Articles by Grist staff

European Union unveils detailed plans to cut GHG emissions

European Union leaders today unveiled detailed draft plans to reduce E.U.-wide emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The plans would require utilities to buy all of their greenhouse-gas emissions permits beginning in 2013, as opposed to the current practice of allocating nearly all of them for free, which companies can then sell at […]

Green films premiering at Sundance Film Festival

If you’re a super-hip journalist with awesome connections and a sweet gig, you’re spending a cush week writing about the Sundance Film Festival from snow- and celeb-covered Park City, Utah. If you’re me, you’re sitting in front of a computer screen in an office building in Seattle reading about all the super-hip journalists with the […]

China will close thousands of small coal mines

China plans to close more than 5,000 small coal mines, accounting for about 8 percent of the country’s coal output, for safety reasons. Some 4,750 people died in China’s mines in 2006.

Erosion is as big a problem as climate change, say experts

Planet Earth loses some 1 percent of its topsoil to erosion every year — and that’s an environmental threat on par with global warming, say experts. “Globally, it’s pretty clear we’re running out of dirt,” says geologist David Montgomery, who identifies agriculture as the main culprit for “soil mining.” In the U.S., cropland is estimated […]