Articles by Grist staff

Men at Work

Australia is chopping down its forests faster than any other industrialized nation and has cleared about 2.5 million acres of trees in three years, the Australian Conservation Foundation said yesterday. Australia is now ranked as the world’s fifth-biggest land-clearing nation, behind only Brazil, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Bolivia. For its part, […]

Farmageddon

Farmers in the U.S., Canada, and Argentina are expected to slash their plantings of genetically modified (GM) crops by 20 to 25 percent this year because of growing uncertainty in the market, the Worldwatch Institute said yesterday. A growing number of food manufacturers and retailers have said they will stop selling foods containing GM ingredients. […]

Why Frogs Croak

After more than a decade of puzzling over what is killing off frog species around the world, scientists are now postulating that there is no one factor to blame but rather a combination of factors. Contributing problems include pollution, habitat destruction, the introduction of non-native species, crop fertilizers that cause high concentrations of toxic nitrates, […]

Now We're Really Fed Up

The federal government is polluting the nation’s waterways at a record rate, violating the Clean Water Act six times as often as it did in 1993, and at a higher rate than private companies, according to a new report by the EPA. Nearly four of every 10 federal facilities, primarily those operated by the Defense […]