Articles by Grist staff

Fisheries Service releases yet another Northwest salmon recovery plan

The third draft of a federal plan for protecting endangered salmon and steelhead in the Northwest’s Columbia and Snake Rivers does not propose breaching the four hydroelectric dams that block the waterways, frustrating activists who have long lobbied for the dams’ removal. The National Marine Fisheries Service says the plan for helping the salmon is […]

U.S. House passes groundbreaking mining bill

The U.S. House of Representatives has, in a fit of sanity, voted to make mining companies pay royalties on minerals they dig up on public land. By a vote of 244-166, the House approved the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act, which would reform a 135-year-old law that President Ulysses S. Grant signed to encourage development […]

Researchers quantify U.S. wildfire carbon emissions

The estimations are in on the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from Southern California’s recent wildfires. And the winner is … somewhere between about 6 million tons and 8 million tons. Which sounds like a lot, but on average, wildfires in the United States each year spew some 300 million tons of […]

Oxfam warns Europe’s biofuel boom likely to worsen plight of world’s poor

The anti-poverty charity Oxfam said this week that the European Union’s rush to biofuels could hit the world’s poor quite hard. The group released a report about the issue suggesting that without proper controls to make the biofuels boom sustainable and more just, it’s likely to threaten the food supply and provide a large incentive […]