Articles by Mark Hertsgaard

Why Al Gore isn’t running for president

As Hillary, Obama, and Edwards continue to slug it out in the early primary states, one name is conspicuously absent among the Democratic candidates to become the next president of the United States. Where is Al Gore? The man who received more votes than George W. Bush did in 2000, who served eight years as Bill Clinton's vice president, and whose climate change evangelism has been rewarded with an Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize has resolutely refused to enter the race, even though he might well have won it.

Ever since the documentary An Inconvenient Truth catapulted Gore to international superstardom in 2006, countless citizens and opinion leaders at home and abroad have urged him to pursue the presidency. For its 2007 Person of the Year issue, Time magazine asked Gore if he did not have "a moral obligation" to run, given the unparalleled power of the White House and the urgency of the climate crisis. Gore gave much the same answer he has been giving for months now: although he had "not completely ruled out the possibility," he did not expect to run for office; the best thing he could do to fight climate change was to stay focused on "changing public opinion."

John Francis, a ‘planetwalker’ who lived car-free and silent for 17 years, chats with Grist

How long could you survive without your car? For the many Americans who think nothing of driving 10 blocks to buy a gallon of milk, the answer is obvious. But before any of you dedicated pedestrians and die-hard cyclists start feeling smug, try this question: How long could you survive without talking? John Francis. Photo: […]

An interview with Terry Tamminen, Schwarzenegger’s top enviro official

Terry Tamminen. Terry Tamminen, secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency, may hold the most powerful environmental job in the U.S. outside of Washington, D.C. Not only is California the world’s fifth-largest economy, it has long been an environmental trendsetter, pioneering standards in automobile regulation and alternative-energy development that have spread across the nation and around […]

Can a beat-Bush effort yield a progressive coalition with staying power?

Is Bush digging his political grave with enviro rollbacks? Photo: White House. Who says George W. Bush never did anything for the great outdoors? His running for reelection could be the best thing to happen to the U.S. environmental movement in years. The threat of four more years of Bush has provoked a significant rethinking […]