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Smoky Chokey

National parks aren’t breathing easy From California to Maine to Alaska — sea to shining sea, as it were — almost a third of America’s national parks suffer poor air-quality conditions, says a new study by the National Parks Conservation Association. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury threaten wildlife, plants, visitors, and staff, and can […]

Still have glimmers of childlike wonder and hope?

Well, time to give 'em up. Dolphins are stupid.

(Thanks to reader ET -- or should I say, "thanks.")

Werbach and Wal-Mart

Lest I let a single article about Wal-Mart pass by without notice: check out the San Francisco Bay Guardian's long look at Wal-Mart's greening and the company's hiring of Adam Werbach.

(And lest I let you forget that I wrote an op-ed on the subject: here's my op-ed on the subject -- and a bloggy follow-up.)

Listen to Werbach:

Water scarcity will cause lots of scary things to happen.

In anticipation of World Water Week next week, news on aqueous gloom and doom abounds. This is, um, not comforting:

Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy.

That's nearly as frightening as Snakes on a Plane (all the hype surrounding it, not the movie itself).

But seriously. By 2015? That's damn soon.

Analysts from 200 of the world's largest companies, brought together by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, made the grim forecast, also predicting (hoping?) that water scarcity will spur better management and water-saving technologies. As a third of the world's population already lives where water is overused or inaccessible, future conflicts over water are virtually inevitable.

The analysts, who took three years to study future water availability, came up with three potential future scenarios:

Restaurants substitute cheap fish to unknowing diners

Yesterday, NPR ran a great seafood story. It seems that restaurant-goers in Florida are ordering one fish and being served another. The St. Petersburg Times surveyed 11 restaurants that boasted grouper on their menus; DNA tests revealed that nearly half were serving cheaper substitutes. Who needs cleverly deceptive sales techniques -- like bait and switch -- when you can just use an oldie but goodie: lying?

Peter Schweitzer, Al Gore, and hypocrisy

About a week ago, USA Today published a piece by Peter Schweitzer, who's a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. It accused Al Gore of hypocrisy, for asking viewers of An Inconvenient Truth to scale back their lifestyles and carbon emissions while ... well, there were a number of charges. According to Schweitzer, Gore owns three homes and stock in Occidental Petroleum, still receives royalties from a zinc mine on his property, does not participate in the green-power option his utility offers in Nashville, and lets Paramount pay for his carbon offsets.

As per standard practice, the conservative media machine spread the charges far and wide -- most recently they popped up on Glenn Beck's show on CNN and, bizarrely, in a recurring poll on AOL's homepage.

A little more from ASEC’s founder

If Frank Scura is convinced he can turn around a sector that is the very epitome of heedless consumption, it's because he's been there himself. "My whole life was based on sex and debauchery," he says of his days on the nascent action-sports circuit in the 1980s. But one day, as he tells Gregory Dicum here, everything changed.

I had pretty much gorged myself on the fruits of Babylon and found myself empty. But when I went to Portland, I found sustenance. I found people who played music for music, who grew gardens, who were in touch with the Earth.

Then my grandmother died in eastern Oregon. None of us had ever even gone there, but I was going to go and be Grizzly Adams. I invited people to come start a commune with me, but nobody went. So I went anyway.

The Few, the Proud, the Marine Reserves

California will create nation’s most ambitious marine-protection program California wildlife officials voted this week to create 15 distinct marine reserves from Half Moon Bay to Santa Barbara, making about 110 square miles of ocean off-limits to most human activity and giving another 94 square miles or so protection of varying degrees. Backers hope the plan […]

The documentary filmmaker talks about his film on California sea lions

Avast, mateys! 'Tis been too long since me last post. The good ship Something Fishy, she been a'travelin' far and wide to find ye the juiciest sea-worthy stories yet untold. This week, I introduce you to Alan De Herrera, a documentary filmmaker whose latest work, Sea Lions: An Unforgettable Encounter, delves deep into the lives of California sea lions.

Circus veterans for more than a century, California sea lions are entertaining animals, and as a result, are one of the most widely recognized marine mammals in the world. But De Herrera's more worried about their reputation as pests -- venturing into marinas and climbing aboard boats; following commercial vessels to all the best fishing holes and then pilfering the catch; even maneuvering onto fish ladders to trap salmon on their way upstream.

"[People] just think they're stinky, dumb dogs with flippers that want to go rape and pillage all the fish out there, and that's simply not the case," De Herrera says. His 45-minute film, narrated by former hobbit Sean Astin, aims to show the public how intelligent and playful the animals are and illuminate the threats they face from humans. (One in five sea lions rescued by the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., have carcinoma -- a cancer linked to chemical exposure -- and another 20 percent suffer from gunshot wounds likely caused by angry fishermen.) "It's not in any way going to be beneficial for human society to eradicate these animals," De Herrera asserts.

I caught up with the impassioned filmmaker between promotional screenings at the Seattle Aquarium earlier this summer to chat about de-villainizing the charismatic mammals, protecting their West Coast habitat, and educating the next generation of fishermen.

My love affair with Bucky Fuller

A few days back, David posted a link about the Dymaxion Car, Bucky Fuller's ill-fated attempt to inject sanity in to Detroit. In 1933. Maybe I'm just being me, but I think David was trying to taunt me in to posting. I did, after all, pick a related title for my blog.