Articles by Grist staff

Why Be Normal?

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) will oppose granting China permanent normal trade relations, arguing that a trade deal with the country needs to encompass greater protections for the environment, human rights, and organized labor. Gephardt’s decision, which he is set to announce tomorrow, is a big setback for the Clinton-Gore administration, which has made […]

Captain's Courageous

Enviros and human rights activists are celebrating after Russia’s Supreme Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s acquittal of anti-nuclear activist Alexander Nikitin, who had been accused of revealing state secrets while working with a Norwegian environmental group. Nikitin, a former navy captain, was arrested in 1996 for writing a report about Soviet nuclear submarine accidents […]

Ivory Illiquid

In a victory for conservation groups, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe yesterday withdrew controversial proposals to expand international trade in ivory. In a compromise deal reached at a meeting of the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, delegates agreed that ivory sales will be delayed for at least two years, until a […]

West Virginia, Mountain Maim-ah

The Clinton-Gore administration disappointed some enviros yesterday as it made official for the first time its position on mountaintop-removal mining, a controversial technique used in West Virginia. A federal judge ruled last year that the mining technique, in which the tops of mountains are blasted off to get at coal deposits and the debris is […]