Environment

Though it would seem that only global cooperation can solve global environmental problems, globalization in its current form works against sustainability. WTO-style capital liberalization causes investment to shift quickly to the site of highest returns, irrespective of national borders. To a far greater extent than in the past, fear of disinvestment causes CEOs to strive for maximum short-term profits. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that corporate short-termism is incompatible with long-term sustainability. When all operational inefficiencies have been squeezed out of a company, all…

Five years after the European Union imposed a temporary ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, an “experts committee” of the member states has now finally voted to make the ban permanent. This was hardly a surprise. The vote followed shortly after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published their advisory opinion that neonics “represent a risk to wild bees and honeybees,” a finding that got banner headlines across Europe and the U.S. Any reporter who actually read the report, however, would have discovered that EFSA found nothing of the sort. What they actually found was that it’s very…

If you offer a wealthy elite any fish that is not gathered by depleting the oceans, they will recoil in horror. It is unclear why they recognize that farms are essential for growing vegetables but think farmed fish should only be for the poor.  The science says otherwise. Aquatic farming -- aquaculture -- can help feed the future global population while substantially reducing one of the biggest environmental impacts of protein production -- land use -- without requiring people to entirely abandon protein as a food source. A new study from UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological…

A week after the Science March, environmental groups have turned up the heat on politicians, hoping to use the famous DDT strategy (ignore scientists, get a politician to do the work) to get a ban on a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids (neonics), which are sprayed on seeds so that there is less environmental strain and food waste. Despite being in use for decades, during which bee levels have not gone down, anti-science groups like Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Union of Concerned Scientists have continued to raise money promising donors they will get them banned. They have been using a…

A new study finds that Americans waste nearly a pound of food per person per day. And at the top of it is fruits and vegetables. Way below those is dairy, and meat waste is almost a third of what fruits and vegetables are. People who believe they "eat more healthy" than others - the organic elite and vegetarians - have a food fetish for fresh vegetables. And Americans are told by government committees and pyramids they should want to eat vegetables, so they buy them and then throw them out when they start to spoil. When is the last time you threw out moldy pizza? The results were determined…

Though we read a lot of claims about impending extinction, the biological reality is that we don't know anything about 99.9999999 percent of species that have ever lived. And then there are species only newly discovered that are immediately declared endangered because an academic only recently named them in a print journal. Sometimes things are declared extinct because we just didn't look all that hard. Like the Lahontan cutthroat trout (lacustrine LCT). Weighing in at 40 pounds, with stories of the trout getting up to 60, the Lahontan is the largest species of cutthroat trout and…

In 1984, activist groups won a stunning victory for political allies they had placed inside the Federal government. Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 gave "deference" to agencies when interpreting statutes Congress required them to administer. The White House, regardless of voters or Congress, could legislate using regulations and be judge, jury and executioner when it came to science. Perfect for activism, but terrible for public trust in science.  Since then, Chevron deference has shielded any number of attempts to undermine public confidence…

Plant lovers love peat moss, it is the major component of potting mix and popular in greenhouses and gardens, but the 'back to nature' movement has caused it to be depleted faster than it can re-form, and it contributes to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Science may have the solution. Similar to charcoal, biochar is produced through a process called pyrolysis, or heating to high temperatures in the absence of oxygen. And like charcoal, it can be derived from virtually any organic substance. To save the peat moss, we have to burn some other stuff. But even then burning…

The definition of "endangered" is vague but in no dictionary does it mean an animal that does not even live in a state must be placed there, with private landowners footing the bill for $20 million, in order to keep a creature from declining in population. Yet so far a series of court decisions have upheld that the federal government can do just that, making Fish and Wildlife Service, which with its hand-picked consultants controls how the Endangered Species Act is implemented, the most powerful regulatory body in America. Some time in a few months beginning in January, the Supreme Court…

This is a story that's running at the moment - hugely sensationalized and made as pessimistic and gloomy as could be. in many of the papers, especially the sensationalist press, it's presented as a "Doomsday prediction". It's nothing of the sort.The number of scientists, 15,000 is correct, and that they were warning about climate change and other issues is correct, so the snesationalist press got that much right. However, they don't say the world will be destroyed. The letter actually says there is much we are doing right, but that there is much more we have to do to see ourselves through to…