Articles by Grist staff

Bill McKibben sends dispatches from a global-warming march

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, published in 1989, the first book for a general audience on climate change. A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, his forthcoming book is titled Deep Economy. He’s participating in a five-day walk calling for action to fight global warming — From the Road Less Traveled: Vermonters […]

Could small farms provide fresh food year-round, even in northern climes?

Is the sustainable-agriculture movement essentially Luddite? It’s a common charge — and a fair enough question. The Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, perhaps industrial agriculture’s greatest living apologist, deplores at every opportunity the organic movement’s supposedly technophobic ways. Addressing a graduating class a few years ago at Texas A&M — that factory for future big-ag farmers […]

The Visible Hand of the Market

BP under investigation for possible manipulation of oil and gasoline markets Petro-behemoth BP is being investigated by two U.S. agencies for possible manipulation of crude-oil and unleaded-gasoline markets. (These are, of course, in addition to ongoing investigations of BP over a Texas refinery explosion, an Alaska pipeline spill, and alleged manipulation of the U.S. propane […]

An Eden Break

Birds return to Iraq marshes, but long-term recovery in doubt Birds have begun to return to restored wetlands in southern Iraq, the famed marshes rumored to have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden. In decades past, ornithologists recorded more than 250 bird species in the region, including the fun-to-say Iraq babbler and […]