Articles by Grist staff

Getting Into Chip Shape

Semiconductor manufacturers have reached a voluntary agreement with the U.S. EPA to reduce the use of chemicals that contribute to global warming. The industry cleans equipment and makes silicon wafers using perfluorocompounds, which are 10,000 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat and last in the atmosphere for 2,000 to 50,000 years. Under […]

Spilling Me Softly

Salmon are suffering as the West feels the squeeze of California’s energy crisis and the second-worst drought since 1929. Operators of federal dams are being forced to choose between using water to generate hydropower or spilling it downstream to support salmon. The Bonneville Power Administration announced last week that salmon recovery programs on the Columbia […]

Songbird Sings the Blues

Some animals facing extinction aren’t being helped by the Endangered Species Act thanks to a decision last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to place a moratorium on protecting new species. The service said it had to impose the freeze because it was too busy and short on cash from dealing with lawsuits […]

For the Love of the Lamb

What’s a conservationist to do when the biggest threat to the survival of a species is another rare species? In California’s eastern Sierra Nevada, endangered bighorn sheep could be pushed to extinction by the threatened mountain lions that like to eat them. Not all mountain lions have a taste for mutton — champions of the […]