Articles by Grist staff

All Articles

  • The Empire Strikes Back

    Apparently sick of playing the bad guy at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the U.S. struck back yesterday, proclaiming itself “the world’s leader in sustainable development.” To bolster that claim, U.S. delegates in Johannesburg announced joint government and private-sector initiatives, including a $53 million effort to protect forests in the Congo Basin and $43 […]

    Grist staff Politics

  • Sprawl Together Now

    A new culprit has been named in the drought that has plagued more than a third of the U.S. this summer: urban sprawl. A report released yesterday by American Rivers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Smart Growth America found that the rapid expansion of pavement and developed land in metropolitan areas amounts to a […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Quite a Pear

    There have been wars fought over oil and opium, spices and sugarcane — and now it seems there is a war brewing in Washington state over pears. The battle was touched off when the Seattle-based Washington Environmental Council sent a letter to an irrigation district in the eastern part of the state threatening legal actions […]

    Grist staff Food

  • To Market, to Market

    Can capitalism and environmentalism go hand in hand? A new breed of financiers thinks so, and is making money by treating air pollution as a commodity. Here’s how it works: Companies are required to cut their emissions to a certain level; if they do better than those targets, they can sell pollution credits to other […]

    Grist staff Technology