Articles by Grist staff

Airing Out the Dirty Laundry

EPA Official Knew Rule Change Could Hurt Enforcement, GAO Says The top air-quality official at the U.S. EPA was warned repeatedly by agency staffers that changes to the New Source Review rules of the Clean Air Act could undermine enforcement actions against polluting industrial plants, a General Accounting Office report found last week. But still […]

Spammed If You Do, Spammed If You Don’t

Breadfruit Trees Endangered by Climate Change and Western-Style Diet The breadfruit tree, which has long provided a dietary staple to residents of South Pacific islands, is in severe decline, experts say, threatened by climate change and, of all things, Spam. Breadfruit trees, with their shallow roots, are particularly vulnerable to storms and cyclones, which have […]

Brown Out

Two Enviros Named to San Francisco Power Commission in Political Coup A political coup in San Francisco last week led to two environmentalists being named to the city’s Public Utilities Commission: former Sierra Club President Adam Werbach and Robin Chiang, an architect specializing in eco-friendly design and construction. San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly was serving […]

Hanford and Sums

Feds, Washington State Reach Agreement on Hanford Cleanup After years of bitter wrangling, the federal government and Washington state on Friday reached an agreement on a timeline for cleaning up the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southern Washington. Under the deal, the U.S. Energy Department will treat the equivalent of […]