EcocentricRegulation
Better hope you’ve got a little extra closet space. Sometime today, American industry will manufacture or import 250 lbs. of chemicals just for you. There will be another 250 lbs. tomorrow and another the day after that — every day, in fact, throughout the year. That’s a pretty big mountain of chemistry, but if we’re going to …
EcocentricEcocentric
In this week’s Going Green column, I have a piece on Ray Anderson, the founder of the modular carpet manufacturer Interface and quite possibly the greenest CEO in America. Some of that reputation stems from what Anderson has done with Interface, setting the company on a path to total sustainability—meaning zero waste—by 2020. But to …
EcocentricEnvironmentalism
After cap-and-trade finally died in the U.S. Senate last year, it didn’t take long before we all started asking what went wrong—and who was to blame. There was no shortage of explanations: a plummeting economy and high unemployment made it impossible to sell major environmental legislation; the White House chose to prioritize health …
EcocentricEnergy
FUKUSHIMA — A Geiger counter isn’t something you ever want to know how to use. It’s definitely not something you want to need. Not that it’s an intimidating piece of equipment – the one I used last week in Japan was roughly the size of a mobile phone circa 1998. Our Terra MKS-05, made in the Ukraine, almost blended into the …
EcocentricWildlife
“They say the sea is cold,” D.H. Lawrence wrote, “but the sea contains the hottest blood of all.” Whales aren’t just physically majestic, but as warm-blooded mammals who give birth to live young, they provide a human link to an underwater region that can often feel so alien. Still, between the last vestiges of whale hunting and …
Cyber-birding gets an upgrade
EcocentricUncategorized
April 26 will mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. I’ll be publishing a story on the day that, with the help of TIME’s Kiev-based stringer James Marson, will show how the effects of the meltdown continue to be felt in the region. Nuclear accidents require the work of generations to clean-up. That’s a troubling …
EcocentricFood
In the fishing town of Iwaki, uni is sold in the local market steamed, on the clamshell. Starting each May, free divers wearing weight belts and flippers gather urchin from a small cove and haul the spiny globes to shore in woven baskets. For years, tourists have been coming to this port in Fukushima prefecture to taste Iwaki’s uni, …
EcocentricOil
April 20, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf oil spill, has no shortage of news events. Environmentalists and fishermen along the Gulf coast offered tours of the shoreline, to show the spots where the oil still remained. BP—with its impeccable sense of timing—lodged a $40 billion lawsuit against Transocean, the …
EcocentricNatural Gas
For all the fear about the potential for deep underground water contamination due to the hydraulic fracturing process used in shale gas extraction, there’s always been a much more present danger: the risk of something going wrong at the surface. From simple spills to industrial accidents to the ongoing problem of wastewater disposal, …
