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Piscean Match

Fishing industry, USDA square off over definition of organic fish What makes a fish organic? That query has the U.S. Agriculture Department swimming in circles as it fleshes out a new organic rule. Is wild-caught fish the purest, or is closely monitored farm-raised fish the better option? If the latter, does it matter if the […]

Finally, a racy calendar with a purpose

The second best thing about this effort is that in the event their Climate Protection Campaign doesn't work out, they already have a leg up on adaptation.

Nice work, PETA

I differ strongly with those who argue that environmentalism should embrace the animal rights agenda, but extensive discussions here suggest that this story may be of more than passing interest. This account of how the AR program to stop animal testing may have gone badly awry may also help explain some of the reasons why environmentalism should try to maintain a respectful distance from other causes, however virtuous or pressing they may seem.

"Few rules and fewer protesters draw animal testing to China," by Jehangir S. Pocha (originally in the Boston Globe), discusses Bridge Pharmaceuticals, a San Francisco-based company that is outsourcing animal testing to China, where -- as a recent article in Forbes (also written by Pocha) described it -- "scientists are cheap, lap animals are plentiful and animal-rights protestors are kept at bay, muzzled by an authoritarian state."

Bridge CEO Glenn Rice said the company's Beijing facilities were designed to meet U.S. standards on animal care, and it anticipates receiving USDA certification by year-end. He was clear, moreover, about the main reason why moving testing to China makes economic sense:

The problem of fish

Organic agriculture has always walked a tricky line between the aspirations of a positive ecological movement and the real difficulties of trying to define what makes for good agricultural practices. Noticeably absent have been workers rights and energy use -- and the organic rules surrounding animal agriculture are weak.

Now the limits of organic are being reached.

A nice New Yorker piece

Catching up on a month's backlog of reading, I came across an excellent piece on water shortages by Michael Specter, a former colleague of mine who writes on science and public health issues. It's called "The Last Drop: Confronting the possibility of a global catastrophe," in the 23 October issue of the New Yorker.

Specter opens the article by introducing us to Shoba, a young mother living with her husband and five children in Kesum Purbahari, a New Delhi slum, where women with buckets and pails line up at dawn to wait for a tanker truck carrying water. Everyone knows that to drink the thick, brown water from the community standpipe is to risk serious illness or even death. Some days, the tanker doesn't come.

India, with 20% of global population, receives only 4% of the world's annual supply of fresh water. India's groundwater aquifers are quickly disappearing from over-pumping.

Even in prosperous neighborhoods of cities like Delhi and Mumbai, water is available for just a few hours a day -- and often only as a brown and sludgy trickle -- forcing millions of middle class Indians to stumble out of bed at three or four in the morning to turn on their taps.

Big energy begs for climate rules, bottom-trawling ban fails, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another Nothing New Under the Sea For Every Action, There’s a Reactor You Give Hubris a Glad Name OSHA, No He Didn’t One Good Deed Reserves Another Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Live and […]

Skiing, soccer, and motor racing, oh my!

Goodness. Sometimes this dashing (lovely?) sportswriter must resort to reeeally stretching to make a sports-environment connection; sometimes, the eco-athletics news springs up faster than you can, um, [insert your sports analogy of choice here].

What is it good for?

Whether we're addicted to heroin or hallucinogens, romance or righteousness, our addictions are resolved as we seek, in fellowship with others, to abandon our control-based mentality, and to develop our capacities for personal humility, indiscriminate compassion, and responsible participation in the many layers of community in which we are nested.

I like that quote from this short but suggestive piece in Orion by Roget Lockard. It's about addiction in general and addiction to righteousness specifically.

On righteousness, every progressive and every green would well heed these words:

SCOTUS should split the difference on GHG regs

Somewhat contra Andrew, I think the approaching Supreme Court case will be significant, and not just as a symbolic way to keep global warming in the headlines.

To me, the ideal outcome would be precisely the split decision alluded to by David Savage in the L.A. Times piece Kit mentioned. That is, I hope SCOTUS rules that the EPA can regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act, but that it is not required to.

Humpback whales have ‘human-like’ brain cells

New discoveries point to the presence of more complex forms of brain cells in Humpback whales, which might explain their high levels of intelligence.