It’s not likely that a book called Harry Potter and the Mountaintop Removal Project would have much appeal to middle-schoolers. And have fun trying to get the pre-K crowd interested in Clifford the Big Red Strip-Mine Operator. The good news is you’re never likely to see such literary nasties. The bad news is that Scholastic, …
Environmentalism
A New Victim of Second-Hand Smoking: Fish
For smokers, the world has always been one big ashtray, with cigarettes flicked away pretty much anywhere. That’s especially true now, since smokers are increasingly forbidden to light up in restaurants, office buildings and even new no-smoking condos. In the great river of litter human beings create each year, so tiny a thing as a …
Battling Over the Climate War
After cap-and-trade finally died in the U.S. Senate last year, it didn’t take long before we all started asking what went wrong—and who was to blame. There was no shortage of explanations: a plummeting economy and high unemployment made it impossible to sell major environmental legislation; the White House chose to prioritize health …
The Psychology of Environmentalism: How the Mind Can Save the Planet
There aren’t a whole lot of scientific disciplines that haven’t had something to say about climate change over the years — and with good reason. When a problem is global in scale there’s a universe of specialists and subspecialists who have to pitch in to to fix it — meteorologists, chemists, geologists, physicists, zoologists, …
The Planet’s Natural Air Filters
The Earth as one great organism has always been one of the most appealing metaphors of the green movement. From the moment environmentalist James Lovelock first articulated his so-called Gaia hypothesis—after the Greek goddess of the Earth—in the 1970s, the theory has continued to charm environmentalists.
It doesn’t stand up to …
Silence the Cows and Save the Planet
Flatulent cows are not a laughing matter. (Pause.) OK, they are a laughing matter. And flatulent sheep and goats are almost as funny — though not to the chickens and pigs in the pen next door. But pull-my-hoof livestock are a problem too.
The emissions produced by nature’s woodwind section contain a nasty mix of many gasses, among …
Washington Will at Last Regulate Fish Farms
Chances are pretty good that the last fish you ate never saw a river or the open ocean. That’s because the U.S. imports 84% of the 5 billion lbs. of seafood we consume each year and more than half of that is raised on fish farms and other aquaculture operations. The U.S., however, has not gotten invested in the aquaculture game as …
Industrial Tourism in Japan: Your Health Hazard, My Holiday
The Wall Street Journal has run a fascinating article about a newish travel trend in Japan called kojo moe – roughly translated as “factory love” or “factory infatuation.” Kojo moe enthusiasts fetishize the otherworldly beauty of elaborate industrial spaces: the steam punk drawbridge, the soft billows of a polluting smokestack …
What is killing the pacific salmon?
The great sockeye salmon run from the Pacific Ocean to Canada’s Fraser River was for decades an example of nature’s fruitful bounty. Some 60 million fish returned annually to spawn. But starting in the 1990s, the sockeye’s productivity declined precipitously—and in 2009 only 1 million fish returned to the run.
Greenpeace’s New Board Game
Looking for the perfect gift for your radical, left-wing activist nephew? Greenpeace has just the product for you: a free downloadable board game called “Deepsea Desperation” that pits oil industry versus Greenpeace for control over deapsea oil reserves.
According to the Greenpeace website, the game is for two players, or teams of …