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And Maybe We’ll Finally Clean Out That Closet

Daily Grist taking day off tomorrow, back on Thursday You know how, after you’ve been working for months on end, you get a hankering for a day off? You’re not sick, but you feel a little burned out, and you’re pretty sure tending to your own needs would help you do your job better, so […]

Let My River Go

Unleashing Mississippi River could be key to restoring Louisiana wetlands Painfully aware that their state is sinking, Louisiana politicians are pushing a $50 billion plan to fight wetlands erosion by unleashing the Mississippi River. The river built much of the southeastern part of the state over time, through sediment deposits. But levees and other restraints […]

Are We Having Fund Yet?

Neglect, underfunding cause Superfund cleanups to dwindle Twenty-seven years ago, Love Canal prompted the feds to invest resources in cleaning up America’s most toxic sites and start shaking down the polluters responsible for creating them. But a new study from the Center for Public Integrity finds that underfunding of Superfund in recent years has severely […]

Face Offset

A campus organizer takes a critical look at going carbon neutral These days, college is about more than keg stands and beer pong: students all over the country are taking stands on global warming, pushing their schools to move toward climate neutrality. Nathan Wyeth, an undergrad at Brown University, is one of those students. But […]

IPCC releases third report, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: One Fight In Bangkok Mine Your Business That’s One Way to Push Public Transportation Let’s Balk About Sex Ducked Ape Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Places in the Heart No More Teachers’ Dirty Looks The Spoken Word

Umbra on watering the yard

Dear Umbra, Thanks for your good advice about water conservation. You failed to mention the largest (unnecessary) water user in most U.S. homes: outdoor plant watering. While Grist readers may be eco-wise enough not to water their plants, nor even entertain the possibility of managing a green lawn, there may still be a few closet […]

Let’s Balk About Sex

Eastern Pacific gray whales, tired and hungry, are breeding less Researchers say the gray whales of the eastern Pacific are in deep trouble, and their fate could be an indicator of ocean health. According to Earthwatch, whales migrating from their feeding grounds north of Seattle to breeding grounds off the Mexican coast are arriving scrawny, […]

Crazy quotes from everyone’s favorite skeptic

Climate skeptics love citing MIT prof Richard Lindzen, probably because, well, there aren’t many other semi-legitimate skeptics left to cite. (And how many of the dead enders can bamboozle their way into Newsweek?) But lately, it seems like Lindzen is more and more openly losing his cool. A quick survey of today’s news, for instance, […]

Senators demand Congressional participation in Endangered Species Act changes

On Wednesday, several key Senators sent a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne expressing concern about an Interior Department proposal they say will weaken the Endangered Species Act. The letter states that draft revisions to the act have suggested a major overhaul of the act is under consideration and demands that the Bush administration include […]

Reading the fin print

Some folks are quick to give sharks a bad rep without considering their importance as top feeders in the marine food web. But when we remove these so-called lions of the ocean from their habitat through shark-finning and bycatch, it doesn't take long for the rest of the food web to feel the effects. Chew on this:

In 2004, North Carolina's century-old bay scallop fishery effectively ended because too few scallops survived into the autumn to sustain fishing, according to a report published in Science last month.

The culprit? Rays. Vast increases in the numbers of rays, which eat scallops. The rays have been decimating the young scallops before they could grow to commercial size.

So where do the sharks come in?