Articles by Grist staff

Comment Tally Voodoo

Environmental organizations had just 48 hours to submit policy proposals for consideration by Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, according to the latest batch of documents released by the Energy Department. Shortly after midday on Wednesday, March 21, 2001, Margot Anderson, a senior department official, sent an email message to a colleague instructing him […]

Basin Is No Sink

The network of waterways in the Amazon River Basin emits three times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as previously thought, according to a study appearing in the current edition of Nature. The finding suggests that tropical forest regions are not carbon “sinks” that help cleanse the world of excess CO2 emissions. Rather, the […]

Dune Messiah

It’s a rare moment when ranchers and environmentalists see eye-to-eye — and yet a collaboration between the two parties is leading to the creation of the nation’s 57th national park. The unlikely relationship began when enviros and ranchers realized they had something in common: a need to protect the water resources in Colorado’s San Luis […]

By the Hair of Our Chinny Chin Chin

As building materials go, straw generally gets a bad rap: A straw man is something that can be knocked over easily, and, as everyone knows, any decent wolf can blow down a straw house. But people have been building homes in the U.S. from straw bales encased in plaster or drywall since at least the […]