EcocentricEcocentric
Last year’s global climate change summit in Copenhagen ran into trouble for all kinds of reasons, but one of the first and worst was logistics. Too many people—more than 45,000—tried to jam into the Danish capital’s too-small Bella Center. The result was hours-long lines for security and accreditation, hot tempers and general …
EcocentricOceans
CSI Sharm el-Sheikh: What is causing the normally harmless sharks of the Red Sea to start mauling holidaymakers in Egypt?
Shark experts have this weekend converged on the popular resort to investigate a series of attacks that have killed one tourist and badly injured four others. But they have already reached consensus on a general …
EcocentricEcocentric
I’ve just arrived in Cancun, where the 16th meeting of the Conference to the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is in full, acryonymized swing. It’s already clear that the mood in Cancun—like the weather—will be quite different from the chaotic atmosphere at the U.N. talks in …
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 …
