Articles by Grist staff

Gray whale killed by Makah tribe members in surprise hunt

Photo: bbum A gray whale was harpooned off the coast of Washington state this weekend in a surprise hunt by members of the Makah tribe. The tribe does have hard-won treaty rights to conduct whale hunts, but this weekend’s kill was not sanctioned since the tribe has not yet succeeded in obtaining a necessary waiver […]

U.S. study says two-thirds of polar bears will be gone by 2050

The U.S. Geological Survey released a grim study of polar bears on Friday, concluding that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will be gone by 2050. Polar bears in Alaska and other areas outside the very far north will be most out of luck, according to the study; it forecasts that precisely zero polar bears […]

Enter a climate video contest, win a Toyota hybrid

Watch this short eco-video, then make one of your own and enter it in the Ecospot Contest.

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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.