Uncategorized
All Stories
-
Woodward’s new book is terrifying
From Woodward's new book:
During a meeting in the Oval Office, according to Woodward, Bush personally thanked Bandar because the Saudis had flooded the world oil market and kept prices down in the run-up to the 2004 general election.
-
A Grist special series
Environmentalists and their politically progressive allies have long dismissed conservative evangelical Christians as repressive moralists and industry apologists. The suspicion and hostility are mutual: evangelicals see environmentalists as godless, anti-human pagans and socialists. Not exactly a match made in heaven. But relations are slowly thawing — in part thanks to, well, thawing. As glaciers and […]
-
To Catch a Leaf
FBI raids companies linked to E. coli-tainted spinach Federal agents raided two produce plants in Salinas Valley, Calif., yesterday, as part of a criminal investigation into whether they violated food-safety and environmental laws in distributing E. coli-tainted spinach. The FBI and the Food and Drug Administration executed search warrants for the plants operated by Natural […]
-
White House supports bottom trawling ban
I seem to be developing a habit of writing pro-Bush posts here (see this one and this one), but doggonnit, Bush is developing a habit of making pro-conservation ocean policies.
On Tuesday, the White House issued a statement calling for a halt to destructive bottom trawling on the high seas and promised that the U.S. "would work with other nations and international groups to change fishing practices and create international fishery regulatory groups if needed." See -- who said the White House doesn't play nice with other countries? Oh right, lots of people.
-
Really
I'm in the last throes of getting camera and dive gear ready for a longish trip and a million other things, but I had to make the effort to let Gristmates know about this bit of news. This has been a contested issue -- up to now, at least. Perhaps now we can move on towards finding ways to protect wild salmon from the dangers posed by farming instead of arguing about whether those risks are real. They are.
-
Rethinking ‘overpopulation’
"Overpopulation" is one of them. "Gay" is another. You can insist on calling yourself gay out of a stubborn refusal to let language evolve, but unless you are gay, you will be giving a lot of people the wrong impression.
The word "overpopulation" (which remains vague and poorly defined) has fallen out of favor and is rarely used in polite company. We can thank, at least in part, those who called for an increase in death rates and draconian restrictions on childbirth for that. They provided the fuel needed by hatemongers like Ann Coulter to make comments like, "We believe in populating the earth until there's standing room only, and then colonizing Mars."
It has also been interesting to watch, over the last 30 years, organizations like ZPG change their names (Population Connection) and evolve into, basically, women's reproductive-rights organizations, joining ranks with NARAL, NOW, and Planned Parenthood. Having won the struggle for lower fertility rates, these organizations now fight a running battle to protect past gains. Read this article from the Associated Press to see how well that battle is going:
Abortion access in many states is being curtailed, activists are uncertain about the stance of the U.S. Supreme Court, and South Dakotans vote Nov. 7 on a measure that would ban virtually all abortions in their state, even in cases of rape and incest.
Correction: The original post said that NPG [not ZPG] had changed their name. -
Middlebury’s nordic ski team goes climate neutral
The Middlebury College Nordic Ski Team is starting off the athletic season with a clear conscience. Well aware of how global warming could eliminate their sport altogether, the team is going green to protect the white stuff. After calculating their environmental footprint -- from the eco-costs of travel to the energy used to power coach Andrew Gardner's office -- the skiers decided to go climate neutral.
They've partnered with NativeEnergy, a Native-owned renewable energy company that will use the money from the skiers' offsets to support wind-driven local energy creation.
"NativeEnergy is proud to work with these athletes to help build new renewable energy projects that will help preserve the skiing experience we all enjoy," said NativeEnergy's Thomas Hand, who also happens to be a Middlebury alum and one of my favorite eco-dreamboats.
Update [2006-10-6 14:3:2 by Sarah van Schagen]: I just received an email from Thomas Hand (swoon!) letting me know that the Middlebury Alpine Ski Team has also gone carbon neutral. Here's to a great (eco-conscious) season!
-
Craigslist founder teaches us a lesson
What if everyone in America thought like Craig?
The founder of craigslist, the free social networking and classifieds Web site, said on Thursday he is not interested in selling out, a few hours after social networking site MySpace was valued at $15 billion.
"Who needs the money? We don't really care," Craig Newmark said in an interview at the Picnic '06 Cross Media Week conference here.
"If you're living comfortably, what's the point of having more?" Newmark said. -
A former fisherman responds to David Benton’s Q&A
Following Grist's Q&A with David Benton of the Marine Conservation Alliance, George Pletnikoff -- a former fisherman who now works with Greenpeace -- wrote to respond to some of Benton's points, arguing that the Alaskan fisheries are not quite the model of sustainability.
-----
I read with interest the article about David Benton of the Marine Conservation Alliance. The board and funders of the Marine Conservation Alliance are a veritable who's who of the industrial fisheries (mostly draggers and factory trawlers), and they have a right to their perspective. But being an Aleut from the Pribilof Islands, I have a different worldview and understanding of what is happening in Alaskan waters. I would like to respond to Benton's brave statement that Alaskan fisheries are healthy and that there are no examples of any overfishing practices. To the contrary, the examples abound.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council manages the lucrative pollock fishery -- lucrative for the moment, that is, for one or two fishing communities and for the Seattle owners. Under the "precautionary" catch limits set by the NPFMC, three of the region's main pollock fisheries have been closed or severely limited due to overfishing: two in the Bering Sea (the Aleutian Island and Bogoslov fisheries) and one in the Gulf of Alaska (the Shelikof Strait roe fishery). Despite use of "strict guidelines," these fisheries have been decimated by the same catch formulas still in use to determine the total allowable catch for pollock in the Bering Sea.
Today, the vast majority of the fishing pressure is on the spawning aggregation in the eastern Bering Sea, home to the last pollock stock capable of supporting a sizable commercial fishery. Yet, there are no marine reserves set up to protect spawning fish. And what does the NPFMC say about this? "We use the best available science to determine total allowable catch limits."
