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The seal massacre, in its full gory

I'm an environmentalist, not an animal-rights activist. Sometimes the two labels go hand-in-hand; sometimes they clash. Personally, I place a priority on healthy ecosystems (including the survival of whole species in their native habitat) over an individual animal's right to exist no matter where it may find itself.

So from that vantage point, the fracas over Canada's annual seal hunt doesn't seem to me to be an "environmental" issue, if we're pigeonholing. Seals, as I understand it, are not endangered.

But, trust me, you don't have to attach any activist label to yourself at all to be revolted and horror-struck by the hunt. The International Fund for Animal Welfare is posting new video footage daily of the mass killing -- and, despite the fact that some of it is set to cheesy, melodramatic music, the images of young seals being bludgeoned and skinned are stomach-churning and heart-breaking. And infuriating. Steel yourself and take a look. "Highlights from 2004 hunt" (shouldn't that be lowlights?), which you can access after registering, are particularly gruesome and illustrative.

As The Guardian notes, this year's particularly large hunt is being justified in part by the claim that seals are eating too many fish, wholly ignoring the fact that the Canadian government has long sanctioned unsustainable fishing practices. Yet another example of humans pushing a species to the brink, then using its scarcity as an excuse to massacre its natural predators. That's a fucked-up cycle.

InterActivist Robyn Griggs Lawrence asks readers for input on green certification issues

Robyn Griggs Lawrence, editor in chief of Natural Home & Garden magazine, answers reader questions about her magazine, the wabi-sabi movement, and getting rid of elder box bugs in InterActivist today. She answers a question about user-friendly labels evaluating the environmental impacts of products and brings up the issue of cost for many small companies:

Q: Are you supportive of the concept of developing scientifically robust yet user-friendly expanded labels evaluating the environmental impacts of products? Ideally, this "label" would provide us with a "thin slice" of summary information on the product's lifecycle to make it easy and quick to use. -- Deborah Dunning, president, International Design Center for the Environment, Chapel Hill, N.C.

A: I think this would be fantastic! I love that we're seeing more green certification -- in everything from forest products to fish. Most of our readers say they do want to be better informed about life-cycle issues and manufacturing processes, but they don't have the time or the resources to investigate every single one. I like to think that the transparency such a label would create could make a big difference in how a lot of products are made -- and disposed of. (Campaigns like the recent "Green the iPod" from The Green Guide -- calling for the iPod to be fitted for an easily replaced and recyclable, toxic-free battery -- are great for making people aware of the full life-cycle consequences of ubiquitous products that they might not think about.) The challenge, as you know, is to make green labels and certification affordable for smaller companies. I'd love to know your thoughts on how to address that sticky issue.

Luckily we have just such a place for readers to discuss green issues! Let us know what you think.

Eco-April Fool’s from around the web

It's April Fools Day, as Daily Grist readers are no doubt discovering right about now. Other examples of the grand tradition of April Fooling can be found on RealClimate and Energy Priorities. Readers: you have any other good examples? Leave them in comments.

(Oh, this is funny too, though not April Foolsy -- I meant to blog about it a long time ago and forgot -- thanks to Jeff for reminding me.)

climate science is not a short-cut to cultural change

Roger Pielke Jr. has an important post up that I would encourage each and every enviro to read. He references this letter (PDF, registration required) in the current issue of Nature. It's from reps of several green organizations. An excerpt:

Civil-rights, suffrage activists didn’t give up, and neither should environmentalists 

This piece is adapted from a speech given before the Alliance for Global Sustainability last month at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. The full speech — “Reflections on Sustainability and Universities and Whether Environmentalism Has Died” — can be found here. Are the reapers quitting too soon? The environmental community is in […]

Backchat from Earth First! and ExxonMobil, and a response from Riki Ott

  Re: Climb Every Mountain. Then Remove It. Dear Editor: Thanks for runnin’ a blurb on Mountain Justice Summer on your fine website. The only thing is that the groups involved with Mountain Justice Summer, which include Katuah Earth First! and Coal River Mountain Watch, have specifically said we will not be engaging in property […]

Head and shoulders above the rest

As I was waiting for the bus this morning, I glimpsed this headline: 'Is that Dandruff in Your Air Pollution'? It's such an unsurprising concept -- that particulate matter in the air includes stuff like dandruff and fur -- that it hardly seems newsworthy. And yet. The image of all of us wading through a haze of skin chunks is somehow tough to, er, swallow. I can't help but think of all those salmon swimming through each other's lice -- and how I had the temerity, when we reported that the other day, to think it was strange.

Ecosystem services

Don't miss Joel Makower's long and informative post on recent developments around ecosystem services:

...the $33 trillion worth of "free" deliverables provided to us by a healthy planet, including fertile soil, fresh water, breathable air, pollination, habitat, soil formation, pest control, a livable climate, and a bunch of other things we generally take for granted.

He touches on the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment and a number of emerging attempts to assign economic value to ecosystem services, thereby making "externalities" into market "internalities." A great read.

Je Syracuse

Onondaga Nation sues for land rights in New York state The Onondaga Nation earlier this month filed a lawsuit claiming ownership of some 3,100 square miles of New York state, including Onondaga Lake in northwest Syracuse — a large body of water to which the community claims to have ancestral connection. That lake also happens […]

Undermined

Ruling halts proposed mine under wilderness area, for now Plans to build a massive copper and silver mine beneath Montana’s Cabinet Mountain Wilderness was successfully halted (again) yesterday when a federal judge ruled that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials put the area’s bull trout and grizzly bears at risk by approving the mine. The […]