Latest Articles

Fischler-ing for Trouble

The E.U. has announced a proposal to overhaul Europe’s fisheries policy, a move that would save endangered species but cost some 28,000 jobs. The reforms would entail cutting the size of the fishing fleet by 8.5 percent, a reduction that E.U. Fisheries Commissioner Franz Fischler called necessary for the future of European fishing. “Either we […]

Gift Rap

So far, the first-ever Grist fundraising drive has been an unprecedented success. (eGrants.org, the organization that’s making it possible to do fancy things like process your online credit card donations safely and securely, wants to know what the heck we’ve done to inspire such a love-in among our readers.) Donors have sent enthusiastic notes saying […]

It’s a Criming Shame

Environmental crimes are the train robberies of the 21st century: High-profit and low-risk, they are generally carried out by perpetrators that are better informed, better organized, and better funded than law enforcement agencies. That was the message delivered by the Environmental Investigation Agency at a Royal Institute of International Affairs seminar held yesterday in London, […]

William Faries, environmental journalist

Thanks to a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, William Faries is currently working as an environmental journalist for the Jakarta, Indonesia-based Tempo magazine. This week, he is reporting from Bali, site of the final preparatory meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in South Africa this August. Tuesday, 28 May […]

TRI a Little Tenderness

The amount of toxic chemicals released into the environment dropped 8 percent in 2000, continuing a decade-long trend of declining industrial pollution, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA. The Toxics Release Inventory compiles data from more than 23,000 factories, refineries, hard-rock mines, power plants, and chemical manufacturers, which together reported pumping […]

Taipei Personalities

More than 200 former employees of an RCA television and semiconductor plant in northern Taiwan have died of cancer and at least 1,000 others are suffering from the disease, in what industry watchdogs are calling the worst cancer cluster in the history of high-tech. A group of former plant workers arrived in Silicon Valley yesterday […]

Graceless Slick

Massive ships spilling sheets of oil across the sea might make for dramatic photo ops — yet the vast majority of oil pollution in North America comes not from leaking oil rigs or troubled tankers, but rather from thousands of small, diverse sources, most of them on the land, according to a new report by […]

Blair Switch Project

In what some observers saw as a thinly-veiled attack on environmentalists and animal-rights activists, British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned that his nation risked being overtaken by other countries if it let public sentiment and vocal protesters stand in the way of scientific progress. Speaking yesterday to the Royal Society in London, Blair said Great […]

Snoop Dog

Almost everyone’s been embarrassed at one time or another by an over-eager dog sniffing in the wrong places. Now car owners have to worry about the “smog dog,” designed to “sniff” tailpipes to detect air pollution. Formally called the AccuScan Remote Vehicle Emissions Testing System, the smog dog analyzes exhaust from cars as they pass […]

Michelle Nijhuis reviews Water Wars by Vandana Shiva

I can see the source of the world's water problems from my office window. It's called the Fire Mountain Canal, and it winds its way past peach and apple orchards, through green horse pastures, and around the edge of the dry, juniper-covered mesa where I live. This fat, smooth snake of water seems like a generous thing; after all, it supports the work of local Colorado farmers, who stuff us with cherries, chilies, meat, and other goodies each year. But the canal cheats the river itself, sucking out so much water that the local swimming season ends in June. Thousands of other diversions, big and small, prey on other tributaries in our watershed, eventually shrinking the main stem of the Colorado River down to a ghost of itself.