Articles by Grist staff

A second dispatch from the sea

Mary Pearl is the president of Wildlife Trust, cofounder of its Consortium for Conservation Medicine, and an adjunct research scientist at Columbia University. This week, she's traveling in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador with a boat full of scientists, conservationists, and business leaders to forge partnerships and develop solutions to the global freshwater crisis. This is the second of her dispatches from the journey. See her first dispatch here.

Our first afternoon hike was spectacular: an extravaganza of lovesick blue-footed boobies and vermillion-throated magnificent frigate birds displaying to potential mates on North Seymour Island. The sea lions were strewn like boulders on the beach, except for the pups, who either raced around in rough-and-tumble play, or inched up to inspect human beings with their big eyes and little, whiskery snouts.

The next morning, Manu Lall spoke to us about water after we re-boarded the Isabella II fresh from swimming and snorkeling at Gardner Bay at Espanola Island. Manu is a professor of engineering and hydrology at Columbia, and his assignment was to present the current state of the world's water. He started off with this startling statement: If water use continues as it is today, we can expect a catastrophe somewhere between 2026 and 2050.

The action agenda for addressing climate change, a synergy of science and political activism, is to find solutions before a climate crisis overwhelms us and leads to irreversible damage, he told us. The time scale is in decades. But here we are with water crises looming even closer, a subject about which there is relatively little research and even less dialogue.

Ducked Ape

East African gorillas make a comeback Good news, ape fans: thanks to conservation efforts, East Africa’s mountain gorillas are eking their way toward not-endangeredness, at least in one national park. While still threatened by war, poaching, and habitat loss, an encouraging 340 mountain gorillas have found Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park at least penetrable […]

Look At Me, I’m Cassandra Dee

McCain comes out singing on global warming and energy Karl Rove might think global warming is the province of shrill Hollywood harpies, but John McCain knows better. In a speech Monday ahead of his expected entry into the presidential race tomorrow, the Arizona senator termed global warming “a serious and urgent economic, environmental, and national-security […]

But By All Means, Keep Filling Your Tank

Gunmen attack Ethiopian oil field run by Chinese company A story unfolding at press time gives a taste of that global energy-security issue everyone’s worried about: according to news reports, gunmen attacked an oil field in eastern Ethiopia run by a Chinese company, killing 65 local workers and nine Chinese workers, and taking seven Chinese […]