Latest Articles

When Nature Emails

Ah, wilderness — the chirping of birds, the burbling of creeks, the melodic chime announcing that new mail has just arrived in your inbox. Yep, that’s right — or it will be if the Colorado Department of Natural Resources has its way. In an effort to boost revenue in the middle of a massive budget […]

Above the Bar

Great Britain may soon use DNA bar codes to make it easy to spot genetically modified (GM) foods. The technology, developed by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge, would help regulators quickly spot foods or crops contaminated with GM organisms. The British government is weighing the possibility of requiring biotech companies to use […]

Terror Alert Level: Green

New York City is on high terrorist alert. The entire nation is on tenterhooks. And at California State University at Fresno, security was heavy — for an academic environmental conference. The reason? The conference addressed “revolutionary environmentalism” and participants included former members of militant environmental and animal-rights organizations that have been linked to fire-bombings, vandalism, […]

The Fire Down Below

Forget about car emissions for a moment; coal fires, hundreds of which are raging out of control around the world, pump so much carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere that researchers at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science yesterday called them a “global catastrophe.” Coal fires burn […]

President’s Day Sail

In honor of Presidents’ Day (uh, that’s celebrating presidents past, not present), Grist will not be publishing on Monday. Have a great long weekend; we’ll be back Tuesday.

Nuts!

For the first time, scientists believe they have found an instance of climate change causing a species to alter its genetic makeup — not just its behavior. To date, species changes stemming from climate change have all been behavioral, such as animals shifting their migration patterns. But after studying the DNA and mating habits of […]

Kodak Moments

Environmentalists have many tools for looking after Momma Earth — and now, in remote villages in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, one of them is a Kodak camera. Through a project designed and funded by the Nature Conservancy, about 100 people in the region have been given cameras and training to help them take […]

Wooda, Coulda, Shouldn’t

The U.S. Congress is readying to pass its catch-all domestic spending bill this week — and with it, a provision that would give the timber industry responsibility for managing millions of acres of national forests throughout the West. Under the provision, which was added at the last minute by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the U.S. […]

Farm Band-aid

Here’s another provision to watch out for in the national spending bill: $3.1 billion in disaster assistance for farmers in the wake of this summer’s (and, in many places, this winter’s) drought. Sounds good — but if the spending bill is approved, the money will come at the expense of a national conservation program. The […]

I Want to Be Your Pledge Hammer

In what the Bush administration hailed as proof that voluntary environmental initiatives can work, representatives from 13 different industries gathered in the Energy Department cafeteria yesterday to pledge their commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The industries, ranging from energy companies to paper manufacturers, have agreed to commit to reductions targets to help the administration […]