Articles by Grist staff

Olympic Heights

Green-roof project aims to clean up Beijing for Olympics With the 2008 Olympics in Beijing inching closer, the Chinese are hard at work cleaning up the notoriously smog-ridden city. Polluting factories are being relocated, new pipelines are bringing in natural gas to replace dirty coal, and higher emissions standards are being applied to the city’s […]

Weakened in Review

Bipartisan efforts to revamp the Endangered Species Act begin A hearing of the Senate fisheries, wildlife, and water subcommittee last week kicked off what is likely to be an extended process of revising and updating the Endangered Species Act. There is bipartisan agreement on several measures, including providing grants and incentives to private landowners to […]

Tar Wars

Canadian tar sands becoming top oil source, despite environmental harm With conventional oil reserves declining around the world, all eyes are turning to Canada, where tar sands in the north contain 175 billion barrels of proven oil reserves — almost in the neighborhood of Saudi Arabia’s 262 billion and far more than the Arctic Refuge’s […]

David Cash, Massachusetts air-policy director, answers questions

David Cash. What work do you do? How does it relate to the environment? I’m the director of air policy for the state of Massachusetts in the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. EOEA is an umbrella agency that oversees and coordinates the activities of numerous other environment-related agencies such as the Department of Environmental Protection […]