Grist | Topics | 47 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 25 of 47
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Flock Together New climate campaign aimed at U.S. consumers		05 Jun 2008	News
Posted at 3:30 PM on 05 Jun 2008 A European campaign to raise consumer awareness of climate change has made its U.S. debut. The Together campaign -- not to be confused with the similarly named-and-agendaed "we" campaign -- was initiated by the nonprofit Climate Group and kicked off in the U.S. by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Var ...
Topics: Arnold Schwarzenegger, climate, consumerism, environmental movement, green living, messaging, news (all these topics)

A tool in the toolbox Richard Revesz responds to Lisa Heinzerling, defending cost-benefit analysis	Guest author	05 Jun 2008	Gristmill
This is a guess essay from Richard L. Revesz, dean of New York University School of Law and co-author, with Michael A. Livermore, of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, published by Oxford University Press. It continues a dialogue with professor Lisa Heinzerling: see Revesz's initial post and Heinzerling's response. ----- Cost-benefit analysis, correctly applied to many environmental problems, will show ...
Topics: economy, environmental movement, health, messaging (all these topics)

The problem with 'We Can Solve It' An ad campaign on climate needs spokespeople who believe what they're saying	Ken Ward	04 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Idly watching TV the other day, my attention was caught by the arresting image of Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting on a sofa. The artfully shot, 15-second spot is one of the first blitz of television ads from We Can Solve It, Al Gore's $300 million project to build up a public base of support for climate action. The two resemble each other, looking as sleek and plump as sea otters after a good feed. Sharpton and Robertson fence good naturedly, following t ...
Topics: climate, environmental movement, messaging, religion and spirituality (all these topics)

Cost-benefit environmentalism: an oxymoron Lisa Heinzerling responds to Richard Revesz on cost-benefit analysis	Guest author	14 May 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest essay from Lisa Heinzerling, Professor of Law at Georgetown University and author, with Frank Ackerman, of Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, published in 2004 by The New Press. ----- The efficient wasteland In his essay, Richard Revesz argues in favor of a 'cost-benefit environmentalism' that embraces economic analysis and "uses both reason and compassion to justify strong environmental rules." It is wo ...
Topics: economy, environmental movement, health, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Celebrating Earth Day with Tom Friedman An interview with The 'Stache pre-pie-in-the-face	Nathan Wyeth	28 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Yes, Tom Friedman came to Brown University on Earth Day to unveil his new book and got hit by a pie. But he cleaned himself up, came back with a joke about surviving Beirut and Jerusalem but running into trouble in Providence, and went on to deliver a stem-winder of an address for an op-ed columnist essentially outlining his latest book. I found The World Is Flat to be a good window into business models in the 21st century. His new offering, Hot, Flat, and Crowded ...
Topics: books, education, energy, environmental movement, local food, messaging, oil (all these topics)

Urgency and solvability: The "we" campaign Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection unveils ambitious $300 million ad campaign	David Roberts	31 Mar 2008	Gristmill
If you read Juliet Eilperin's great rundown in the Washington Post, you know that today marks the launch of a massive PR effort from Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection. Gore has concluded that U.S. politicians will continue to be timid on climate change until the public demands otherwise. "The simple algorithm is this: It's important to change the light bulbs, but it's much more important to change the laws," he said. "The options available to ...
Topics: Al Gore, business, celebrity, climate, environmental movement, messaging, politics, TV (all these topics)

Experts agree: We should all lie. A lot. About important stuff. Nobody fights for change unless they see there's a problem	John McGrath	29 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Ugh. So my local paper decided to print its own local blend of Nordhaus-Shellenberger drivel. Did you know that "it's time to stop blaring dire warnings about the perils of climate change and, instead, start enthusiastically proclaiming solutions"? I sure didn't. It's not as if people like Amory Lovins, Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben, or I dunno, Gar Lipow have spent years talking about exactly that. It's not like the central message adopted by successful c ...
Topics: climate change impacts, climate change skepticism, climate, messaging, environmental movement, climate change mitigation (all these topics)

PETA's dogma is all bark and no bite Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians	Grist	14 Sep 2007	Gristmill
This is a guest essay from Alex Roth, a financial analyst, attorney, and environmentalist in Washington, D.C. Matt Prescott, a spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, asserted last month that 'you just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist.' PETA's pronouncement is part of a cooperative campaign among a number of animal-rights groups. Their message is that meat production exacerbates global warming. PETA will lead the charge by dispatching an ...
Topics: animal welfare, environmental movement, food, messaging, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics)

Nothing to fear ... Fear of death leads to authoritarianism, not sustainability	David Roberts	27 Aug 2007	Gristmill
It's tempting to think that if you scare the shit out of people -- really convince them, down to their bones, that hurricanes, diseases, and starving refugees are hiding just around the corner -- that mass mobilization against global warming will at long last ensue. There's good reason to doubt it. Fear causes fairly predictable reactions, which do not include international cooperation, equitable distribution of resources, cost-benefit analysis on a multidecadal sc ...
Topics: environmental movement, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Can enviros learn to tell stories? Learning from masters in other fields: What a concept!	JMG	09 Aug 2007	Gristmill
David Mamet (author of The Verdict and Glengarry Glen Ross, among other fine things) writes this in his new book Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business (a great book just loaded with great snark:As we enter the cinema, we relax our guard. We do so necessarily, because to resist, to insist on reality in the drama, is to rob ourselves of joy. For who would sit through he cartoon thinking constantly, 'Wait a second, elephants can't fly!' ...
Topics: books, environmental movement, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Women Are From Earth, Men Are From Terra Firma Is the environmental movement losing touch with its feminine side?	Kira Gould, Lance Hosey	31 Jul 2007	Soapbox
By Kira Gould and Lance Hosey 31 Jul 2007 This year, Rachel Carson would have turned 100. Had she lived, the "mother of the environmental movement" might have been pleased with how popular environmental causes have become. On the other hand, she might not have liked current shades of green. Don't lose sight of the forest. Photo: iStockphoto The great lesson of Silent Spring ...
Topics: environmental movement, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Brit's Eye View: Lose the doom and gloom How to talk about the future without depressing everyone	Peter Madden	20 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe. We have a problem, we greens. It has to do with the way that we talk about the future. We do need to have a more plausible account of what the kind of world we are recommending would be like. However, our main narrative about the future talks of apocalypse and doom and gloom: the earth is dying; species are disappearing; the pl ...
Topics: environmental movement, messaging (all these topics)

E.O. Wilson on Bill Moyers Journal this week Check it out	Kate Sheppard	05 Jul 2007	Gristmill
On Friday, Bill Moyers profiles E.O. Wilson on the latest edition of 'Bill Moyers Journal.' (The show is his new spot on PBS that started airing in late April, and happens to have the same name as his old show that stopped running in 1981.) Moyers talks to Wilson about subjects ranging from his work cataloging every living creature on earth to religion to his vision for facing climate change. Check out a preview: The show also includes an update on the work of th ...
Topics: biodiversity, environmental justice, environmental movement, green living, messaging, religion and spirituality, TV (all these topics)

If a website pats itself on the back in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? Grist in NYT	Kate Sheppard	04 Jul 2007	Gristmill
How did we neglect to shamelessly self-promote mention that Grist honcho Chuck Gilla got some props in Sunday's New York Times?
Topics: environmental movement, green living, messaging, shameless self-promotion (all these topics)

Looking for a new GW metaphor: Canaries exhausted No more canaries in coal mines, please	Kit Stolz	22 May 2007	Gristmill
While on a book tour recently, Bill McKibben made an interesting point in an appearance in Santa Barbara. McKibben -- a former New Yorker writer who wrote his first book on climate change back in 1989 -- told the crowd that to expect the Sierra Club and traditional conservationists to take on global warming with "the grammar of wildness" that John Muir drew from his life in the Yosemite Valley back in the 1860s was impractical and unfair. He suggested that &q ...
Topics: Bill McKibben, climate, cutesy, environmental movement, messaging, Sierra Club (all these topics)

Face your bag The paper vs. plastic question must die	Clark Williams-Derry	21 May 2007	Gristmill
Ok, I'm whining. But the obsession with paper vs. plastic shopping bags just plain bugs me. As The Oregonian's Michael Milstein correctly points out: both paper and plastic have their pros and cons. Plastic has some surprising environmental advantages (more here), but also some unexpected drawbacks, including gumming up recycling equipment -- which makes it hard to figure out which option is actually worse in practice. But quite clearly, reusing bags you alr ...
Topics: environmental movement, green living, messaging, shopping (all these topics)

The alternative to fear is not lack of emotion How best to pitch the climate change message?	David Roberts	15 May 2007	Gristmill
Mike Hulme of the UK's Tyndall Centre says -- yet again -- that the language of "catastrophe" and "disaster" used by climate-change scientists and advocates is having the opposite of its intended effect: it's making people numb and apathetic. I more or less buy this -- I did, after all, write a five-part series arguing that fear is no friend of greens. But the conclusion Tim Haab draws from it is so spectacularly, diametrically wrong I can only sh ...
Topics: climate, environmental movement, green living, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Save the charismatic megafauna! What's true in one area is often true in another	JMG	10 May 2007	Gristmill
Nicholas Kristof has a great piece in today's NYT (behind the damn paywall) about why it's so hard to galvanize attention onto mass suffering. It could be quickly converted into a piece explaining why pictures of cute polar bears -- especially cute baby polar bears -- work so much better at getting people to pay attention to environmental problems than anything that actually shows their real scope. Hmmm, I'm going to have to stop talking about the problems inherent in jet ...
Topics: environmental movement, green living, messaging (all these topics)

Newt Gingrich's 'green conservatism' It's not an alternative, it's a subset	David Roberts	10 May 2007	Gristmill
Newt Gingrich has a new book out called A Contract with the Earth, which purports to outline a "green conservatism." For a summary, you can check out this brief op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I approached it with an open mind -- eagerly, even. There's nothing I would like more than for a vibrant green conservatism to join the debate over the best way to accomplish green goals. That would be an enormous step forward from the current situation. ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, environmental movement, messaging, Newt Gingrich, politics (all these topics)

Robert Wright at TED	David Roberts	07 May 2007	Gristmill
I love Robert Wright's thinking and his work, particularly NonZero. It's not explicitly green, so I won't get into it -- here's a good rundown -- but I will encourage everyone to watch this short talk Wright gave at TED last year:
Topics: environmental movement, green living, messaging, politics (all these topics)

It does to this one Is the starfish story really just bunk?	JMG	01 May 2007	Gristmill
The estimable biodiversivist wrote, in another thread, that 'What we do as individuals is insignificant compared to changes in carbon neutral energy generation and transportation infrastructure.' Which is both true and not true, I think. It reminds me of the story about the little tyke throwing starfish stranded on the beach back into the water, and being told by the parent that it didn't matter, leading the child to say, 'It does to this one.' Cute story, all chicken-soup ...
Topics: ecological footprint, environmental movement, green living, messaging (all these topics)

Green so light it barely leaves an impression From pop star John Mayer	David Roberts	30 Apr 2007	Gristmill
John Mayer. Photo: sushla via flickr Congratulations to pop star dreamboat John Mayer for penning what can only be termed a reductio ad absurdum of the light-green, change-your-lightbulbs, ten-things-you-can-do, don't-sweat-it-too-much, caring-a-little-is-OK but caring-too-much-is-square environmentalism. I was going to pick excerpts, but really you gotta read the whole post to get the full impact. Ladies and gentlemen, John Mayer: (Preface: Don't get tur ...
Topics: celebrity, environmental movement, funnies, green living, messaging, music (all these topics)

The Travel to exotic lands ...	JMG	26 Apr 2007	Gristmill
During Vietnam we used to say that 'fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity' (OK, not exactly, but you get the point). I had a flashback of that today here at Gristmill.A new ad in rotation here from some outfit called the National Outdoor Leadership School invites you to 'Traverse a glacier -- before they melt.' In other words, NOLS has decided that there's no point in trying to be part of the solution, and it's better to make a buck making the problem worse, encou ...
Topics: environmental movement, green living, messaging (all these topics)

Screw Earth Day It's descended completely into 'small steps'	David Roberts	20 Apr 2007	Gristmill
When I read stuff like this ... A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that more Americans than ever -- 60%, up from 48% a decade ago -- believe that global warming has begun to affect the climate. A slightly larger percentage think it will cause major or extreme changes in climate and weather during the next 50 years. ... Even so, most people are wary of any government effort to protect the environment by imposing restrictions on how they live, work or get around. A m ...
Topics: environmental movement, green living, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Sensenbrenner: protecting the children from <del Oy	David Roberts	19 Apr 2007	Gristmill
A panel of retired generals thinks global warming is an urgent national security threat. The U.N. Security Council thinks global warming is an urgent national security threat. But wait! We forgot to ask Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R)! Sensenbrenner questioned "why global warming has suddenly become an issue of national defense" and afterward accused politicians and pundits of stoking children's fears. Think of the children.
Topics: climate, climate change impacts, Congress, environmental movement, insanity, messaging, politics (all these topics)

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