Articles by Grist staff

Cool Air, Just Don't Breathe It

Environmental officials in Utah yesterday eased air-quality rules temporarily to allow communities in the state to rev up diesel generators so that residents can blast their air-conditioning this summer. Some cities fear they will experience blackouts this summer, as a lack of rain, inadequate conservation, and ties to the energy crunch in California have led […]

Infertile Crescent

The largest wetland in the Middle East has shrunk by 90 percent since 1970, a change that has had a “devastating” impact on humans and wildlife, says the U.N. Environment Programme in a report to be released later this year. The UNEP says that dams and drainage projects have been the two main causes of […]

All We Are Is Soot in the Wind

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., yesterday sided mostly with the U.S. EPA and backed an order forcing factories and power plants in the Midwest and the South to reduce their emissions. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania petitioned the EPA in 1997 to order hundreds of polluters in upwind states to cut their […]

Assault and Paper

In a move that could put U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman in the hot seat again, a scientific advisory committee to the EPA voted unanimously yesterday to send on a long-delayed report to the agency that concludes that dioxin should be more tightly regulated. The committee found that dioxin is an air pollutant that […]