Articles by Grist staff

Ashcroft, Ashcroft, We All Fall Down

A sweeping “wartime reorganization and mobilization” effort announced by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday sounds like bad news for environmental and social justice issues. Ashcroft indicated that the Justice Department will scale back or abandon many of its current responsibilities, which range from civil rights enforcement to prosecuting environmental polluters, in order to step […]

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Opportunism Itself

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) blasted the Bush administration last night for using fear of terrorism to drum up support for oil drilling in Alaska and other extraction-based energy policies. Speaking at a dinner in New York for the League of Conservation Voters, the potential 2004 presidential candidate denounced the administration’s maneuverings as “misplaced patriotism” and […]

Unappealing

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that a $5 billion punitive damage award levied against ExxonMobil for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill is excessive. The decision stunned environmentalists and the roughly 10,000 fishers, Alaska Natives, and others who have been awaiting compensation for more than a decade. When a jury handed down the verdict […]

A Growing Problem

Global warming could lead to a 30 percent decline in the yield of key crops over the next 100 years, according to a report made by the United Nations Environment Programme during ongoing climate change negotiations in Marrakech, Morocco. The report says rising temperatures damage the growing capacity of critical crops such as wheat, rice, […]