Latest Articles

The continuing quest to find something, anything to bash Gore with

People magazine reports that Al Gore’s daughter Sarah just got married, revealing in the course of the article that Chilean sea bass was served at the rehearsal dinner. In the Daily Telegraph, Australian Humane Society Rebecca Keeble writes that “only one week after Live Earth, Al Gore’s green credentials slipped.” Why? Because Chilean sea bass […]

Unsustainability in the water

Poor African countries have been selling their fishing rights to richer countries for years, and now they can neither catch enough fish for their populations nor protect their fisheries from collapsing. In today's Wall Street Journal (behind a subscriber wall), the grim state of affairs is laid out:

Wealthy countries subsidize their commercial fishermen to the tune of about $30 billion a year. Their goal is to keep their fishermen on the water. China, for example, provides $2 billion a year in fuel subsidies; the European Union and its member nations provide more than $7 billion of subsidies a year. Such policies boost the number of working boats, increase the global catch, and drive down fish prices. That makes it more difficult for fishermen in poor nations like Mauritania, who get no subsidies, to compete.

The end result: African waters are losing fish stock rapidly, with ramifications both to the economies of Africa's coastal nations and to the world's ocean ecology. Over the past three decades, the amount of fish in West African waters has declined by up to 50 percent, according to Daniel Pauly, a researcher at the University of British Columbia.

Or should that be get fast trashed?

In college I wrote my honors thesis on the connection between running and spirituality. And I like the idea of eco-running as a combining-of-passions sort of idea. Except I’m not really into combining my passions a la eco-runner Samuel, by picking up trash while I run. Because I’m training for a marathon, and I live […]

This week’s coal-sucks update

I just realized it’s been almost a week since I’ve published a coal-bashing post! This cannot stand. I’ll have to dig back a bit … ah, here we go: a new study from the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center (CEIC) concludes that investing in plug-in hybrids would be much more sensible, in terms of both […]

Shell and Nat Geo team up to create 5.4 million pieces of trash

A rant: I'm a big National Geographic dork, so it pains me to kvetch about the ton of crap that comes with each issue. Once relieved of its "recyclable" plastic baggie, the fumes usually make me want to hang it on the clothesline for a while to air out, and I would, except a zillion junky inserts would festoon the lawn (excepting the sometimes great map supplement).

But this month's garbage haul topped it all, as a promotional DVD tumbled to the kitchen floor. Called "Eureka," it's a slick nine-minute commercial for Shell Oil dressed up as a movie, complete with a Hollywood score and gauzy cinematography, wherein our hero, the troubled but lovable petroleum engineer with receding hairline, struggles mightily with the problem of how to get more precious oil out of the earth without disturbing a nearby coral reef system, and remains stumped until he looks into his heart and is given the key by a child. Really. And that's not all.

Park Service hacks down some trees in Pa.

This is sorta effed. The National Park Service is cutting down hundreds of acres of trees on the Gettysburg Battlefield to restore historical accuracy. From NBC News in Pennsylvania: The National Park Service is starting another phase of its efforts to return Gettysburg Battlefield to how it looked in 1863, during the Civil War. The […]

BS green

Given the surge of interest in climate and energy, it’s no surprise that a lot of BS — rainforest-screwing biodiesel, everyone-screwing liquid coal, etc. — is getting passed off as "green" and bellying up to the public trough. Glenn Hurowitz calls out some of the more egregious offenders.

You know you wanna listen

Yesterday, I was on radio show called Earthbeat, discussing the presidential candidates and their views on climate and energy. You can read about it here, or download the one-hour mp3 here.

And a bit of introspection

From the Oregonian: Wild birds competing with youth baseball. City wants to turn Little League diamond into wild space. Little Leaguers don’t want to be forced out of their park. Should wild birds trump kiddie baseball players? If I say no, does that go against everything I allegedly stand for as an environmentalist a person […]

Global-warming-themed game now online

A new video game teaches users about saving the planet is coming on the market, and you can try it out for free first. Check out Global Warning, a new game from Midori Tech. Here’s what happens: A dump company sets up an immense (nearly the size of 50 football fields) landfill next to your […]