Articles by Grist staff

How Now, Brown Cloud

A dense blanket of pollution that is hovering over South Asia could cause millions of deaths in the region and pose a threat to the world at large, a group of 200 scientists announced today. Known as the “Asian Brown Cloud,” the smog is an estimated two miles thick and covers the entire Indian subcontinent, […]

Catch As Quechua Can

Until recently, there were only two roads out of poverty for Ecuador’s Quechua people: cutting down the rainforest (thereby destroying habitat and soil fertility alike) or trading with warring factions in neighboring Colombia (thereby opening the door for that country’s violence to spread into Ecuador). Now there is a third, far better option: the Callari […]

Signs, Seals Not Delivered

Thirteen years after the Exxon Valdez spill sent 11 million gallons of crude oil pouring into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, some species still show no sign of recovery, according to the government panel overseeing the area’s restoration. The long-suffering species include herring, ducks, harbor seals, and loons; others, such as some seabird and salmon species, […]

Rock Me Like a Hurricane

The healing of the Florida Everglades is the largest environmental restoration project in U.S. history — and its got some of the nation’s highest hopes pinned on it. Some of those hopes involve the Florida Bay, a once-pristine angler’s paradise that all but collapsed in the late 1980s, when its clear waters became clouded and […]