Articles by Grist staff

The Rend Is Near

Senate votes to keep Arctic Refuge drilling in budget bill The campaign to keep oil drills out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has just been dealt what could be a fatal blow. Yesterday, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced an amendment to drop refuge-drilling language from a filibuster-proof federal budget bill; today, the Senate voted […]

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na — Batwing!

Radical design might help curb greenhouse-gas emissions from aircraft Under pressure to reduce fuel use and greenhouse-gas emissions, the airline industry may turn to a futuristic airplane design sketched by Sir Frederick Handley Page in the 1960s. The delightfully dubbed “batwing” would be built of plastic rather than today’s heavy aluminum, and would be covered […]

Have Your Lake and Deplete it Too

U.N. urges decisive action to save Africa’s lakes Africa’s 650-plus lakes are degrading at an astonishing rate, says the U.N., and protecting them is crucial to restoring the continent’s health and boosting its prosperity. The U.N. Environment Program’s new “Africa’s Lakes: An Atlas of Environmental Change” compares recent and past satellite images of the water […]

Char and Away

Salvage logging after fires harms forests, new report claims The Bush administration has oft trumpeted the benefits of postfire salvage logging — coincidentally, a practice of great financial benefit to timber companies. But a recent report by the American Lands Alliance claims salvage logging is harming national forests. Fire experts and other scientists analyzed historical […]