Articles by Grist staff

Dirt Poor

Some 60 percent of the hillside areas in Central America and the Andean region of South America show signs of serious soil erosion, according to a new report by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Cali, Colombia. Tropical hillsides, which comprise 9 percent of the world’s landmass, lose 13 billion tons of […]

Platforms, Shoo

Oil companies are looking to save millions of dollars in costs by leaving oil platform towers in place in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast to serve as artificial reefs instead of paying to remove them, as required under state and federal law. California state Sen. Dede Alpert (D) is sponsoring a bill that […]

Ted's Bill: Bogus

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) is stirring up trouble again with a rider attached to an appropriations bill that would exempt Alaska salmon fishing from the Endangered Species Act. The Clinton administration has threatened to veto the bill over the rider, a move that could jeopardize not only the Columbia River chinook stocks that migrate […]

Schroeder Plays a New Song

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder opened the fifth U.N. World Climate Conference yesterday in Bonn, Germany, with an unexpected call to developed nations to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change by 2002. Thus far, only 14 countries, most of them developing, small island nations already threatened by rising sea levels, have ratified the treaty, which […]