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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
The official announcement will come at from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at 1:30 EST today, but sources are already reporting that the White House will be pulling back on offshore oil and gas drilling. Drilling will only be allowed in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, and in parts of the Alaskan Arctic—both territories …
Food-safety reform advocates won a long-awaited—and rare—victory today in Washington. This morning the Senate passed a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s food-safety system, approving the Food Safety and Modernization Act by an unusually bipartisan vote of 73-25. The bill, which had been languishing in the Senate for more than a …
Readers of this blog will know that one of my pet issues is energy research and innovation. The U.S. invests an obscenely low amount of federal money on basic energy research—perhaps $5 billion a year, not counting one-time stimulus spending, compared to $30 billion and north of $70 billion annually for medicine and defense …
I didn’t understand just how valuable a bluefin tuna could be until I spent a year in Tokyo. Before Japan, sushi was a California roll with artificial wasabi and too much soy sauce. In Tokyo, I discovered how different a meal could be with fresh fish, expertly prepared by a sushi chef standing sentinel behind his counter. And nothing …
It’s the most wonderful time of the year once more for environment reporters: the UN climate summit. Last year’s affair in Copenhagen was a frigid disaster, mostly a failure for the climate—but at least the food was terrible. Beginning on November 29, diplomats from more than 190 countries will spend two weeks (plus overtime) …