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True Grime Stories

Rochester Investigates Link Between Lead and Crime If you read yesterday’s review of Six Modern Plagues in Grist, you know that environmental problems can be linked to health issues. But can they be linked to crime? That’s what officials in Rochester, N.Y., are trying to determine by investigating the relationship between violent behavior and lead […]

Inuit and Out

Inuit Plan to Launch Human-Rights Case Against U.S. Over Climate Change Saying global climate change threatens them with extinction, the world’s Inuit people yesterday announced plans to launch a human-rights case against the United States, which has repeatedly reiterated that it will take no decisive action on the issue. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference represents 155,000 […]

Oil and World Bank Shouldn’t Mix

Report Recommends That World Bank Stop Backing Oil, Coal Projects The World Bank should phase out all investments in oil and coal projects by 2008 because the environmental risks are too high, an independent report has recommended. Now, the bank must figure out how to respond to the Extractive Industry Review, which it commissioned in […]

All Our Excess Lives in Texas

West Texas Up in Arms Over Bid to Sell State-Owned Water Water may be scarce in West Texas, but emotions are flowing freely over an insider deal that would allow politically powerful oil tycoons from Midland to sell billions of gallons of water from state-owned reserves. The deal was cut in secret between Rio Nuevo […]

Michelle Nijhuis reviews Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them

It's easy to look at disease outbreaks as acts of God, or fate, or chance. After all, diseases are often so capricious, so stubbornly beyond our full control, that it can seem as if we humans have little to do with them -- beyond suffering the consequences, that is. But in many cases, argues journalist and veterinarian Mark Jerome Walters, we have far more influence over disease than we think. In Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them, he contends that disease outbreaks are often triggered by the damage we've done to the environment.

Extract Marks the Spot

Development, Tradition on Opposite Sides in South American Energy Battles Given its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, the Amazon basin should be heaven for extractive industries. Instead, the people who make their home in the basin are trying to make life hell for energy companies. Over the years, Amazon natives have become both […]

It Doesn’t Look a Day Over 29

Taking Stock of the Endangered Species Act at Age 30 Who knew the Endangered Species Act was a Sagittarius? That’s right, this month the act will turn 30. Signed into law by President Nixon in 1973, the ESA aimed to prevent extinctions, bring imperiled species back to viable population levels, and protect the natural habitat […]

Bush’s latest clean-air proposals are better than nothing, but how much better?

Who let the smog out? Photo: EPA “I hate it that we’re always complaining,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former senior enforcement official at the U.S. EPA who resigned in 2002 to protest the Bush administration’s poor record on nabbing polluters. “So, looking on the bright side, I suppose you could call this better than nothing.” […]

Wes Is More

Clark Unveils Environmental Platform Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean grabbed the campaign spotlight this week by earning the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore. Meanwhile, off in the shadows, fellow Democratic presidential contender retired Gen. Wesley Clark presented his environmental platform yesterday. Perhaps it befits Clark’s military background that he described that platform not […]

Billions and Billions Observed

World Population to Level Off at About 9 Billion, Says U.N. Population growth is expected to slow dramatically over the coming decades, but the number of people on the planet is still likely to reach 8.9 billion by 2050, up from 6.3 billion today, according to a new U.N. report released yesterday. Granted, that’s not […]