Articles by Grist staff

Putin on the Fritz

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday abolished the nation’s environmental protection agency, the State Committee on the Environment, ostensibly to help save money and cut bureaucracy. The agency’s functions will be turned over to the Ministry on Natural Resources, which oversees oil and gas development, logging, and mining. Putin has made it clear that he […]

Court and Spark

The U.S. Supreme Court set the stage yesterday for a landmark environmental ruling by announcing its decision to hear a case that will determine whether the government went too far in 1997 in setting tough national clean-air standards. Last year, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., invalidated EPA standards that could have forced a […]

Going Smog Wild

More than 132 million Americans live in areas that ought to receive a flunking grade for their dangerously high smog levels, according to an American Lung Association report released today. The report graded metropolitan areas based on the number of days they had unhealthy smog levels in 1996, 1997, and 1998, the most recent years […]

They Otter Be Ashamed

Sea otters in Alaska’s Prince William Sound have experienced long-term negative effects from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In some areas polluted by the spill, otter densities are now about half what they were before the accident. Much of the apparent […]