Articles by Grist staff

Soylent Bean

Brazil is in the process of deciding whether to allow the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops, and many observers believe that its decision could play a big role in determining the future of GM technology worldwide. The U.S., Brazil, and Argentina together grow 80 percent of the world’s soybeans, a crop used in countless […]

U'wa Ta Shame

A court in Colombia gave the go-ahead yesterday to Occidental Petroleum to drill for oil on rainforest land claimed by the U’wa indigenous tribe, overturning an earlier court decision that had suspended drilling in response to a petition from the U’wa. Work on construction of an exploratory drilling site is expected to resume immediately. The […]

Keeping Pollution at Bei-jing

A small but increasing number of Chinese citizens are filing lawsuits seeking compensation for the effects of pollution, some of them with help from a recently opened legal-aid center in Beijing, the first such center in the nation to focus on pollution. Many of these cases involve severe river pollution, which kills fish and farm […]

Man Oh Manatee

Manatees in Florida’s waters are dying at a record rate, causing concern that the state’s small population of the marine mammals may be in trouble. One hundred manatees died in the first three months of this year, including 32 killed by powerboats, compared with 80 total deaths during the same period in 1999. In other […]