Articles by Grist staff

Making the Trade

Britain looks into carbon trading system for individuals British Environment Secretary David Miliband has endorsed the idea of a carbon trading system for individuals, requiring people to limit personal emissions and allowing energy-savers to sell back unused carbon allowances for a profit. “Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency,” Miliband said. Each citizen […]

Act Normal

Illinois mom blogs about her car-free month In some ways, Christine Gardner lives a normal life — she’s a mom, a writer, and, after all, she lives in Normal, Ill. But for July she’s doing something decidedly out of the norm — going car-free in a suburb without amenities right around the corner. Halfway through […]

That Extincts

Scientists, worried about mass extinction, call for international biodiversity panel The planet faces a “major biodiversity crisis” that could lead to mass extinction of species, warn 19 of the world’s leading biodiversity specialists in Nature. Stating that “biodiversity is still consistently undervalued and given inadequate weight in both private and public decisions,” the specialists urge […]

Vegetarians are ruining our bad headline

It was a headline many took personally: "Vegetarians Are Ruining the Planet."

As we know from the source article for our news blurb -- and from the many readers who wrote in to emphasize this particular point -- about 80 percent of the world's soy goes to feed livestock, much of which is then eaten by non-vegetarians.

So yes, meat-eaters, dog-food purchasers, leather-jacket wearers, and other sundry livestock end-users thus are about four-fifths at fault for destroying the soy-deadened parts of the Amazon.

But chew on this: inadvertently helping to destroy even 20 percent of these vast Amazonian tracts is still helping to destroy the planet, is it not? Alas, we're all playing a part -- though veggies less so than meat-eaters in this instance (particularly ones who make sure their soy patties and tofu nuggets are certified organic).

Anyhow, we are sincerely sorry that the headline offended many of you, dear readers. We thought, in our innocence, that it was such a clearly ridiculous assertion that it would be taken in jest. We've nothing against vegetarians, we swear -- in fact, we've even let some of them infiltrate our ranks.