Articles by Grist staff

40 Acres and a Stubborn Mule Named Lloyd

Environmentalists praised a Supreme Court decision yesterday to let stand a ruling that makes it more difficult for landowners to get compensated when government regulations prevent them from developing their land. Lloyd Good owns 40 acres in Florida, primarily wetlands, and had wanted to build a luxury waterfront development on the land. When federal officials […]

Halt! U'wa Goes There!

A Colombian court last week ordered Occidental Petroleum Corp. to halt temporarily all work on a large oil drilling project in a rainforest area that the native U’wa tribe claims as ancestral land. The court ruled that the U’wa had not been properly consulted about the development. Occidental and its partner in the project, the […]

Magic Beans

Coffee roasters and importers met with environmentalists and other groups last week and agreed to develop a labeling system for Mexican coffee that would assure consumers that the beans have been grown in an environmentally conscious way and that the growers have been treated well and paid a fair price for their work. The new […]

All the Dams That Are Fit to Breach

An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times urged the federal government to protect threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead species by breaching four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state. Most scientists believe that breaching would be the most effective step to help the salmon, the newspaper argues, and the economic fallout would […]