Grist

The quiet push to shield pesticide makers from lawsuits

Louisiana lawmakers rush to support an industry they ‘do not know a lot about’

The World Cup is one wildfire away from an air quality disaster

Becoming a farmer is hard. This Michigan program wants to help.

Why are so many Democrats going quiet on climate change?

Federal agency to open tens of thousands of acres of Colorado wilderness to oil drilling

Trump uses wartime powers to dole out $700 million to ‘clean, beautiful’ coal

And other words from readers

A number of the following comments on campaign 2000 and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader are responses to a set of letters published previously. Dear Editor: I read all the letters posted on the Nader-Gore-Bush debate. I had planned to vote for Ralph Nader, but with the benefit of so many other perspectives, I […]

Pounding the Pavement

3 million — number of acres of open space developed each year in the U.S. 40 — percentage increase in acreage of developed land in the U.S. between 1982 and 1997 1891 — year in which the first road was paved in the U.S. 2.4 million — number of miles of paved public roads in […]

And other words from readers

Dear Editor: I’m a little concerned with the pressure environmental groups are putting on less developed countries (whose standards of living are below those of the U.S.) to halt what many in these countries might see as improvements in their daily lives. I say this mainly because many people living in these areas look to […]

Shalini Ramanathan, Global Village of Beijing

Shalini Ramanathan works with Global Village of Beijing, a Chinese environmental group. Previously, she was international coordinator of the Earth Day 2000 campaign, based in Seattle, Wash. Monday, 14 Aug 2000 BEIJING, China Today, I sent two faxes to a UN office in Washington, D.C. If that doesn’t sound like a major accomplishment to you, […]

Elizabeth May, Sierra Club of Canada

Elizabeth May is the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada and a lifelong environmental activist. She is also a lawyer, educator, writer, and mother. Her most recent book, coauthored with fellow Canadian activist Maude Barlow, is Frederick Street: Life and Death on Canada’s Love Canal. Monday, 7 Aug 2000 OTTAWA, Ontario Today, being […]

Danny Kennedy, Project Underground

Danny Kennedy is the director of Project Underground, a Berkeley-based human rights and environmental organization which he helped to found in 1996. He is also a husband and a happy new father of a beautiful, bouncing baby girl. Monday, 17 Jul 2000 BERKELEY, Calif. Monday is a day I look forward to, not because I […]

I've Got Good News, and I've Got Bad News

In the spirit of celebrating every success, but only to the extent the success deserves, I would like to celebrate something that is kind of hard to describe. The rate at which things are getting worse is slowing down. We’re not going downhill as fast as we once were. The fever is high, but rising […]

And other words from readers

Grist readers are mighty opinionated when it comes to Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader. You’ve been flooding our mailbox with letters responding to Donella Meadows’s column on why she plans to vote for Nader, as well as a follow-up column she wrote on the topic, an item on Nader in our Muckraker column, and […]

And other words from readers

Re: Won’t You Be My Nader? Dear Editor: I am disappointed to hear that Donella Meadows plans to vote for Ralph Nader and is encouraging her readers to do the same. While I agree that he is more committed to environmental issues than Al Gore, voting for Gore is, in Meadows’s own words, “the undeniably […]

Hannah Stewart, Aquarius Underwater Laboratory

Hannah Stewart is the controlled flow environment specialist on the mission at Aquarius, where a team of six aquanauts will spend nine days in the underwater laboratory 63 feet below the ocean’s surface in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Friday, 16 Jun 2000 CONCH REEF, Fla CONCH REEF, Fla. We got a bit of a […]

Micheal Phillips, Aquarius Underwater Laboratory

Michael Phillips is a scuba technician and archaeological diver for Tidewater Atlantic Research in Washington, N.C. He is the operations and communications specialist at Aquarius, where a team of six aquanauts will spend nine days in the underwater laboratory 63 feet below the ocean’s surface in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Thursday, 15 Jun 2000 […]

It's Report-Card Time

The timing is unbearable. Here on my desk in the middle of the blooming, buzzing month of May is the best report yet on the state of the world’s ecosystems. Best not because it contains good news — it doesn’t — but because it’s short and clear and blunt. The report evaluates the health of […]

And other words from readers

Re: Lean and Green Dear Editor: I read with interest your story on the family in Colorado that made the choice to live more simply and consume less in an effort to improve their quality of life and lessen their impact on the environment. I fully endorse the idea of simplifying one’s life, spending less, […]

Bean Counting

3,300 — number of cups of coffee that are consumed each second worldwide 6.3 million — metric tons of coffee produced in the world in the 1999-2000 crop year 25 million — number of farmers who grow coffee worldwide, the majority on small-scale farms 600-800 AD — the era in which an Ethiopian goat herder […]

Fool's Gold

125,000 metric tons — estimated amount of gold mined worldwide since historical times 2,500 metric tons — amount of gold mined worldwide in 1998 360 cubic feet — amount of waste rock removed in order to produce enough gold to make an average pair of gold wedding bands 31 — number of fatalities in gold […]

Gas 'n' Uh-oh

40 percent — petroleum’s share of global energy consumed in 1998 $246 — amount spent by the author on gasoline to drive a 1987 Honda Accord 5,700 miles on a cross-country road trip from Feb. 15 to March 15, 2000 $433 — estimated amount the author would have spent if he had driven a new […]

Let's Look Before We Leap into Biotech

Biotech stocks plummeted last week as President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair requested that companies make their data on the human genome public. Private firms are racing madly to read and patent the genetic code that makes you you and me me. They are trying to beat publicly funded labs, which are required […]

Make Mine Manure-Covered

Re: Food for Thought Dear Editor: As a fan of organic produce and a local newspaper editor, I appreciated Donella Meadows’s article. She does a great job of rounding up and then refuting the stale critique of organic produce offered by Dennis Avery and his ilk. We need more articles like this in the mainstream […]

This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land

Last week the Vermont Environmental Board denied a permit to a developer for a project in Hartland. It was a typical interstate-exit gas-and-food stop — the kind of place no one likes to look at but we’re all glad to find when we’re on a long trip and running low on fuel. Hartland’s I-91 exit […]

Amelie Van Den Bos, Global Village of Beijing

Amelie Van Den Bos is program coordinator for Global Village of Beijing (GVB), and she is helping to organize Earth Day 2000 in China. Monday, 28 Feb 2000 BEIJING, China This week Global Village of Beijing (GVB) is fortunate to have Denis Hayes, chairman of the Earth Day Network, as a guest. GVB is a […]

Notes on the Underground

The February issue of Scientific American tells of a new technology that makes me both rejoice and worry. It looks so great, so likely to relieve a massive environmental problem that there’s no way I could oppose it. But on second, third, and fourth thought, I have some doubts. The technology is called carbon sequestration. […]

Dead in the Water

Here’s a story of the global economy at its worst and maybe also at its best. Early this month a cry of alarm came over email from my friend Zoltan Lontay in Hungary. The Hungarian news had just announced an enormous fish kill in the Szamos river on that country’s eastern border. A wave of […]

Oh, We Got Trouble -- With a Capital T and That Rhymes with P and That Stands for Population

Re: Daily Grist Dear Editor: What a great magazine! Now that I subscribe to the Daily Gist, I clutch my cuppa java as I pass through your cloud of gloom. Better gloom than darkness. However, I’m mystified that we don’t hear more about the big P — population. Why? All these summits, all this talk […]