Articles by Grist staff

Jungle Fever

Vines are the hallmark of any self-respecting jungle — picture Tarzan swinging in from offstage — but the situation is getting a bit out of control in the Amazon rainforest, where vines are growing so quickly they are choking trees and possibly interfering with the ability of forests to soak up greenhouse gases, according to […]

To Summit Up

A global report card issued by the United Nations just two weeks before an international environmental summit has given low marks to the world’s ecological condition. Among the report’s more shocking findings: Three million people die annually from air pollution, while more than 1 billion people — a sixth of the world’s population — lack […]

Curse D’ Alene

In a precedent-setting move, U.S. federal officials signed an agreement yesterday ceding control of the cleanup of Idaho’s highly polluted Coeur d’Alene Basin to state, local, and tribal officials. For more than a century, mining waste from the Silver Valley washed down the Coeur d’Alene River into Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River, and […]

Everybody Must Get Estonia-ed

Like the rest of the former Soviet Union, the Baltic states were once ecological disasters. But while Russia continues to be an environmental nightmare, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are investing serious resources into cleaning up their environments — in the interest, government officials say, of gaining entry into the European Union. To do so, they […]