Articles by Grist staff

The Father, the Sun, and the Holy Spirit

A number of churches and city governments in California and other spots around the U.S. are leading the push for clean energy by powering their houses of worship and city halls with solar, wind, and other renewable sources. Twenty-five Episcopal churches in California have switched to green power, as have Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant groups […]

The Perfect Ploy

Environmentalists are trying to parlay the box-office success of the “The Perfect Storm,” a movie that follows the ill-fated voyage of a commercial fishing boat, into increased awareness of the depleted swordfish population in the Atlantic. SeaWeb, a conservation group running a public education campaign centered on the film, says too many swordfish are being […]

Simply Grand

Thousands of Californians are embracing a new state program that gives residents $1,000 to junk cars and trucks that fail to meet emission standards. The program, launched July 7, aims to take 50,000 polluting clunkers off the roads over the next four years. Residents can alternatively get up to $500 to make repairs that will […]

Gobi, Gobi, Gone

High prices for cashmere made from the wool of goats is leading in part to overgrazing of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. In the last decade, the number of livestock in Mongolia jumped more than 30 percent, and the number of herders rose by 300 percent, to about 440,000. Many of the newcomers to the […]