Articles by Grist staff

Shuffling is afoot in Bush administration’s environment-related slots

There’s so much talk of hirings, firings, retirings, and resignations at environment-related agencies in the Bush administration that it feels almost as though a whole new regime were coming in, when in fact we’re likely to get four more years of the same policy aims. Ann Veneman (left) and Spencer Abraham. Photo: USDA. Departing at […]

Dude, the Powder Is Nuclear Today!

Extreme microbes may aid nuclear waste disposal Researchers with the Department of Energy, hip to the latest trends, have developed genetically manipulated “extreme microbes” that reportedly survive entirely on Red Bull and communicate via appropriated skater slang. Ah, we kid. But there are some pretty bitchin’ microbes out there. Able to survive in earth’s most […]

Better Red Than Dead

Annual “Red List” of threatened species says lots of species are threatened The World Conservation Union released its annual Red List of threatened species today, and it ain’t pretty. Some 15,589 species — 7,266 animals and 8,323 plants and lichens — are in danger, up more than 3,000 from just last year. Nearly an eighth […]

I’ll Have a Side of Hash Browns

U.S. joins 13 other nations in plan to reduce methane emissions Fourteen nations agreed yesterday to a non-binding agreement to curtail methane emissions by trapping the gas and using it as a relatively clean-burning fuel before it’s released into the atmosphere. Methane is the second most common heat-trapping greenhouse gas — albeit a distant second […]