Articles by Grist staff

Cheap Tricks I

Toyota Says Hybrids Can Be Inexpensive to Manufacture Defying conventional wisdom, Toyota unveiled its new hybrid-car production site in Toyota City, Japan, yesterday and sent a clear message to other automakers: Gas-electric hybrids can be manufactured inexpensively. Such cars have traditionally been thought of as too costly to be practical, and Toyota and Honda, the […]

I’ll Take Mongolia for $1,000, Alex

Increased Mining in Mongolia Could Threaten Environment Say “Mongolia” and most people think of yaks and yurts — that is, if they think of anything. But these days, mining companies have a very different image of Mongolia: an untapped source of gold, copper, and other natural resources that can be exploited on the cheap and […]

Cheap Tricks II

New Solar Panels Would Be Inefficient — and Inexpensive Usually, inefficient energy sources are an environmentalist’s worse nightmare — but the opposite might be the case for a new type of solar cell. True, the new cells would only capture about 10 percent of the sun’s energy (roughly half of what conventional solar cells capture), […]

Run Out on a Rail

Senate Rejects White House Proposal to Restructure Amtrak A White House plan to restructure Amtrak was, uh, derailed yesterday by nearly unanimous bipartisan opposition in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The six-year Amtrak reauthorization bill proposed ending federal operating subsidies for the passenger rail service, opening some routes to private operators, and […]