Articles by Grist staff

If the Military Can’t Pollute Freely, the Terrorists Have Won

Pentagon asks Congress for exemptions from environmental laws, again For the fourth time in as many years, the Defense Department has appealed to Congress for exemptions from major environmental laws — this time it’s air and hazardous-waste laws, as part of the 2006 defense authorization bill. In congressional testimony last year, a senior Pentagon official […]

We Can’t Handle the Truth

Court rules that Cheney may keep task-force deliberations secret In a major political and legal victory for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court has ruled that Vice President Dick Cheney is not obliged to release records on his secretive 2001 energy task-force meetings, effectively ending the long-running legal challenge brought by the Sierra Club […]

Private Eyes Are Watching Ewe

Remote sensors, cameras able to monitor earth’s health Technological advances in the burgeoning field of environmental monitoring are allowing scientists to take frequent and accurate measurements of weather conditions, animal behavior, and even contaminant levels without leaving their workstations. By placing tiny wireless instruments — no larger than a cell phone or a deck of […]

Fiddler on the Hot Tin Roof

Climate scientists grow more concerned as Rome burns, Nero fiddles In most fields of science, lay opinion tends to be more alarmist than scientific opinion, says Carbon Mitigation Initiative codirector Robert Socolow. “But, in the climate case, the experts — the people who work with the climate models every day, the people who do ice […]