Articles by Grist staff

Pulp Friction

Cheap paper made from rampant logging of the Indonesian rainforest is flooding Britain. Public agencies are among the big users of the paper, despite calls by the government to use products only from sustainable sources. Asia Pulp and Paper, Indonesia’s biggest paper producer, receives significant backing from British banks. About 70 percent of Indonesia’s forests […]

A Connecticut Yankee in King Coal's Court

Connecticut Gov. John Rowland (R) on Friday vetoed the “Sooty Six” bill that would have forced the state’s six oldest and least efficient power plants to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide. His decision came the day before the bill would have automatically become law. Rowland had said he would sign the bill, and Democrats and […]

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

About 1,000 demonstrators, some dressed as ears of corn and others as tomatoes, held a protest yesterday in San Diego on the opening day of a biotechnology trade show. Shannon Service of Boulder, Colo., who was in a monarch butterfly costume, said, “The biotech industry is conducting a real-time experiment with our biosphere. They don’t […]

Unhealthy Glow

Thousands more people than expected face health threats from plutonium and other highly radioactive isotopes that contaminated huge amounts of uranium recycled by the U.S. nuclear weapons program over the last 50 years. USA Today reports that federal data show that the recycling program yielded 250,000 tons of tainted uranium, about double the estimate of […]