Articles by Grist staff

Hello Cleveland!

Ohio city is latest to hire sustainability manager Cleveland, Ohio, has joined Seattle, Chicago, Portland, Ore., and other American metropolises (metropoli?) in creating a city-government position focused on going green and saving energy — ideally stimulating job growth in the process. Cleveland’s new “sustainability programs manager,” Andrew Watterson, is getting started with relatively simple and […]

The Sum of Owl Fears

Feds to shoot barred owls to save spotted owls Would you kill an owl to save another owl? It’s not a thought experiment from your Intro to Ethics class: Northern spotted owls — the feathered poster children of last decade’s timber wars — are dwindling in the Pacific Northwest, and bigger, more aggressive barred owls, […]

The Peat Is Gone

Siberia’s fast thaw alarms scientists Siberia is melting. Meeelllting! Ahem. Of particular concern is a 386,000 square-mile expanse of western Siberian permafrost that’s been icy cold for about 11,000 years and sits atop billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If the permafrost melts, the methane could […]

Dense and Densibility

Densest U.S. cities aren’t the ones you think Advocates of energy-saving urban density usually laud the towering buildings and subways of Manhattan, as contrasted with the car-heavy suburban sprawl of, say, Los Angeles. But the most dense city in the U.S., measured by people per square mile, is … Los Angeles. In fact, despite its […]