Articles by Grist staff

Rev. Allen Johnson calls on churches to condemn mountaintop-removal mining

This is a guest post from Rev. Allen Johnson, whom we interviewed last year as part of our God & the Environment series. Johnson heads Christians for the Mountains, a group fighting to protect the Appalachians from mountaintop-removal mining. This post is reprinted with permission from the Moyers Blog.

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On August 22, The New York Times published an article that began, "The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday [August 24] that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal."

Enshrine? An oddly appropriate word, I thought -- a biblical word, even. A place where dwell the gods; in this case, the gods of money, comfort, and power.

For over two years I have been involved with a network organization, Christians for the Mountains, to engage Christians and their churches to take on the moral question of mountaintop removal. The massive scale of beheading coal-bearing mountains, obliterating headwater streams, and building multi-billion-gallon toxic slurry impoundments begs biblical and theological activity.

Bush administration will propose quicker deadline for phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals

Nearly 200 nations will gather on Sept. 15 to discuss the Montreal Protocol, a 20-year-old treaty put into place to phase out the nasty chemicals that contribute to the thinning of the ozone layer. At the meeting, a dozen countries plan to suggest that participating nations move up the deadline for a full phaseout of […]

Bush makes gaffes at APEC gathering, forum may set weak voluntary targets

In Sydney, Australia, today at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, U.S. President George Bush referred to APEC as OPEC, then tried to cover up his gaffe by explaining that Australia’s prime minister had invited him to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries next year. Unfortunately, Australia has never been part of […]

Al Gore will pen a solutions-focused sequel

Al Gore is writing another book — and you can bet that climate change is shakin’ in its boots. The Path to Survival, a solutions-focused sequel to the groundbreaking Inconvenient Truth, is slated to hit shelves on Earth Day 2008. (Where was that impeccable timing when you were campaigning, Al?) Billed as “part scientific manual, […]