Articles by Grist staff

The Traffic is Murder Out There

Traffic causes heart attacks Being stuck in traffic could substantially raise your chances of having a heart attack — and it’s not just the stress. The particulate pollution that hovers over traffic is the likely culprit, says a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine, though “we can’t exclude that there is an […]

For the Price of a Starbucks Latte, You Could Save the Whales Too

Group says power plants could cut mercury by 90 percent for cheap Electric utilities could use commercially available technologies to reduce their mercury emissions by 90 percent and it would cost consumers the equivalent of a cup of coffee per household per month, according to a new National Wildlife Federation study. The group looked at […]

Feather Report

Birds in decline across North America Last week we heard that amphibians — the alleged environmental “canaries in the coal mine” — are dying off in record numbers. But what if birds, not amphibians, are the better environmental indicators, as John Flicker of the National Audubon Society claims? Well, then … we’re still hosed. According […]

The Meek Shall Inherit the Dearth

Climate change threatens to reverse progress on fighting poverty Global warming will disproportionately harm the world’s poorest people and “perpetuate injustices unprecedented in human history,” says Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth. Such is the conclusion of a sobering report called “Up in Smoke,” released this week by a 17-member coalition of environmental and […]