josh donlan | July 8, 2008As presidential politics ramp up and the environment becomes part of the rhetoric, it reminded me of a essay I wrote a couple of years ago as part of book project entitled Thirty-five Years Since Earth Day: Visions of a New Generation. The editor ended up dropping the ball on the book, but my essay is still lingering. So I thought I would share it here. My essay addresses the state of biodiversity and reads much like a open letter to the president and voters.
Perhaps some of you will enjoy some or all of it here: History, our gardens, and the future of biodiversity: Why we should care and…
rolson | July 6, 2008As far as anyone that I've spoken with in Hollywood knows, this has never been done before. No one has ever organized 50 bloggers to post their reviews of a small movie all on the same day, which is what will happen next Tuesday, July 15, for my new film Sizzle. Turns out it's an interesting idea. The reason it's so interesting: Independent film distribution is in absolute chaos. I've been hearing this for the past year, but last month it came to a head when Mark Gill, the former president of Miramax, gave a very important speech at the L.A. Film Festival titled, "Yes, the Sky Really is…
jjacquet | July 5, 2008Check out some thoughts on overfishing and sustainable seafood (including my own) compiled by Greenpeace here.
rolson | July 3, 2008They're making progress. Check out the map. They're halfway down Baja and a couple hundred miles out to sea. As you're reading this right now, Dr. Marcus Ericksen and Joel Paschal are bobbing on the surface, eating their beans, corn and fish, and calling attention to the sad situation of plastics in the sea. It's been a month since they left Long Beach harbor, however, they spent more than the first week hiding out at San Nicholas Island waiting for a storm to blow by. Now they're well on their way. As Marcus keeps emphasizing, quoting Captain Charles Moore, sailboats don't have ETAs,…
josh donlan | July 1, 2008Here's one for you, just in case you weren't confused enough about which foods you should eat. The diary industry is known for its use of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST), a protein hormone that boosts milk production. You may have noticed it on your pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia: "No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from recombinant bovine growth hormone treated and non recombinant bovine growth hormone treated cows". Its use is controversial, as are its potential human impacts. The product has one seller: Monsanto. It is banned in Canada, and parts…
jjacquet | June 30, 2008I spoke with my sometimes co-blogger Randy Olson this morning. He's up to his neck in Sizzle hustling (though he did have time last week to host a dinner with Carl Zimmer, Chris Mooney and friends as Carl was in L.A. promoting his new book). The Sizzle folks have come up with a rather novel idea which will play out here on ScienceBlogs in a couple weeks. They put out an invitation to Science Bloggers to review the movie, got 40 replies, added on a few major environmental bloggers, and now have over 50 bloggers who will all be posting their reviews of the movie on SIZZLE TUESDAY, July 15.…
jjacquet | June 27, 2008Believe it. Pigs and poultry gobble down 14 million tonnes of seafood (more than twice the amount the Japanese consume) every year because we feed it to them. Read my full post on the subject at The Gristmill.
josh donlan | June 26, 2008In this month's issue of Orion Magazine, I wrote a brief piece on the idea of bringing back North America's charismatic megafauna, and its potential benefits to society along with the challenges involved. Click here to read the article.
rolson | June 25, 2008My phone rang at 8 this morning and the caller I.D. said, "Out of Area." That was an understatement. It was Marcus Eriksen, calling on the satellite phone on board Junk Raft, from 5 miles south of Guadalupe Island, which is about halfway down the Baja Penninsula. We talked for about 15 minutes. They're doing great!
They've been at sea for about two weeks now (while they left Long Beach on June 1, they ended up spending over a week at San Nicholas Island waiting out a storm). The raft is performing perfectly. They had added two smaller sails that enable them to make 90 degrees against…
jjacquet | June 24, 2008Mark Powell at Blogfish points to an article in last week's Miami Herald where a reporter had to bow out of his search for sustainable seafood because it was too much work and too expensive. The messages are, indeed, too mixed and confusing (we established that after the episode last summer that involved Al Gore eating (un?)sustainable toothfish). Witness the confusion yourself firsthand at this website from the makers of Fishbase, which compiles the recommendations from different sustainable seafood advocates for different fish. For some fish (e.g., Atlantic salmon) there is unanimity,…
jjacquet | June 23, 2008I just finished teaching a 200-level course on Marine Science at Western Washington University and this quarter, just as last quarter, I offered the students extra credit if they wrote a letter to their representative about an ocean issue and proposed solution to the problem that they learned about in class. The letters must come in an addressed, stamped, unsealed envelope and this year I received more than 40 of them, some of them stuffed with scientific studies we had read, many of them calling for more marine protected areas. It's a really rewarding assignment for them and for me. I'm…
josh donlan | June 22, 2008In some conservation circles, there has been a lot of talk lately about the newly planned damns in southern Chile. In some ways, its a classic debate: finding a balance between energy needs and preserving wild places. But a different kind of damn is a much larger threat to southern South America: beaver damns. North American beavers were introduced to Tierra del Fuego island back in the mid 1950s; today they have spread throughout the island and onto the mainland - covering more than 14 million hectares, and causing widespread ecosystem damage. Over the past year, I have been part for a…
josh donlan | June 20, 2008John McCain announced his new goal of pushing through 45 nuclear reactors by 2030. Whether you are pro- or anti-nuclear (or somewhere in between), 45 by 2030 will be too late for mitigating climate change. This is an important point that is often overlooked. Calls for carbon reductions from the IPCC and others require major actions pre-2030. The bureaucratic hurdles associated with building nuclear reactors in the US takes them off the table in terms of being a tool in the quiver to abate on-coming climate change in the next two decades. Is including nuclear in our long-term energy strategic…
jjacquet | June 18, 2008Yesterday, Greenpeace-USA released a report criticizing supermarkets for buying unsustainable seafood. Greenpeace-Canada also released a similar report, which I spoke about this morning on CTV news. As I said in the interview, if we want sustainable seafood to become something more than just yuppie food, we're going to have to affect behavior on a big scale and supermarkets (where, in Canada, for instance, two-thirds of seafood is sold) are one medium for doing this. One way to motivate supermarkets to change their buying behavior is through affecting their reputation with negative…
josh donlan | June 15, 2008While China has now clearly overtaken the United States in carbon emissions, carbon regulation appears to be finally coming to DC. While legislation failed last week in the Senate, 54 Senators were in favor of the bill - demonstrating bi-partisan support for climate change regulation. I was in DC last week for the Katoomba Meeting, an international coalition of environmental organizations, financial instituions, and intergovernmental agencies dedicated to building an infratructure fund for the planet. Senator John Kerry addressed the group, and was confident that Congress will pass climate…
jjacquet | June 11, 2008Since we're on the subject of eating lower on the food web, check out this wonderful, solutions-oriented article on Putting Meat Back in Its Place by Mark Bittman for The New York Times (and its imaginative artwork)...
jjacquet | June 10, 2008Taras Grescoe, author of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood has a new article out in the New York Times on why we should opt for sardines over salmon. On the one hand, I disagree with Grescoe's overall premise that we can steer consumption to achieve a desirable outcome. Consumers alone cannot save our fish. On the other hand, I commend his efforts to raise awareness and support for eating lower on the marine food web. Check out his article and see what you think...
jjacquet | June 9, 2008It's movie time again for my sometimes co-blogger, Dr. Randy Olson, who today opens the website for his new movie, "Sizzle: A global warming comedy." Just the fact that they have been invited to the Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival of Los Angeles for their world premiere tells you that it's something more than your standard dry science documentary. Tickets go on sale June 16 and you can attend the premiere if you're able to get one before it sells out, which it will because it's part of the festival so there's only a limited number available. He says the whole cast and crew will be…
josh donlan | June 9, 2008Peter Barnes, founder of one of the first social businesses - Working Assets - is full of good ideas. And people are starting to notice. His most recent book Capitalism 3.0 builds on his previous book Who Owns The Sky, which lays out a public trust model for public goods - like the sky and the carbon (and other pollutants) that enter it. His model works much like oil in Alaska: the oil belongs to the citizens of Alaska and thus every year they get a check for it. Well, the sky belongs to you and I, so those who want to spew carbon into it, should do so responsibly and pay for it. And that…
josh donlan | June 6, 2008550 cites will have populations of more than 1 million by 2015. 58% of the known human pathogens are zoonotic - they can jump between humans and animals. 371 people have been diagnosed with avian influenza as of March 2008, including 235 deaths. 5,000 western lowland gorillas have died from Ebola virus over the past several year. Visit Wildlife Conservation Society's State of the Wild website (or buy the book) to learn more about the state of the wild. You can also watch video presentations of the recent event in New York City.