Articles by Grist staff

Clinton's Ditch

Pres. Clinton signed a bill yesterday designating the nation’s 55th national park, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River in western Colorado, the first national park created in five years. The 30,000-acre area, most of which has been a national monument since 1933, features a canyon just 40 feet across at its narrowest point and […]

Y2 Chaos?

The CIA told Congress yesterday that there’s cause for concern about the Y2K bug compromising the safety of aging Soviet-era nuclear power plants in Russia and Ukraine. The risk of an accident is low, said Lawrence Gershwin of the CIA, but still higher that usual because computer problems could be aggravated by power failures. A […]

Ho Chi Minh-imizing Pollution

Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, plagued by pollution but determined not to be consumed by it like Bangkok, is about to approve a five-year cleanup plan. Some 1,500 large industrial firms and more than 32,000 small industries are based in this city of 7 million, and they don’t filter their emissions. The new plan […]

Oil's Not Well With Gore

Vice Pres. Al Gore today plans to announce that he will ban any new offshore oil and gas drilling along the California and Florida coasts if he is elected, a controversial move that would surely anger oil companies, some of which have already paid $1.2 billion for drilling rights off California’s coast that would be […]