Articles by Grist staff

Back Scratch Fever

The Senate is packing the Interior Department spending bill with measures to benefit oil, gas, timber, mining, and ranching interests. Riders would let oil companies keep hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties owed to the public, miners dump thousands of tons of waste on federal lands, timber companies log more of Alaska’s forests, and […]

Belgium Waffles on Nukes

A plan to gradually eliminate nuclear power in Belgium is threatening the nation’s fledgling government — an alliance between Liberal, Socialist, and Green parties — before it even takes office. Meanwhile, an internal battle is raging in Germany’s Green Party, with younger members who favor free markets and less regulation railing against older, more leftist […]

Yucky Truckies

Government regulators are planning to clamp down on diesel trucks, buses, and other vehicles, which make up only 2.5 percent of vehicles on the road but account for 26 percent of nitrogen oxides and up to 70 percent of soot in urban air. Federal rules permit diesel vehicles to emit much more pollution than standard […]

Stop Your Blubbering

Norway, which since 1986 has flouted an international ban on commercial whaling, has stockpiled about 500 tons of blubber from thousands of minke whales, which it hopes to someday sell to the Japanese. The Japanese consider the blubber to be a delicacy, but its sale abroad is outlawed by the Convention on International Trade in […]