22nd March 2011
3rd March 2011
The new school of fish
“Eating sustainably is at the very core of Bay Area culture, an essential part of the local ethos. Our chefs are leaders of the organic movement, and when we sit down in a top-rated restaurant, we take it for granted that the food we’re served has been sourced with the best interests of the planet at heart. We assume that the salad greens are always organic and that the porchetta sandwich we stand in line for is made with meat from a humanely raised, hormone-free pig who spent his days rooting for acorns underneath an oak tree. But when it comes to offering sustainable seafood, very few local restaurants get it right in any consistent way.
The problem isn’t a lack of interest. There is a booming demand for sustainably caught fish. You’ll find it at restaurants across the price spectrum, from Chez Panisse to (I kid you not) McDonald’s. But at the same time, many of our most famous chefs continue to put unsustainable choices like ahi tuna, monkfish, and farmed salmon on their menus, while their most respected suppliers keep selling red-listed fish to whoever wants it. Even the many chefs who go out of their way to ask the right questions of the people they get their fish from can be misled by the half-truths told all along the supply chain. In the end, despite our best intentions, much of what we’re told or assume about the provenance of the seafood we eat is essentially a fish story.
23rd February 2011
Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden
“A handful of dilapidated roads cross the zone, half-overgrown with weeds and grasses, and the whole area is littered with pockets of intense radiation, but nature doesn’t seem to mind. All nature seems to care about is that the people, along with their domestic animals, are for the most part gone. The zone is reverting to one big, untamed forest, and it all sounds like a fantastic success story for nature: remove the humans and the wilderness bounces right back. Lured by tales of mammals unknown in Europe since the Dark Ages, we’re setting out on an atomic safari.
16th November 2010
Fish With The King
“As Gulf fishermen are forced to work for the oil company that destroyed their livelihoods, who will train Louisiana’s next generation to fish?
10th November 2010
Dirty Coal, Clean Future
“To environmentalists, “clean coal” is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world’s energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal—in more-sustainable ways. The good news is that new technologies are making this possible.
8th November 2010
The Tiger’s Revenge
“Deep in the forests of Russia’s Far East, the last Siberian tigers are under siege by runaway logging and poachers who get paid $30,000 per carcass. One tiger decided to fight back.
(via longform.org)
21st October 2010
The Starbucks Cup Dilemma
“Cedar Grove is a best-case answer to the question of what happens when waste leaves your hand. This question has been obsessing Seattle’s second-largest company because of an object that’s sitting at the corner of my desk (and millions of others) right now, in a sweaty puddle of guilt: a single-use paper cup.
11th October 2010
The Disappearing World of the Last of the Arctic Hunters
“Stephen Pax Leonard reports on the unique culture of the Inughuit as the sea ice that has supported their ancient way of life melts beneath them
6th October 2010
Inside the Senate
“How the Senate and the White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change.
