Articles by Grist staff

On Acid

Dealing a major setback to New York’s efforts to reduce acid rain in the Adirondacks, a federal judge yesterday overturned a law penalizing power plants in the state for trading pollution credits to plants in 14 other states. According to U.S. District Court Judge David Hurd, the state’s 2000 Air Pollution Mitigation Law conflicted with […]

On the Railroad to Nowhere?

Europe has long set the standard for rail travel, with a system whose efficiency, extent, and affordability has been the envy of rail advocates in the United States. But now it seems that European transportation trends are in danger of imitating those in the U.S: In the last decade, the highway network in the European […]

Sludge Hammer

After highway infrastructure, the U.S. water and sewage system is the single biggest public works network in the country — and it is in trouble. Annual spending on the system falls tens of billions of dollars short of what is needed to maintain and expand it enough to keep up with population growth and stricter […]

Russian to the Brink

Russian environmentalists announced yesterday that they would take their government to court over its decision to accept spent nuclear waste from foreign countries for storage and reprocessing. The law allowing the country to import such waste was signed by President Vladimir Putin last summer. Proponents say it could generate up to $20 billion over 10 […]