Articles by Grist staff

What U.S. leaders could learn from a 13-year-old

Under the blunt title “Ethanol is Stupid,” a letter in the Concord Monitor makes a cogent case against corn-based ethanol: Most ethanol is made from corn. However, that corn must be supplied in enormous quantities, and corn is used in much food for humans and animals. If we use corn for fuel, more will need […]

Appeals court ruling closes Clean Air Act loophole

Green groups won an important victory for clean air last week when a federal appeals court ruled that chemical plants, refineries, and other industrial sites are still subject to pollution limits even during equipment malfunctions and when plants start up or shut down. Some refineries and other sites have used the Clean Air Act’s start-up, […]

Air in 46 U.S. metro areas exceeds allowable soot levels

Over 100 million people in the United States, nearly one-third of its population, live in metro areas that violate federal standards for daily soot pollution on at least some days, the U.S. EPA said this week. However, missing from the EPA’s list of officially sooty areas — and thus exempt from further enforcement actions to […]

EPA declares waste from oil-shale production ‘non-hazardous’

Waste products from oil-shale development are not hazardous and thus would not have to be treated as such, the U.S. EPA ruled this week, thereby lowering the costs of developing oil-shale deposits on public lands in the U.S. West.