EcocentricInvasive Species
As fish go, silver carp—one of several species that fall under the general term Asian carp—have a lot going for them. They are voracious feeders, they can grow to more than 40 lbs. and their bony bodies mean few Americans want to eat them, so they can escape the overfished fate of their more filletable cousins. But they do have …
EcocentricOil
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EcocentricOil
BP’s compensation claims process for Gulf residents and businesses affected by the oil spill has had some serious problems. Residents are saying that the company has been slow to pay, that the forms disappear into a bureaucratic void, and that the criteria of who qualifies and who doesn’t is anything but clear. For journalists covering …
EcocentricPolitics
This afternoon, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi called them back from their six-week summer break, members of the House of Representatives passed an emergency $26 billion spending bill to prevent the layoff of 300,000 teachers, police and other civil servants from layoffs due to state cutbacks. The bill passed
EcocentricFood
Hot enough for you? If you live in one of the more than 15 states that were suffering under a heat advisory or excessive heat warning on Tuesday, I’m going to guess the answer is yes, God, please make it all stop. The oppressively high temperatures that gripped much of the U.S. during June—the hottest month on record worldwide, …
EcocentricOil
According to The Onion, the greatest environmental disaster could be oil that actually makes it safely into our cars and planes, gets burnt for fuel and pollutes the atmosphere:
“We’re looking at a crisis of cataclysmic proportions,” said Charles Hartsell, an environmental scientist at Tufts University. “In a matter of days, this oil
…
EcocentricOil
You know, I’m going to miss these almost daily updates of well-capping procedures performed by robots 5,000 ft. under the surface of the Gulf of Mex…
No, I’m not. If I never hear another piece of vaguely violent drilling jargon—top kill, bottom kill, static kill—it will be too soon. It’s gotten to the point where I’m hearing …
EcocentricEnvironmentalism
Update: Big mistake on my part here—I did not give proper credit to Andrew Dermont, the writer from Big Think who originally interviewed Hawking. You can access Dermont’s original post and story on the Hawking interview here, which contains Dermont’s own take on Hawking’s thoughts as well. Complete mistake on my part—the post I’d …
EcocentricEcocentric
Over in Foreign Policy, Christina Larson has an interview with the New York-based Chinese-American artist Zhang Hongtu. Zhang, who grew up in China under Mao Zedong but moved to the U.S. in 1982, is a dissident painter, but one with a comic touch—see his famous picture of Mao on the Quaker Oats can. While many of his artist peers back …
EcocentricOil
For weeks now, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen has been very clear: BP’s blown well would be considered fully fixed when the relief well was finally completed. “This well will not be killed until we do the bottom kill,” Allen said last week.
But it turns out that might not be true. As we reported yesterday, the final phase of …
