Articles by Grist staff

A Trader to Their Cause

Several U.S. corporations are doing an about-face: To get Democrats in Congress to stop holding up free-trade agreements, some representatives of Big Business are abandoning their long-held opposition to linking free trade with environmental and labor standards. For example, Caterpillar CEO Glen Barton said in a letter last month to the Clinton administration that the […]

Trash Talking

The first piece of legislation signed by Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo requires local governments to reduce waste disposal by 25 percent across the county in five years, mostly through re-use, recycling, and composting. Macapagal, who came into office the same day as U.S. President Bush, said, “I am told no other country in the world […]

Up Sheet Creek

The middle of the West Antarctic ice sheet — one of the world’s largest collections of water — is shrinking and could contribute to a dramatic rise in global sea levels, according to a study published in the journal Science. The researchers found that part of the ice sheet, the Pine Island Glacier, thinned by […]

Aaaay, It's the Fronds!

A common fern can thrive on big amounts of arsenic and could possibly be put to use soaking up arsenic from contaminated land and water, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. The fern, a nonnative plant that grows in the Southeastern U.S. and California, is the first known plant to do […]