Latest Articles

Business As Usual

The U.S. government will no longer consider a business’s environmental track record when awarding federal contracts, following the Bush administration’s decision to rescind 11th-hour Clinton-era “blacklisting” regulations. The regulations required a business to have a satisfactory record on ethical, environmental, tax, labor, antitrust, and consumer protection laws to win government contracts worth more than $100,000. […]

‘Tis the Treason

It was a grim holiday season for Grigory Pasko, a Russian journalist who was sentenced on Dec. 25 to four years in prison on charges of high treason. A military reporter with an interest in environmental issues, Pasko documented the Russian Navy’s practice of dumping old weapons and nuclear waste into the ocean. The treason […]

Minority Report

Officials in charge of reviving the Florida Everglades have created an outreach program to encourage minority involvement in the region’s decades-long, multi-billion dollar restoration plan. The $11 million outreach program accords with 2000 legislation that granted federal funding for Everglades restoration and called on the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps […]

Oh, Baby

Pregnant women exposed to high levels of ozone and carbon monoxide are more likely to give birth to children with heart defects, according to a study published yesterday in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The study, which was conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles, looked at birth defect cases in Los Angeles, […]

I Got Yer Holiday Cheer Right Here, Buddy

Species going extinct. Warming temperatures. Environmental skeptics on the rise. An all-oil team in the White House. Yep, we at Grist sure do have fun writing about the despoiling of Mama Earth. But even Grist staffers need to take time out once in a while. We’ll be on vacation for the last two weeks of […]

Gluttony at home is not necessary for victory abroad

My grandmother, the family provider in World War II’s market of scarcity, pleaded — or was it flirted? — with the butcher for meat. My father, who couldn’t hit his hat with a hammer, volunteered for military service and wound up in Boston army ordinance helping “our boys” make munitions. On “the home front,” my […]

Are higher temperatures the price of saving the ozone layer?

After 15 years as the poster child for international environmental agreements, the Montreal Protocol has slipped into the relative anonymity of a well-functioning accord. As Kyoto Protocol negotiations grab headlines before even yielding a ratified deal, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are quietly on their way to oblivion, through unprecedented, concerted efforts worldwide. That was some of the […]

Elizabeth Grossman reviews Affluenza and Red

There's been a tendency since Sept. 11 to reconsider everything in light of that horrific tragedy. I've tried to resist that inclination, but I had read both Affluenza and Red before that day and could not ignore the way the attacks highlighted the importance of the books' divergent subject matters: our desire for the good life, which has made us the greatest consumers on earth; and the need to protect the wild places which that pattern of consumption threatens.

I Got Yer Holiday Cheer Right Here, Buddy

Species going extinct. Warming temperatures. Environmental skeptics on the rise. An all-oil team in the White House. Yep, we at Grist sure do have fun writing about the despoiling of Mama Earth. But even Grist staffers need to take time out once in a while. We’ll be on vacation for the last two weeks of […]

Now that's a reason to be jolly

This holiday season, we’re bombing Afghanistan, and perhaps contributing to mass starvation there. We stand apart from the rest of the world on climate change, ignoring the melting ice at the North Pole and rising global temperatures. As if the killing and bombing and starving weren’t bad enough, we’re not just at war with other […]