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What the fate of two old turtles says about China’s future

Having spent two summers researching amphibians and reptiles, I have a poster of endangered frogs and salamanders on my wall what one might call a healthy fascination with these endearing […]

French government charges fees to new owners of gas-guzzling vehicles

France is supercharging vehicle efficiency -- not by doling out big R&D subsidies for cars that never make it to market, but by instituting a system of efficiency feebates.

In a nutshell: the French ministry of ecology has announced a program that would require purchasers of new gas guzzlers (luxury Mercedes, for example) to pay an extra fee for the privilege. That money is rebated to people who buy super-efficient cars. If it's done right, the system doesn't really involve taxpayers, since the rebates balance out the fees. And it gives huge incentives for sales of the most gas-miserly vehicles.

Voila -- instant fuel efficiency!

Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s just better than knowing

It's well known in environmental advocacy that people can easily be overwhelmed by problems. They wind up feeling paralyzed rather than motivated. I've always treated this as a theoretical point about communications, but I've had to admit that I'm an example. Here's how.

Mountain Equipment Co-op, (aka "the REI of Canada"), just pulled from shelves a batch of polycarbonate plastics, including those ubiquitous Nalgene bottles. According to an article in the Globe and Mail:

Whales on treadmills and dolphin harassment

New Zealand installed its first acoustic fish fence, designed to herd salmon smolt in the right direction during migration ...

... Polish fishermen who obeyed a ban on cod will receive up to $11,000 in revenue lost, but those who defied the ban will face fines up to $7,500 ...

... salmon returns for the year in Vancouver were called "dismal" ...

... for the first time, scientists were able to estimate how much a fin whale can swallow in one lunge for krill, finding that they engulf 2,900 cubic feet in a single gulp -- the equivalent of the volume of a school bus. Measuring the amount is tricky, said one scientist, because "you can't get whales to run on a treadmill in a laboratory" ...

Friday music blogging: Bruce Springsteen

People in my, ahem, age cohort were first exposed to Bruce Springsteen via his 1984 album Born in the USA, which came out when I was 12. As a result, […]

Better management is needed before closing fisheries is the only option left

About thirty years ago, diners around the world developed a taste for the low-fat white meat of a large pelagic fish known as a slimehead. The name was changed to orange roughy, and a delicacy was born.

Unfortunately for the orange roughy, its long lifespan (a hundred years or more) and its late arrival to sexual maturity (at 20 years or more) has made it vulnerable to overfishing. As its popularity in fine restaurants has grown, orange roughy populations have nosedived. And just this week, Australia and New Zealand (the world's largest producer of orange roughy, while the U.S. is the largest consumer) agreed to close a large orange roughy fishery in the Southern Ocean, with managers saying they're not sure when or if the area may ever reopen to fishing because of the damage done.

It doesn't have to come to this. With responsible fishing techniques and sustainable quotas, rare and increasingly rare commercial fish like the roughy, bluefin tuna, Patagonian toothfish (Chilean sea bass), and more can thrive.

Landmark energy bill stalls in the Senate

Today, Senate Republicans blocked efforts to push through the landmark energy bill that was passed by the House yesterday. To cut off debate on the bill and avoid a filibuster, […]

‘Live like a subsidized farmer but on a Hill salary’

This rather droll ad appeared in Roll Call yesterday:

Mexican police conduct anti-logging raid in butterfly habitat

Hundreds of Mexican police raided illegal sawmills near a monarch butterfly reserve yesterday in “the largest seizure of illegally logged wood in the country’s history,” according to the attorney general’s […]

Barge collides with tanker, spilling 2.7 million gallons of oil off South Korean coast

A barge collided with a massive oil tanker this morning about five miles off the coast of South Korea, damaging the tanker’s single hull in three places and resulting in […]