Articles by Grist staff

Wherefore Art Thou Romero?

There’s death, taxes and now — garbage. So says California state Sen. Gloria Romero (D), who is concerned about the state’s increasingly inescapable waste problem. California’s population is expected to reach 40 million by the end of the decade, and Romero and others see a waste management nightmare in the combination of a mushrooming poor […]

Dam Nation

The Amazon Basin could become home to the world’s third-largest dam if Brazil continues with plans to build a hydroelectric plant to stave off the nation’s energy crisis. Energy consumption in Brazil is growing by 5.3 percent annually, a rate that far outstrips supply increases. The energy shortage was compounded this year by a severe […]

Norton: Here's a Whoops

An on-going battle over proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge took an ugly turn late last week when news surfaced that Interior Secretary Gale Norton had distorted government data about the impact of drilling on caribou populations. In a July letter to the Senate committee that had requested the data, Norton left […]

Cogito Ergo Summit

At an environmental summit being held this week in Rio de Janeiro, Latin American and Caribbean countries are forging an alliance to pressure developed nations to foot most of the bill for the planet’s ailing ecosystems. During the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, industrialized nations pledged to spend 0.7 percent of their gross domestic products on […]