Articles by Grist staff

A Jury Of Your Pyrrhus

G8 climate deal is failure or triumph, depending whom you ask Welcome to another installment of “Days of Our G8 Lives.” Yesterday, the G8 agreed to a climate deal it’s been fine-tuning for weeks. It notably did not commit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 50 percent by 2050, but it […]

The Whine of the Motor

Big Auto pleads for smaller gains in fuel efficiency The heads of Ford, GM, and Chrysler returned to Washington, D.C., yesterday to try to convince Congress not to hike fuel economy standards. Next week, the Senate will consider a proposal to raise average fleet-wide mileage to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 from the current […]

Clean Water Is Highly Overrated

Bush administration limits reach of Clean Water Act If you assumed the federal Clean Water Act should apply to all bodies of water in the U.S., well, you have made an ass out of u and me. The Bush administration unveiled guidelines this week that say only bodies of water large enough to float a […]

Beak Squad

Bird biologists are increasingly like hospice workers The sorry state of many of the world’s bird species — like vultures in Southeast Asia and northern spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest — is turning wildlife biologists into virtual hospice workers: they come to know and care for their patients, but can do little to stop […]