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Court ruling may save oil companies billions in royalties

A federal judge in Louisiana ruled this week that oil and gas companies who signed leases for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico between 1996 and 2000 do not […]

Grist to appear on the ‘Today’ show

We're pleased as punch to let you know that NBC's Today show has invited Grist to be part of its special "Ends of the Earth" environmental coverage the week of Nov. 5. While Matt, Al, and Ann venture to exotic locales like Antarctica, the Arctic, and the equator, we'll be hangin' with Meredith in Rockefeller Plaza, offering up green-living hints from our new book, Wake Up and Smell the Planet. Keep an eye out for us on Monday, Nov. 5, and Tuesday, Nov. 6, between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m., on NBC.

And hey, while we're allowing ourselves to preen a little: did you happen to notice our recent appearances in Time and Newsweek? Yep, we're blushing, but we're also really excited that our site and our book are making a splash.

Haven't gotten yourself a copy of that book yet? Buy it today. It makes a good read, a great holiday gift, and a fantastic doorstop.

Fisheries Service releases yet another Northwest salmon recovery plan

The third draft of a federal plan for protecting endangered salmon and steelhead in the Northwest’s Columbia and Snake Rivers does not propose breaching the four hydroelectric dams that block […]

The vampire slayer goes green

Buffy is back in Climate Progress. I'll take any excuse!

Turns out former Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar is green, or at least green-tinged, like those monsters she used to fight.

She brings her own reusable bag to Whole Foods. Why? "So I get a discount." Okay so the millionaire actress is cheap frugal. You got a problem with that?

She also rides a bike, to the annoyance of her neighbors:

Not only is it bright pink with the bell and streamers and the whole thing, but it has Hello Kitty tires. Every time I leave my apartment, my doorman just shakes his head.

Interestingly, some of the demons on Buffy spin-off Angel were also green, figuratively speaking. For the sake of its vampire employees, the Los Angeles offices of Wolfram & Hart employ "necro-tempered" tinted glass, which "filters out the constituents of sunlight that are dangerous to vampires while leaving the brightness intact. Plus it's thirty percent more energy efficient!"

And you thought TV was a vast wasteland.

Researchers quantify U.S. wildfire carbon emissions

The estimations are in on the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from Southern California’s recent wildfires. And the winner is … somewhere between about 6 million tons […]

Oxfam warns Europe’s biofuel boom likely to worsen plight of world’s poor

The anti-poverty charity Oxfam said this week that the European Union’s rush to biofuels could hit the world’s poor quite hard. The group released a report about the issue suggesting […]

U.S. recalls 440,000 more leaded toys, including novelty teeth

If Halloween itself wasn’t the fright-fest you’d hoped for, maybe the most recent round of leaded-toy recalls will do the trick. This week’s list includes 1,500 Ribbit board games, 16,000 […]

Mercury pollution is driving loons crazy

This year I spent some lazy late-summer days watching loons patrol a wilderness area lake I'd backpacked to. I should have been totally relaxed and enjoying this gorgeous and remote spot in the Adirondacks, but I couldn't help wondering if these birds had succeeded in hatching a brood, with no sign of little ones about. A friend at the Biodiversity Research Institute had told me of a paper they were soon publishing, which demonstrated the negative impacts of methyl mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest on loon behavior, physiology, survival, and reproductive success in the Northeast. The most impacted pairs David et al studied showed signs of lethargy and aberrant behavior (crazy loons), and they also "fledged" 41 percent fewer young. The birds' body burden of mercury increased 8.4 percent each year during the study. Sobering and awful.

So I cheered this month when I heard that New Source Review rules had been used by my state and seven others to successfully sue an Ohio company for acid rain impacts on wildlife, ecosystems, and structures in the Northeast. While acid rain is only peripherally related to the mercury problem we have from those same plants, it's a step in the right direction, and as this article points out, it's really good news for two reasons.

Progressive pundits don’t seem to be fully grappling with the oil problem

Earlier this week, Joe Romm said he doesn’t see peak oil radically changing U.S. culture, since hybrids and plug-in hybrids will reduce the fuel necessary to get around. Matt Yglesias, […]

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