Articles by Grist staff

Amazon.Gone

The Amazon rainforest will be cleared within 80 years if multinational companies continue to log at the current rate, Greenpeace warned yesterday in its annual report. Illegal commercial logging is responsible for 80 percent of the trees that are taken from the forest each year, and most of the profit from sale of the timber […]

Flaky Tuna Rules!

A coalition of environmental groups plans to file suit today against the feds, seeking to overturn what they see as a weakening of labeling standards for “dolphin-safe” tuna. In April, the U.S. government expanded the number of fishing methods that qualify as dolphin-safe, including one called encirclement, a previously banned method that involves closing in […]

All They Hate is Dust in the Wind

Leaders from Los Angeles and California’s Owens Valley today will sign an agreement to resolve a bitter, long-running dispute over water and dust. In 1913, a Los Angeles-bound aqueduct began diverting water from the Owens River, causing Owens Lake to dry up. The dried sediments cause severe dust storms and give Owens Valley the worst […]

Finders Keepers, Polluters Weepers

Citizens across the U.S. have formed 35 “water keeper” programs, in which volunteers monitor pollution in rivers, bays, and channels and along coastlines, working to boost enforcement of environmental laws. The Clean Water Act empowers citizens to bring legal actions against polluters when local, state, and federal governments do not. The keeper programs are modeled […]