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ABC’s Boston Legal tackles issue of fish farms

The Late Show with David Letterman was not the only television program last night to expose enviro themes to the late night crowd. Over on Boston Legal, something fishy was going on (and I'm not talking about their usual shenanigans).

Normally, I wouldn't watch the show, but I got a tip from a reliable source that it might be worthwhile last night. So after returning from a night of Green Drinks and dinner, I plopped down on the couch and hit play on my VCR. In short, I was pleasantly surprised.

Now, I had thought Boston Legal was one of those legal shows where a defendant chopped up his spouse and fed her to his pet tiger ... and the defense team knows he's guilty, but champions the case anyway ... and the lead attorney sleeps with him ... and the tiger escapes in court ... blah, blah, blah. I don't know about you, but I've had enough of reality shows. I prefer fantasy myself, which is why I tune in to The West Wing. Ah, if only ...

But I digress ... Boston Legal ... here's the synopsis of last night's episode:

Reeling over his break-up with Tara, Alan Shore [played by James Spader] heads to Nimmo Bay in British Columbia with Denny Crane [played by William Shatner] for some fly fishing and male bonding in an effort to cure his pain. When they learn that the salmon population is being threatened by sea lice produced by fish farms, Shore and Crane feel compelled to act.

Yes, you read that right. The Emmy Award-winning show tackled fish farming during primetime TV. And it was funny.

To create a truly sustainable food system, we’ll need to make some fundamental changes.

The sustainable-food movement has a class problem.

Slow Food, for example, is an essential organization, with its declaration of a universal "right to taste" and its mandate to ...

... oppose the standardisation of taste, defend the need for consumer information, protect cultural identities tied to food and gastronomic traditions, safeguard foods and cultivation and processing techniques inherited from tradition and defend domestic and wild animal and vegetable species.

The group has undeniably done important work internationally toward those goals; yet its U.S. branch tends to throw pricey events accessible only to an economic elite.

Examples like this abound.

Lucky Stiff

Asian men turning to Viagra over traditional animal cures for impotence Far East penises are getting an assist from the pharmaceutical industry, and that’s good news for the seahorses, green sea turtles, and other critters that have been used for years to get a rise out of reticent Asian members. According to a new study […]

No Word on the Mansions

Governors abandon gas-guzzling SUVs as they ask others to use less fuel As post-hurricane gas prices in the U.S. hover around $3 a gallon, several governors have dumped their state-funded, gas-hogging SUVs for more energy-conscious vehicles. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) will be sidelining his Lincoln Navigator for a Ford Escape hybrid, and Florida […]

Beyond a Reasonable Drought

Massive Amazon drought may be linked to warm Atlantic waters With the Amazon rainforest suffering its worst drought in a half-century, Brazil has declared a state of emergency in the hardest-hit area. Some scientists speculate that warmer North Atlantic waters — the same factor driving the intense Atlantic hurricane season — are causing more air […]

No Justice, No Peas

Sustainably grown food still the province of the wealthy The sustainable-food movement has a class problem. While lower-income rural and inner-city residents eat over-processed, nutrient-light food — and grow obese and sick — bourgeois suburbanites feed a growing market for locally produced, sustainably grown food. This disparity is driven by structural factors: for one, development […]

Jacques Leslie’s Deep Water sheds light on dam dramas

What does hell look like to an environmentalist? In the classic Encounters With the Archdruid, writer John McPhee imagines this particular inferno. The outer ring, he writes, is a moat filled with DDT. Inside lies another moat brimming with burning gasoline, and still deeper are masses of bulldozers and chainsaws. In the middle — at […]

Umbra on soy vs. meat

Dear Umbra, I finally went vegetarian several months ago, and one of my main reasons was the environmental impact of meat production. The other day, however, a friend pointed out that soy foods take a great deal of energy to produce too. So is there really that big of an environmental difference between TVP [textured […]

Energy efficiency resources for business

I should have done this several days ago, but better late than never:

Check out Joel Makower's excellent list of resources for businesses looking to save (or make) some money through energy efficiency. As he says:

Energy efficiency (the more business-like alternative to "conservation") has a strong foundation in a bottom-line-centric world. And there are rich resources -- case studies, how-to manuals, calculators, incentive programs, technical assistance agencies, and more -- to help companies manage the process. There's also a sizeable industry that's grown up around helping companies audit, assess, implement, and finance energy-efficiency solutions.

And yet, we've barely begun to harvest the low-hanging fruit, let alone sow the seeds of an economy that can continue to grow and prosper using continually less energy from oil and other polluting resources.

Get to it!

French SUV-haters deflate gas-guzzling tires

Most every cyclist who's rolled alongside cars for any amount of time knows the feeling, the one that makes you pump your fist at that driver who nearly ran you over, or that one whose tailpipe is emptying its contents into your face, or the one who's emissions are melting that glacier you liked so much (anger rising, rising). It's this sort of frustration that makes regular bicycle commuters and eco-conscious citizens of all stripes regularly curse outright at aggressive, too-large-vehicle drivers: "you just wait. You'll get yours."

Now some activists in France are dishing out those just desserts to a growing number of SUV drivers in wealthy neighborhoods in the form of empty, but undamaged, tires. The Deflators (or Les Degonfles), a group of French SUV-dislikers tired of the massive vehicles clogging Paris' streets, have been quietly deflating SUV tires in the dark of night. Repeatedly.

And without damaging the vehicles, it's essentially just setting free the air within, they argue, but with amusing side effects.

It's not all late-night pranks, though. Their masked leader has braved a televised debate with the president of the French SUV-owners' association and is apparently working on some sort of a movement anthem, set to appear as both a children's song and a dance mix (oh, those savvy French).

Though The Deflators, who also often post fliers and smear mud on the targeted vehicles, have been in touch with sympathizers and potential deflators on this side of the Atlantic, it seems the mischievous Parisians have much less cultural inertia to overcome than their American counterparts in their quest to spread the message that SUVs sucketh throughout the land, what with openly SUV-hostile city officials and a national SUV-owner tax. Also, SUVs in France, according to the Los Angeles Times, make up only about five percent of the market, whereas Americans would be up to their eyeballs in potential deflationary targets, with SUVs comprising about one-quarter of its market.

Of course, that doesn't mean SUV deflations are a bad idea in America, just a lot of work ...