Articles by Grist staff

All Roads Lead to Rome — Except on Wednesdays

Starting tomorrow, Rome’s historic center will be off-limits for six hours each Wednesday to vehicles without catalytic converters, city officials said on Monday. The ban, aimed at reducing levels of toxic benzene, is expected to affect about 1 million cars. Starting August 31, 2000, all of Rome will be closed to cars without the pollution-filtering […]

Wind-Win Situation

Ten percent of the world’s electricity could come from wind by 2020, up from just 0.15 percent today, if governments make development of wind capacity a priority, according to a new report released by Greenpeace International, the European Wind Energy Association, and the Denmark-based Forum for Energy and Development. Wind power grew by an average […]

Snailed to the Wall

Freshwater species in North America are vanishing from lakes and rivers at the same startling rate as species in tropical rainforests, according to a new study published in the journal Conservation Biology. Widespread habitat destruction has already caused at least 123 freshwater species to go extinct this century, and surviving species are expected to disappear […]

Dumb-Dumb Bullets

The U.S. military used depleted uranium (DU) bullets, which are made of low-level nuclear waste material and which leave toxic and radioactive debris, as it chased Serbian forces from Kosovo. But the Pentagon won’t talk about how much DU ammunition was fired and has issued no warning to the people who live in Kosovo. DU […]