EcocentricOil
It’s link day! I have a story on the main page about the possible human health impacts of the spill—and the difficulty in tracking those effects. As I’ve written before, the scariest impacts could be to the psyches of Gulf residents—especially as this slow-motion disaster moves on and on.
Micrographs made in a Florida State University chemistry lab reveal kaleidoscopic patterns in popular cocktails
EcocentricTechnology
I have a piece in the paper edition of TIME—the one that comes with stamps and everything—on the legacy of Thomas Edison and the crisis in American scientific innovation.
Update: So TIME has put its magazine content behind a paywall. Brave new world of journalism! Well technically not a paywall because right now there’s no way to …
EcocentricInvasive Species
Fishermen in Lake Clumet, Illinois—just six miles downstream from Lake Michigan—netted a fish on Tuesday. That generally being what fishermen do, the news wouldn’t have caused much of a stir, but this was no ordinary fish. They caught a 20 lb. bighead carp, one of a number of Asian carp species that were imported into the U.S. in …
EcocentricPolitics
The National Enquirer—the once-scorned supermarket tabloid that scooped the mainstream press on John Edwards’ extramarital affair—broke a story yesterday about a masseuse in Portland Oregon, who claimed that Al Gore tried to force her to have sex with him and subjected her to “unwanted sexual touching.” Detectives at the time passed …
EcocentricOil
Billy Nungesser is mad. This by itself is not unusual—as the president of Plaquemines parish in southeastern Louisiana, Nungesser has been dealing with the oil spill since day one, and since maybe day two he’s been angry with BP and the federal government’s sluggish response to the catastrophe. Nungesser—a constant presence by …
EcocentricEcocentric
For the past four years, the U.N.’s annual climate talks have been led by a dapper Swiss diplomat named Yvo de Boer. In that time period, the chances of a global climate deal have gone from unthinkable to inevitable and now, seemingly impossible. Through the impossibly long negotiating sessions and the walkouts and the protests and …
EcocentricRegulation
A troubling first sign that Europe’s fiscal crisis will hit the renewable energy sector emerged in Italy this week when the country’s austerity budget halted a practice whereby the government acted as a buyer of last resort for “green certificates” issued to support development of clean energy projects.
The Wall Street Journal …
EcocentricOil
Over the past week or so, as BP has blunted the Gulf spill by channeling more and more of the oil into containers on the surface, it’s been easy to think that the accident could be managed, even if sealing the well has proved impossible so far. But the challenge of working 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the ocean means that a …
EcocentricEndangered Species
When Iceland resumed commercial whaling in 2006, an old whaling station in a deep, beautiful green fjord called Hvalfjordur — or ‘whale fjord’ — was dusted off about an hour’s drive outside the capital of Reykjavik. The company that had lobbied the government to resume commercial whaling was, in fact, the only company that …
