GILLER AND I are seated inside the Starbucks in Seattle's Pioneer Square, having just missed the five o'clock ferry to Vashon. It's a fitting venue, since Starbucks will soon carry a quote from Giller on its recycled cups, as part of the company's "The Way I See It" campaign. Giller spent the past three days weighing two alternatives, ultimately choosing this one:

So-called "global warming" is just a secret plot by wacko tree huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don't let them get away with it!

"With the other quote, we were trying too hard to figure out what would appeal to the Starbucks user," Giller says, quickly adding, "I can't believe I just called Starbucks customers users."

Yet such marketing-speak rolls off Giller's tongue with ease, and it illustrates his willingness to break from the environmental movement's historical opposition to the commercial mainstream. "I had the opportunity to speak before the Sierra Club board a couple months ago," Giller says between sips of hot cocoa. "I said, ‘OK, there's all this new energy around the environment. Look at what Wal-Mart is doing, and G.E. These companies aren't perfect. And, yes, some of it is just greenwashing. But some of it is actual progress on these issues.'

"I don't want to say I was the Antichrist," he says, recalling some of the angry rebuttals his comments provoked. "But to some of the old guard, it's anathema to be working with any corporation."

The Sierra Club's Carl Pope, who was present for Giller's talk, describes this rift in theological terms. "Our movement has a great many people who would like to be Isaiah—they'd like to stand on the outside and denounce evil." He likens Grist to the Jesuits, who didn't so much care whether their converts had mastered the ins and outs of Deuteronomy, as long as they were "facing the right god."

"One of the interesting things that my generation screwed up," Pope says, "is failing to understand that the future has never belonged to anything that called itself ‘the counterculture.' If environmentalists are ever going to get this right, it's going to have to be by viewing our ideas as the ideas of the future."

In Giller's hopeful future, Grist will attract more and more "light greens"—his label for interested but uncommitted environmentalists—"and make them darker green over time."

A generation after the stunning successes of the Endangered Species, Clean Air, and Clean Water acts, the big environmental groups have been stuck fighting defensive battles over regulatory arcana that, Giller says, have sent them "down a path of such wonkdom that they have started to lose their movement." At the same time, millions of Americans are paying premium prices for organic tomatoes and thousands are filling their tanks with Willie Nelson–branded biodiesel.

With Grist 2.0, Giller believes he can "bridge the gap" between this ascendent commercial culture of sustainability and old-school environmental policy. Readers will come for reviews of organic-cotton tank tops; they'll hang around to read a critique of the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. Giller says he's positioning Grist "to convene and mobilize the next generation of environmental activists."

One big question in all this is how long the current wave of green cool will last. Environmentalists have had their pop-culture moments before—you may remember rockin' for the rainforest at a late-eighties Sting concert—and even Giller concedes that "some of the glamour may depart." But he wants Grist to lead the way to a moment when "green won't be thought of as a ‘segment'—but simply part of what's expected."

That's a lot to ask from a Web site, but the pitch is working with funders. Giller has raised half of the $10 million he needs for Grist 2.0. The additional cash will allow him to hire beat writers to cover sustainable business, design, and celebrity culture, as well as launch product reviews of everything from clothing and appliances to cars and computers. In the meantime, Grist will soon roll out personals and green job listings.

Though he has no illusions about making the site profitable, Giller says diversifying revenue sources is essential if Grist is going to last. He believes advertisers could eventually cover 40 percent of his budget—right now it's more like 10 percent—with increased donations from a potential readership of two million also filling the bank.

In his fearless futurism, Giller is a classic Internet revolutionary: an expansive thinker, rapt by the potential of the medium to "change everything." But there's that tragic moment in so many Web tales, when Thinking Big crosses a line and becomes a form of self-aggrandizing groupthink, the kind that drove Pets.com stock to suicidal heights and convinced millions of Netroots liberals that Vermont governor Howard Dean was a giant-killer.

By attempting to make Grist all things to all green people, Giller may be heading down that road, too, though he insists that expansion makes perfect sense.

"There are a lot of people in our target audience who just haven't heard of us yet," he says. "It's not growth for growth's sake—it's low-hanging fruit."