When Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks, people listen. I was on vacation when America’s most prominent scientist made news for railing against GMO fearmongers. “Practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is genetically modified food,” he told a French interviewer. It was an impromptu, oversimplified response on a complex, hot-button subject, but…Continue Reading…
Several years ago, well before Mark Lynas made his famous public apology for being an anti-GMO activist, I asked him in an interview to explain his change of mind. What prompted it, I wondered. His response: There was no “Road to Damascus” conversion, where there’s a sudden blinding flash and you go, “Oh, my God,…Continue Reading…
There are two kinds of people who write about genetically modified foods: Those who believe that GMOs are bad and those who don’t. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m in the latter group. Unfortunately, the simplistic debate between these two camps has devolved into a Three Stooges slapfest: More specifically, one group shrieks…Continue Reading…
That is the wickedly clever title of a post by Kevin Folta, a plant geneticist at the University of Florida, in Gainsville. To make his point, Folta, as he says on twitter, uses logic “borrowed from the anti-GMO crowd.” That would be logic like this: Is it a coincidence that autism has risen since GMOs have…Continue Reading…
When it comes to climate change, Grist (like many green advocacy outlets), is quick to pounce on media stories it deems substandard. A recent example is this slapdown from Grist’s executive editor, titled: How Huffington Post aided a demolition job on climate science Well, it turns out that Grist has a wrecking ball of its own,…Continue Reading…
David Roberts at Grist seems to have had an a ha! moment. In a long, wonky post about the “rebound effect,” he frames the grand challenge of emissions reduction as a problem that offers one of two choices: 2a. Drive down global energy intensity. 2b. Drive down global economic growth. Roberts runs through the math and concludes…Continue Reading…
This is a priceless post that suggests Grist editors are not reading what goes up on the site, much less editing any of it. Just for kicks, I’m gonna break down the first three graphs: So, the world did not end on Saturday. Harold Camping’s predicted Judgment Day and “Rapture” failed. I wonder how disappointed his…Continue Reading…
In between pool volleyball and the Electric Slide, I’m sure the conference attendees on this floating temple to humanity’s excessive indulgences will be hard at work finding ways to be more consumptive in a more sustainable manner. I’m certain that something good will come out of the event, because Chip Giller, Grist’s founder, will be there,…Continue Reading…
Well, I didn’t take the poll, but I’m putting my nomination in early for the official TreeShagger song. I’m also shocked–shocked–that this number one green pastime didn’t make the cut.
Ryan Lizza, a reporter for The New Yorker, stopped by the Grist office yesterday to chat about his widely read article on How the Senate and White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change Today, David Roberts provides the highlights of the chat, in which he notes at the end of his…Continue Reading…