Articles by Biodiversivist

Extinction of an outdated industry on the horizon?

... you ignorant ass.

You may have noticed the ads here on Grist from the International Fund for Animal Welfare calling for an end to the Canadian seal harvest. This short, simple, balanced article from MSNBC is a timely rehash of this annual controversy.

Because sustainability is ostensibly the main goal of environmentalism, it's difficult to criticize the Canadian seal harvest, because it appears to be a classic case of a sustainably harvested natural resource providing poverty reduction for those who live close to that resource.

Here are the two main reasons the IFAW wants to end the seal harvest: It is cruel and puts the harp seal species at risk.

Sometimes you have to take risks to save endangered species

I received an irate email the other day from Luke Hunter, who is the (taking a deep breath) Global Carnivore Program Coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society and an Associate Conservation Scientist in the Science and Exploration Program.

Apparently, somebody ratted me out and sent him a copy of one of my posts where I made a passing comment about the absurd amount of darting and radio collaring that is now going on in this human-dominated world:

Here is another article where two proud researchers first trapped, then darted, then radio collared cheetahs in Iran. The process will of course be repeated over and over again until their grant money runs out.

We need to rethink all food based biofuels

The lion's share of biofuel bashing on Grist deals with corn ethanol, because we Americans primarily use gasoline for our cars and ethanol runs fine in them, with few modifications. However, our pals in Europe drive a lot of diesel cars and the biofuel crisis over there revolves primarily around biodiesel. I think it is time we recognize that their problem is also our problem. A comment from Pcarbo alerted me to Monbiot's latest take on biofuels. He has now gone so far as to propose a ...

... moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugar cane.

Americans spend 95 percent of their lives indoors

I was recently working in the front yard on one of those warm days that sporadically appear in March and April. Patricia came by, walking her bike up the hill and still wearing her bike helmet. She has watched my daughters grow up and always asks about them. Patricia is a thinking person and I always enjoy chatting with her. The topics included status seeking (my favorite), electric bikes, her present job, an article in The New York Times about global warming, and her ninety-something year-old multimillionaire mom.

Patricia signed off when the neighborhood drunk bellied up. What village or town would be complete without one? Turns out he's on the wagon and I wished him luck. My family has watched him stagger back and forth to the liquor store for almost two decades and he has taken way too much interest in my oldest daughter lately, who made the mistake of washing a car out front in a bikini last summer.