Articles by Grist staff

School and Unusual Punishment

Temporary deal struck to prop up rural funding amid logging-revenue decline What happens if you make funding for rural schools and roads dependent on revenues from a declining resource industry? What’s that you say? Nobody would be stupid enough to do that? Ha ha. Readers, meet the federal government. A federal program that had tied […]

To Tech With It

Investment money pours into the green-tech sector Investors are ga-ga for green. In 2005, clean energy projects in the U.S. were showered with $17 billion in investment money, up 89 percent from 2004. Just in 2005, the worldwide market for carbon credits blossomed from essentially nothing to around $11 billion. And these are not just […]

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Ire

War igniting forest fires in northern Israel Like America’s, Israel’s forests and grasslands are suffering an unusual number of fires this season. But the problem isn’t so much a heat wave as, um, rocket attacks. Since the mid-July start of the Israel-Lebanon conflict, an average of around 50 fires a day have ignited in the […]

Surprise-Side Economics

While cutting back on mercury at home, the U.S. exports it abroad Like Mickey said, it’s a small world after all, and pollution that gets exported can end up coming back home. Case in point: mercury, a neurotoxin especially dangerous to children and women of childbearing age. The U.S. is cutting down on the use […]