Articles by Grist staff

A View to a Killing

Silicon Valley investors putting big bucks into clean-tech start-ups Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists are seeing green in clean energy — and we’re talking gobs of profit, not the whole planet-saving thing. Investor interest in clean-energy tech firms has jumped in the past year, fueled in part by escalating global demand for electricity and the rising […]

Stickin’ It to the Mandatory

Senate passes weak climate amendment Greens were struck with a severe case of mixed feelings yesterday, as the Senate passed an energy-bill amendment to address global warming (yay!) but passed over a different, tougher amendment (boo!). The latter, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), would have imposed mandatory controls on industrial greenhouse-gas emissions (though it […]

Arid Extra Dry

Desertification will be big bummer for hundreds of thousands worldwide Hundreds of thousands of people — some of them the world’s poorest — will be displaced in the next 30 years as the globe’s deserts expand, according to the latest report from the U.N.’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Climate change is likely to intensify droughts, heat […]

Knock, Knock, Knockin’ on Obrador’s Heaven

Ambitious new bus rapid-transit system hits the road in Mexico City Mexico City mayor and popular presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador hopes to clear some of his city’s legendary smog and gridlock with an ambitious pilot transport project — a bus system with a hint o’ subway. Eighty new low-emission Volvo jumbo buses have […]