Articles by Grist staff

Flexing Their Mussels

Roughly 1,000 miles of rivers and streams in Alabama could be protected as critical habitat for endangered species, under a new proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The proposal, which is designed to protect eight endangered and three threatened species of mussels, was great news for environmentalists and bad news for backers of […]

Older Europe

Population growth in Europe is slowing down — so much so that the absolute number of people on the continent could begin to decline in the near future, according to an article published in the current issue of the journal Science. The report authors say the turning point came in 2000, when the number of […]

Someone Set Up Us the Bomb

U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announced this week that she is “very comfortable” with the Pentagon’s proposals to exempt the military from a broad swath of environmental regulations. In response to the war in Iraq, the Defense Department has stepped up its longstanding efforts to obtain military waivers for rules ranging from endangered species protections […]

No Exit

A plan by the California Public Utilities Commission to levy an “exit fee” against anyone who stops drawing electricity from the state’s grid — read: alternative energy users — has come under fire by lawmakers, renewable energy producers, and consumers. The proposed exit fee is a holdover from the state’s 2000-2001 energy crisis, when the […]