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Sprawl the Right Moves

Urban Planner Seeks New Vocabulary to Describe Sprawl Delores Hayden, a Yale professor of architecture, urbanism, and American studies, found herself struggling when she tried to describe the characteristic features of the sprawling suburbs surrounding American cities — features that are now ubiquitous but which have emerged so quickly, historically speaking, that our ability to […]

Oh Riley?

West’s Water Woes Put Spotlight on Bush Water Czar When the Bush administration appointed Bennett Riley to oversee both the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Reclamation, environmentalists feared the worst. Riley, a cowboy-turned-lawyer and longtime advocate for property rights and against government regulation, hardly seemed like an auspicious choice for water czar. But […]

The Chipping News

Organic Snack Foods on the Rise One of the fastest growing segments of the $23 billion organic foods industry — faster than produce or dairy products — is snack food: chips, candy, nutrition bars, and the like, sales of which grew by almost 30 percent last year. If that strikes you as odd, you will […]

Kids Rocked

Enviro Problems Cause One-Third of Child Deaths in Europe Environmental hazards are responsible for a third of all child deaths — some 100,000 a year — in the 52 countries of the European region, according to a new study. Published by World Health Organization researchers in the medical journal The Lancet, the study audited the […]

Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Wind

The Main Objections to Wind Farms The political — and in some places legal — pressure to move to renewable energy is raising the profile of wind energy and the wind farms and wind turbines that generate it. In locales from India to the U.K., groups have agitated against wind farms for a variety of […]

Stretch Pants on Fire

House Rejects Snowmobile Ban, Again Snowmobile news! Here at Grist, we can’t get enough of it. Thursday brought a 224-198 vote in the House of Representatives rejecting a measure — an amendment to the Interior Department’s fiscal year 2005 spending bill — that would have banned snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. The […]

Shake Dat Tongass

House Cuts Funding for Tongass Roads The U.S. House of Representatives last night passed a bipartisan measure that would — if approved by the Senate and not vetoed by President Bush — cut off federal funding for building logging roads in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the country’s largest intact swath of old-growth forest. Supporters of […]

When Shell Freezes Over

Head of Shell Oil Worried About Planet The chair of Shell, one of the world’s largest oil companies, says that global warming has him “really very worried for the planet.” In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Ron Oxburgh was forthright about the dangers of climate change, unusually so for someone from an industry that […]

Unjust Deserts

U.N. Warns of Spreading Deserts As you celebrate World Day to Combat Desertification today, remember it’s not just another excuse to buy Hallmark cards and fancy gifts. (Holidays are so commodified these days!) This week, as the United Nations marks the 10th anniversary of the Convention to Combat Desertification, keep in mind that some one-third […]

Show Them the Money

Russia’s Delay on Kyoto Masks Internal Financial Debates Russia’s will-she-or-won’t-she tap dance on the question of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol may be less mystifying than it appears to outside observers: It might just come down to money. Many economists and energy experts inside and outside of Russia believe the country stands to make millions, possibly […]