EcocentricLiving Green
I don’t eat bacon cheeseburgers. About three years ago I gave up red meat and pork. I am American, and brother do I love bacon cheeseburgers. But I decided that as part of the imperfect project of trying to live a decent, moral life, I could no longer chow down on bacon cheeseburgers. I could not put my preference for the taste of a …
EcocentricOil
ON BOARD THE ARCTIC SUNRISE: I’ve always wanted to write that. I’m currently off the Dry Tortugas south of the Florida Keys, on board a Greenpeace ship. I’m here with a pair of marine biologists from Nova University who have hitched aboard the Arctic Sunrise to do a quick research study on sea sponges in the Tortugas. It’s part of a …
EcocentricTechnology
A little light post for weekend reading. Science magazine has published a special news section on the alternative energy challenge, casting a sober eye on the difficulties—and oppourunities—of leaving behind the age of fossil fuels and scaling up green power. Usually Science studies are behind a paywall (hmm, sounds familiar), but …
EcocentricOil
How sealed does a well have to be before it’s considered sealed? That seems to be the question BP and its accompanying team of government scientists are grappling with as the active phase of the Gulf oil spill appears to enter its final days. Yesterday retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen announced that BP was holding off on finishing …
EcocentricForests
There’s no doubt that recent economic instability has sent gold prices soaring. But gold doesn’t grow on trees–would that it did!—and higher prices for the yellow metal has encouraged companies to go to greater lengths to retrieve the precious element, setting up battles with conservationists.
EcocentricInvasive Species
My magazine story on invasive species and the Asian carp is out today, but you’ll have to go to a magazine newsstand to read it—paywall? (You remember what newsstands look like right? Or perhaps not.) But you can check out a photo essay from Benjamin Lowy on last week’s Redneck Fishing Tournament. I think I convinced him not use the …
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 …
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 …
EcocentricWeather
“2010 is becoming the year of the heatwave, with record temperatures set in 17 countries,” The Guardian newspaper reported today.
For those following the deadly heatwave that has hit eastern Europe in the last 6 weeks, it should comes as no surprise that record highs have been recorded in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. But also Iraq, …
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 …
