Latest Articles

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.

Give It to Me, Baby

As you are no doubt aware, Grist in the midst of its first-ever fundraising drive. Here’s the story: Grist consists of precisely four paid staff members. We send out information by email at no charge to 60,000 people a day, and we post top-notch environmental news, commentary, and features on our website. Plus we point […]

Unkempt

We’re not sure whose job it is to go through all the thousands of pages of documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney’s formerly secretive energy task force, but they sure are having a grand old time. This week, the needle in the haystack was a memo sent to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham by Jane […]

Stranger in a Familiar Land

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, sometimes it makes for strange enemies as well: Tensions are brewing between environmentalists and animal-rights activists over federal efforts to establish the health effects of industrial chemicals and pesticides by testing them on laboratory animals. Under pressure from environmentalists, who were concerned about humans being exposed to tens of […]

Get With the Programme

Despite some bright spots, the outlook for the global environment in the next generation is largely bleak, according to a report published yesterday by the U.N. Environment Programme. The report is the work of more than 1,000 authors and attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of how the environment has changed since UNEP was established […]

East of Eden

After years of foreign control, East Timor became the world’s newest nation this week. Now the country must rise from the ashes wrought by years of brutal domination by Indonesia — and it hopes to do so in part by capitalizing on its abundant natural beauty to attract eco-tourists. Currently, East Timor is the poorest […]

Fatwa Alberta

Canada’s already-tense internal battle over whether to ratify the Kyoto Treaty on climate change heated up further yesterday, when the province of Alberta withdrew from negotiations after its alternative emissions-cutting plan was rejected by the other provinces and territories. In response, Alberta resigned as co-chair of the commission formed to negotiate climate issues and refused […]

Sign of the TIMOs

A major shift is taking place in U.S. timber ownership, and it could have significant consequences not just for the industry but also for ecosystems across the country. Traditionally, the major private owners of forestlands in the U.S. have been forest product companies, but increasingly, such land is being bought by investment groups hoping to […]