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Notes on California’s big sustainable-farming conference

Note: This is another in a series of posts from Eco-Farm, the annual conference held by the Ecological Farming Association of California. At Eco-Farm, some 1,400-1,500 organic farmers, Big Organic marketers, and sundry sustainable-ag enthusiasts pack into a rustic, beautiful seaside conference hall an hour-and-a-half south of San Francisco to talk farming amid the dunes. […]

Notable quotable

“This is something that is very, very important, and I think it’s something the president would sign. We have to have it.” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, endorsing the fantasy that President Bush will sign Lieberman-Warner into law

Could Romney’s climate contrarianism come back to bite him in the general?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Republican race is down to McCain and Romney, and they are rapidly escalating their attacks on one another. Romney is now using McCain’s climate legislation against him: In a new line of attack, Romney then tore into the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. "Instead of seeing if there’s a way […]

A long-time beekeeper’s take on colony collapse

Note: For the next few days I’ll be reporting from Eco-Farm, the annual conference held by the Ecological Farming Association of California. At Eco-Farm, some 1,400-1,500 organic farmers, Big Organic marketers, and sundry sustainable-ag enthusiasts pack into a rustic, beautiful seaside conference hall an hour-and-a-half south of San Francisco to talk farming amid the dunes. […]

NYT satire gives candidates’ alleged responses to the fish ‘n’ mercury issue

The New York Times has a pretty funny satirical article up about candidates’ alleged responses to reports of high mercury content in New Yawk tuna sushi. Obama: “Unlike other candidates, I have been saying since 2002 that we were headed down a disastrous road with our sushi policy. But what we need now is a […]

Conventional oil will peak within seven years

The oil company with the best strategic planning says the day of reckoning is nigh:

Is it possible for an NFL star to go meatless?

Grist recently published my interview with Rory Freedman, one of the authors of vegan diet book Skinny Bitch. The finished piece is just a selection of the topics from our conversation (we had quite a long lunch), and one of the questions that didn’t make the cut was about responding to critics who say veganism […]

South Carolina primary

Barack Obama is projected to win the South Carolina primary. UPDATE: Did I say win? I meant romp like Godzilla. In other news, popular Florida governor Charlie Crist has endorsed John McCain. This is a big blow to Romney in a hotly fought contest. I’m guessing McCain’s (relative) sanity on global warming had something to […]

Could alternative energy companies drive the next big market bubble?

In case you missed it, the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced a violent and exhausting 1,000-point swing the past week, down 450 points on Tuesday before trimming its losses and then tumbling 330 points on Wednesday before rebounding with a 299-point gain.

It's not the only financial freefall of late. The housing market bubble was punctured last fall and has been leaking like the Hindenburg ever since. (And long before that, the economy experienced the dual dot-com and technology implosions in the spring of 2000.)

All of which is to say, it's probably safe to assume most Americans are familiar with what a financial bubble looks like when it bursts. But how many of us could spot a bubble in the making?

Eric Janszen believes he can. In fact, the president of iTulip.com predicts the next bubble is going to be green -- not as in the color of money, but as in alternative energy companies, suppliers, and technologies. If Janszen's right (and he's got a pretty good pedigree in all things bubbles, having had a front-row seat at the dot-com debacle and now as founder of a website that tracks financial dislocations), it could be the mother of all bubbles.

Scared-straight birds and kite-powered cargo ships

New protections that required longline tuna fishing fleets to use bird-scaring lines, or tori lines, went into effect. In addition, international measures asked longliners to fish at night, when few birds are active, and to sink baited hooks out of reach ...

... an open fish farm that cultivates kahala, also known as Hawaiian yellowtail or amberjack, planned to double its capacity ...

... a 14-man British and Irish rowing crew crossed the Atlantic in 33 days, seven hours and 30 minutes, a full two days faster than the previous record ...

... a female leatherback turtle crossed the Pacific while tagged, resulting in the longest recorded migration journey in the ocean. She covered 12,744 miles before the signal was lost after 647 days ...

... scientists recorded, for the first time, a giant internal ocean wave breaking underwater near Hawaii. The researchers used instruments strung along 900 miles to capture the data ...