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You Don’t Need a Weatherman …

In a startling break from its usual dry delivery of statistics and scientific reports, the World Meteorological Organization warned last night that climate change is causing the planet’s weather to rum amok and taking a significant human and economic toll. The organization found that erratic weather induced by global warming is no longer a prediction: […]

Take It Off. Take It All Off.

Writing about the undoing of Mutha Earth is a barrel of laughs, but even Grist staffers sometimes need a break. We’ll be taking a vacation over the next two weeks. We know you’ll miss your daily fix of green news, but fret not — we’ll be back at work the week of July 21, in […]

Unable Was I Ere I Smelled Elbe

For residents of the town of Libis in the Czech Republic, last year’s terrible floods are more than a bad memory: They are an on-going nightmare. Libis is located not far from the Spolana chemical plant in central Bohemia, which leaked more than 1,100 pounds of toxics into the Elbe River when floodwaters inundated the […]

So Much for the Atkins Diet

Women and girls should reduce their fat intake long before becoming pregnant to protect their fetuses from dangerous dioxins, the Institute of Medicine recommended yesterday. The institute, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, urged the government to educate women about the hazards of dioxins, which can cause health problems ranging from behavioral disorders […]

A Current Affair

Eleven months and 1,243 miles later, Christopher Swain has become the first person ever to swim the length of the Columbia River. Swain, 35, embarked on his landmark adventure to draw attention to the desperate environmental straits of the river, which is threatened by dams and pollutants. The Portland native endured 10-foot swells, 38-degree water […]

Label of Love

European lawmakers today adopted new food-labeling rules that could pave the way for lifting a European Union-wide ban on genetically modified (GM) products. The new rules will require labels for food and animal feed containing at least 0.9 percent GM ingredients. Though the move may lead to the opening of E.U. markets to GM foods, […]

Spirited Away

Teshima Island — one of many islands in Japan’s Inland Sea, where the nation’s first national park was established — has for decades served as a dumping ground for trash and toxic waste. The practice was illegal, but advantageous for the nation’s powerful industries (and, according to rumor, its powerful mob). Now, after a 25-year […]

Blind Spot

Controversy is roiling among scientists about the wisdom of focusing conservation efforts on protecting “hot spots,” areas that cover just 1.4 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial surface but are home to nearly half of all land-based plant species and more than a third of all land animal species. Since 1988, when biologist Norman Myers and […]

Lake Woe-be-here

The pristine environment around Lake Baikal in Siberia, the world’s deepest freshwater lake, is endangered by a joint Russian-Chinese plan to build an oil pipeline through the region, Greenpeace warned yesterday. A month ago, Russian and Chinese oil companies signed a 25-year deal to pump 30 million tons of Russian crude oil to China every […]

Down, but Not Out

Here’s a spot of good news: Releases of toxic chemicals by U.S. industries declined 15 percent between 2000 and 2001 (the most recent year for which data are available) and dropped by more than 50 percent since 1988. That’s the latest word from the U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory. Of course, that means there are […]