Grist List

Can barcodes enforce sustainable logging in Liberia?

Liberia, semi-miraculously, is still covered in rainforest, even though at one point in its history, warlord Charles Taylor was more or less giving arms traffickers logging tracts in exchange for weapons. The U.N. eventually noticed this problem and ended up saving the country's forests by putting an embargo on the country's "logs of war.” But […]

Sarah Laskow Technology

What to do about ‘plastic soup’ in the ocean

Is there a less appetizing phrase than “plastic soup”? (Don’t answer that.) The New York Times Green blog reports on what happens to plastic in the oceans — it turns into a soup of seawater and plastic particles — and what we can do about it. The answer, basically: Try to stop putting so much […]

Jess Zimmerman Health

Critical List: Tornado hits Joplin, Missouri; Chicago preps for climate change

A half-mile wide tornado leveled a Missouri town. And another volcano in Iceland poured ash into the sky. Cut it out, nature, we get it: you don't like airplanes. In Chicago, government officials not only believe in climate change, they are preparing the city for a steamier future. Local officials have been leading on adaptation […]

Sarah Laskow Technology

Watch a train run over a market (Everyone’s fine! They do this every day!)

Talk about dense living! At the Maeklong vegetable market in Thailand, retail and transportation are closely connected — like, really closely. The vendors lay out their wares so close to the train tracks that when the train comes through, it's literally sitting on top of the produce. Everyone just sort of puts up their awnings […]

Jess Zimmerman Cities

U.S. marines save lives by ditching bottled water

You probably already know that bottled water is kind of the worst thing ever, but did you know it's getting people in supply convoys blown up? Like other heavy, bulky things our troops have to truck in (primarily fuel), bottled water makes Marines vulnerable to attack by improvised explosives. They don’t even have the luxury […]

Christopher Mims Health

New, ‘hidden’ source of renewable energy fights for tax breaks

Waste heat: It's everywhere, and we're wasting it. (Hence the name.) Giant industrial processes throw off enormous amounts of the stuff, all of it not quite hot enough to be usable in conventional power generation. That's where the waste heat industry comes in. Using liquids that boil at temperatures significantly lower than water, they've created […]

Christopher Mims Energy

Three Gorges Dam has serious issues, China admits

When a country commits to any project as monstrous as China's Three Gorges Dam, it is bound to encounter occasional difficulties. The Chinese government, as governments are wont to do, has preferred to gloss over the dam's detriments and emphasize its attributes, like the 84 billion kilowatt hours of electricity it produced last year. But […]

Sarah Laskow Buildings

Denmark’s government throws down the gauntlet: 100 percent renewables by 2050

Lots of people talk about the possibility of getting to 100 percent renewables by such and such a date — if every one of these reports came true, we'd be exporting surplus wind power to the asteroid belt by now. But few countries are actually doing it. Denmark is one. And Denmark would like you […]