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The Shipping News

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reiterated yesterday that at-risk salmon populations wouldn’t be further endangered by a project to deepen the Columbia River for more shipping. The Corps said environmental improvements that would be undertaken along with the $188 million dredging project would actually upgrade conditions for fish in the lower river. The Corps […]

Coal in His Stalking

More bad news from the Bush administration: The U.S. EPA is planning to relax Clinton-era interpretations of the Clean Air Act by allowing owners of aging coal-fired power plants to upgrade their facilities without installing pollution controls. The policy change is bound to be unpopular with environmentalists, as well as with many Northeast states, which […]

Fuels Don’t Rush in

Environmental groups sued the U.S. government yesterday for violating a 1992 law requiring federal agencies to buy vehicles powered by alternative fuels. The suit, filed by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Bluewater Network, charges 18 agencies for failing — in some cases miserably — to meet the terms of the […]

Tijuana Ass

For decades, raw sewage from Tijuana has flowed into the Tijuana River, north through the United States, and into the Pacific Ocean, violating U.S. clean water standards. Efforts to clean up the waste have bogged down in the double-bureaucracy that plagues cross-border negotiations, with fully one dozen Mexican and U.S. municipal, state, and federal agencies […]

Turning Over a New Leif

With a new, government-approved plan to become the world’s first hydrogen-based society, Iceland is emerging as the protagonist of the clean energy revolution. The nation plans to end its dependence on fossil fuels (and hence on foreign energy sources) through the use of fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce energy, yielding water […]

Oh, Baby

Pregnant women exposed to high levels of ozone and carbon monoxide are more likely to give birth to children with heart defects, according to a study published yesterday in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The study, which was conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles, looked at birth defect cases in Los Angeles, […]

I Got Yer Holiday Cheer Right Here, Buddy

Species going extinct. Warming temperatures. Environmental skeptics on the rise. An all-oil team in the White House. Yep, we at Grist sure do have fun writing about the despoiling of Mama Earth. But even Grist staffers need to take time out once in a while. We’ll be on vacation for the last two weeks of […]

I Got Yer Holiday Cheer Right Here, Buddy

Species going extinct. Warming temperatures. Environmental skeptics on the rise. An all-oil team in the White House. Yep, we at Grist sure do have fun writing about the despoiling of Mama Earth. But even Grist staffers need to take time out once in a while. We’ll be on vacation for the last two weeks of […]

Hummer Bummer

Oy vey. From the department of mad consumerism, reckless fuel consumption, and paramilitary chic comes this latest gem: the Hummer H2, the latest sports utility monstrosity from General Motors. Built to resemble the Humvees rumbling through Kabul, the Hummer H2 gets about 13 miles per gallon and, at 8,600 pounds, weighs just enough to evade […]

Sound Effects

The Pacific Northwest’s Puget Sound is not a great place to be a marine animal, according to a report released this week by the group People for Puget Sound. The report assessed dozens of scientific studies on toxic chemicals in the sound and concluded that although the water is considerably cleaner than it was a […]