraid to ask."
Everything old is new again

Thoreau, Walden and civil disobedience in the age of climate change 10
Posted 27 Aug 2009 6:58 AM
What the sacred text of old-school environmentalism can teach the climate change movement, and why it won't leave me alone.
Don't mess with him

Badass mayor builds bridges between working class and enviros 3
Posted 24 Aug 2009 2:18 PM
John Fetterman might look like a steelworker, but he's actually the 40-year-old, Harvard-educated mayor of Braddock, Pa., trying to revitalize his town with green jobs and an urban farm.
Things that go clunk in the night

Cash-for-Clunkers to end Monday night, for real this time 2
Posted 20 Aug 2009 5:30 PM
The "Cash for Clunkers" program has been so successful that it will have to be wrapped up earlier than expected, the Obama administration announced on Thursday.
Ya down with NRDC?

NRDC Action Fund goes on offense against opponents of climate action 3
Posted 19 Aug 2009 11:48 AM
The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund is bashing representatives who voted against the House climate bill as "villains" and lauding reps who voted for it as "heroes" in a new campaign.
Are you with Don Blankenship or against him?

We are all from Wise County 2
Posted 18 Aug 2009 12:56 PM
Want to get really angry about health care and global warming? Not the ginned-up rage of the Obama-was-really-born-in-Kenya crowd, but an anger that fires you up to take action in the name of justice? Anger like the rage felt by so many white Northerners and Southerners in 1963 when they saw Birmingham's fire hoses turned on patriotic African-Americans, a rage so profound that they too joined the civil rights revolution?

Well I invite you, in a brief audio and video tour, to bear witness to what's happening in Wise County, Virginia.