Articles by Grist staff
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Timber Feast, Salmon Famine?
Washington state may set a national precedent by passing a 50-year deal between the state and private forest owners that would grant tax relief to timber companies while tightening logging rules near salmon streams. The plan, being pushed through the state legislature this week, is part of Washington Gov. Gary Locke’s (D) salmon-recovery effort. The […]
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A review of 'Watching, from the Edge of Extinction'
Cynthia Salley makes an unlikely hero for an environmental fable. A Hawaiian cattle rancher, Salley has tussled for years with the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an endangered species on her property. Yet the authors of Watching, from the Edge of Extinction credit her with saving the 'Alala, or Hawaiian crow.
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A review of 'Earth Odyssey' by Mark Hertsgaard
Will humans survive the environmental degradation we've loosed on the world, or will we drive ourselves to extinction alongside countless other species? Mark Hertsgaard sets forth to explore this question in his wide-ranging book Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future, and while he does not arrive at a vision of humanity on the brink of extinction, he presents a sobering portrait of problems present and impending.
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A review of 'Song of the Meadowlark' by James Eggert
In this gentle and disjointed collection of essays, economist James Eggert pushes his quantitative impulses aside and puts his ecological consciousness front and center. A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, he argues in Song of the Meadowlark: Exploring Values for a Sustainable Future that classical economic values should play second fiddle to what he terms "meadowlark values," or priorities that esteem the natural world over indiscriminate growth. Eggert propounds that along with environmental impact statements, we as a society conduct "grandchild impact statements" to evaluate how our actions will affect the quality of life for generations to come.