Articles by Grist staff

Smithsonian and Lesson

After U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle and scientists across the world raised the roof about a plan to close a wildlife conservation center in Virginia, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, Lawrence Small, said yesterday that he was withdrawing the proposal. Small had proposed to save the Smithsonian $2.8 million a year […]

Saving Grace

A government-led program to encourage energy efficiency could reduce growth in electricity demand by 20 to 47 percent in the U.S., according to three-year report by the Energy Department’s five laboratories. The amount of energy savings would depend on the price of new energy technologies and how aggressively the feds promoted efficiency in buildings, factories, […]

Riding Alone in My Automobile

The average American is spending about 36 hours a year in traffic, up from 11 hours in 1982, according to a study released today by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. Based on 1999 data, the most recent year for which such figures were available, the report found that the average Los Angeles […]

Royal, Copenhagen

Officials in Copenhagen, Denmark, helped to inaugurate the world’s largest offshore windmill park this month. The park has a capacity of 40 megawatts of electricity — four times more than the second-largest offshore windmill park in Sweden — and will supply about 3 percent of the city’s energy, powering the equivalent of 32,000 homes. In […]