EcocentricOceans
Few American consumers would mourn the loss of the anchovy. If it weren’t for pizza or Caesar salads, there might be no use for the little salty fish at all. But few people want to see the ocean’s anchovy stocks wiped out by radiation either. That’s just the scenario that seemed to be developing, however, when reports coming out of Japan …
EcocentricRegulation
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 …
EcocentricRegulation
People signal contrition in a lot of ways, and few countries are better at it than the Japanese — a culture rich in the art of social protocols and interpersonal gesturing. It was not for nothing, then, that when Prime Minister Naoto Kan spoke before parliament this week about the country’s ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi …
EcocentricEcocentric
America is a great country, but we do tend to make other people’s dramas our own. You know that uncle who comes over to Thanksgiving dinner, hears about another relative who recently had a heart attack and spends the rest of the meal asking everyone at the table if they think the chest pain he had last week is serious too? Well, to rest …
EcocentricEcocentric
With four busted reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi site, engineers and rescue workers have plenty to do just to keep all their plates spinning. But over the past few days, there always seems to be one reactor causing them more headaches than others. Yesterday it was reactor 4, with its coolant pool empty of water and the spent fuel rods …
EcocentricEcocentric
The news keeps getting worse at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, with the AP now reporting that the fuel rods in all three of the stricken facility’s reactors are experiencing partial meltdown. In one of the reactors, the level of cooling water has fallen effectively to zero, leaving the fuel rods fully …
EcocentricEcocentric
There are few environmental dangers that spook people more than radioactivity. And there is surely no country in the world that comes by that fear more rightly than Japan — which, alone among nations, has felt the pain of a nuclear conflagration first hand. So it’s understandable that the Japanese public is terrified by the danger …
EcocentricUncategorized
It’s way too early to say that Japan has found its Tony Hayward — the feckless former CEO of BP, who became the face of the company’s obtuseness and denial during last year’s disastrous Gulf oil spill. But it does appear they’re auditioning for the part.
The leading candidate at the moment appears to be Chief Cabinet …
EcocentricEcocentric
[UPDATE: 5:59 PM ET: The evacuation zone around the power plant has been increased to 10 km, or 6.2 mi.]
[UPDATE: 5:46 PM EST: Japanese authorities announced that radiation inside the stricken Fukushima power plant control room has risen to 1,000 times its normal level. Some has leaked outside of the plant, prompting calls for …
EcocentricInvasive Species
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 …
