Al Gore’s televised, 24-hour PowerPoint extravaganza last month predictably sparked some hot debate – much of it not about the science itself, but about Gore as its mouthpiece (common themes: he’s a hero, he’s become irrelevant, he’s a hypocritical capitalist). But a key message within Gore’s Climate Reality Project was …
Food
Study Says Sea Lice From Farmed Salmon Do Hurt Wild Fish—But the Debate’s Not Over
One of the hottest points of debate on aquaculture is the effect that farmed fish might have on their wild cousins. Fish raised in a major aquaculture operation live in close, sometimes cramped conditions that are nothing like the open ocean. As a result, they can become victims of disease and parasites—just as for centuries human …
Organic Farms May Keep Bacteria at Bay
Given how the cracks in our food system have recently expanded into troubling chasms – remember the ground turkey Salmonella scare, and the emergence of an antibiotic-resistant Salmonella strain – health experts are once again fretting about farms and the drugs used in them. And with good reason. Antibiotics may be some of the …
Do I Dare to Eat a Peach? Fukushima Citizens and Farmers Struggle with Food Safety
Call it slipper security. To get clearance into the food radiation testing center at Fukushima Agricultural Technology Center, you have to change shoes three times. The first time, you get a black pair. The second time, after your heels are scanned by a Geiger counter and deemed radiation-free, you change into a pair of plastic house …
El Nino, La Nina, Climate Change and the Horrific Drought in Somalia
As I write this, Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years. The lack of rain—combined with civil unrest and political interference from the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab group—has produced catastrophic results. Yesterday Nancy Linborg, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), told a …
A Mysterious Salmonella Outbreak Shows the Holes in Our Food Safety System
If a disease infected 1.4 million Americans and killed more than 400 of us every year, you’d think we’d hear about it pretty often. You might imagine there would be ribbons we could wear to show our solidarity against the disease, or maybe a nice benefit concertto raise money for a cure.
Yet the bacteria salmonella—which causes …
The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Isn’t Quite Record Size—But It’s Still Huge
Hypoxia sounds like a treatment that pop stars would use to keep from aging, but it’s actually one of the most serious—if underreported and invisible—environmental threats in the world. Hypoxia occurs when coastal waters become overloaded with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus—often from sewage or fertilizer running off …
Fish Food Chain Flounders – and Finds Its Way Back
As we reported last month, one of the biggest obstacles to sustainable fish farming is that raising big, popular carnivores such as salmon and tuna requires us to fish – and overfish – far down the food chain, in the ranks of smaller species like anchovies. Those are the little critters the bigger fish like to eat — and they …
How Meat and Dairy are Hiking Your Carbon Footprint
It’s tough enough dealing with all the hectoring we get about eating less salt, using bigger forks, and making sure that this or that food group makes up only this or that percentage of our diet. All that, however, is only when it’s the nutritionists talking. Things get even harder when the environmentalists enter the picture, with …
Famine in Somalia: When Does the World Decide to Use the ‘F’ Word?
The word ‘famine’ may be a familiar one, but it is not thrown around lightly by the people who decide when there is one. The fact that most of us today probably associate the term with the 1984 crisis in Ethiopia is testament to its exceedingly careful dispensation; to use it too often would dilute its power to command the attention …