Articles by Grist staff

The film opens nationwide Friday

Find out what author Eric Schlosser has to say about the film.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I sat down in the mostly empty theater for the press screening of Fast Food Nation last month. The book is fascinating ... but fact-heavy and not character-driven. I knew this movie was a narrative, following the lives of fictional workers producing (and marketing and serving and eating) food at fictional fast-food chain "Mickey's." I had seen the trailer featuring Little Miss Sunshine cutie Paul Dano serving a "Big One" from off the prep-room floor and Greg Kinnear getting a whiff of "smoky meat" flavoring. I thought the movie might even be a comedy.

But I left the theater feeling like I had seen a horror film. During many of the meat-packing scenes, the gore-level was on par with something like Saw III. (Or I would assume, anyway -- my eyes were closed during the most gruesome scenes. And I've never seen Saw III ... but both involve large saws.) The scariest part about the film, though, is that -- to the best of Eric Schlosser's and Richard Linklater's screenwriting abilities -- it accurately portrays the fast-food industry.

What’s the real cost of climate change, and where do all those numbers come from?

As serious governments shift the climate-change debate from whether the phenomenon exists to the best means to combat it, one of the first things officials want to know is how much economic damage it will cause — and how much measures to fight it might cost. It is the trillion-dollar question, and figures are flying […]

A dispatch from an eco-showroom evening full of luxurious goods

Emily Gertz is an environmental journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., who has contributed to Grist, Plenty, WorldChanging, and other independent publications, and blogs at OneAtlantic.net. Emily Gertz. Thursday, 16 Nov 2006 New York, N.Y. I want to believe. I want to believe that we can create an ecologically sustainable and socio-economically just future for the […]

Pits of Despair

Coal industry fends off concerns, keeps working on comeback Some of the tap water in West Virginia’s Mingo County is flowing in funny colors: red, brown, and black. Alarmed residents asked the state if the discoloration, caused by high levels of heavy metals including arsenic and lead, could be related to Big Coal’s practice of […]