EcocentricHealth
Over at the Healthland blog, I have a post up on a new report from the venerable Consumer Reports on potentially unsafe levels of mercury found in canned tuna. Mercury contamination is a real risk for pregnant women and young children—the Consumer Reports investigation shows that mercury may be more prevalent in canned tuna than we …
EcocentricOil
Gasoline is like the circulatory system of the American economy. When it’s working fine, you barely notice it. But if something goes wrong, you end up in mortal trouble really fast.
Is the struggling U.S. economy headed towards a gasoline-induced heart attack? A report by the Lundberg Survey of American cities found that gas …
EcocentricEnvironmentalism
There are few more exciting, gee-whiz experiences than visiting The Science Museum in London. Airplanes, huge space rockets, early medical instruments and a massive IMAX theater display the breadth of human understanding and technological advancement. So “Atmosphere,” the museum’s new $7 million gallery dedicated to the science of …
EcocentricOceans
For all the reports about overfishing, it can sometimes be hard to except that we really have a problem. After all, if we’re supposedly fishing out the seas, why is it easy—and cheap—to get salmon, crab, tuna and any other delicacy you want at the local sushi counter? Why have McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwiches skyrocketed in …
EcocentricRegulation
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this before leaving the office tonight (it’s Thursday Night Football!): forty years ago today, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), capping a year of tremendous green progress. (It was kind of like 2010, only opposite.) Obviously Nixon was, to put it politely, no …
EcocentricEcocentric
I’m not down in sunny, congested Cancun yet—I’ll be arriving next week for what’s become an annual holiday season trip to the U.N. climate summit. (At least this year won’t be as cold as Copenhagen, though I’ve heard that the food is just as bad.) I’ve already written a preview of the major issues on the table at the summit, which …
EcocentricTechnology
The more I write about environmental issues, the more I like writing about technology. Maybe that’s because while reporting on the decline of the environment can be, frankly, depressing (the naturalist Lois Crisler once remarked of the inextricable link between “love [of the earth] and despair”), while technology is undeniably …
EcocentricHealth
A new survey released yesterday by Hong Kong’s Civic Exchange found that one in four residents are considering leaving Hong Kong because of the city’s chronic air pollution problems. Over half the people surveyed with post-graduate educations are considering leaving — up 12% from 2008 — along with 37% of university graduates. …
EcocentricWildlife
Biodiversity—what’s it good for? Of course anyone lucky enough to catch a glimpse of an endangered Indri lemur screaming through a forest in Madagascar or humpback whale cresting in the north Atlantic knows there’s an intrinsic value to a world with species beyond Homo sapiens. But if biodiversity was just about providing a pretty …
EcocentricWildlife
There are a lot of perks that come with being a primate. You get to be smart. You get to be social. You get to have opposable thumbs — which are very handy things to have. Most of all, you get to keep living even during hard times. If the history of humans indicates anything, it’s that we’re survivors, and a new study is showing just …
