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Revisiting Into the Wild

When the news broke 15 years ago about an idealistic young man who starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness, I reacted badly.

Plenty of folks, myself included, go alone into the wild and emerge unscathed; in fact, restored to Muirean health and sanity. The national fascination with Chris McCandless' sad end seemed morbid to me -- a morality tale told by the comfortable to justify their easy, unexamined lives.

I still think a sick fascination is part of what made Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild a bestseller. But I confess I have read only the excerpt from it published over a decade ago in Outside magazine, which may not do the book justice. It was somewhat misleadingly subtitled "How Christopher McCandless Lost His Way in the Wilds," and mostly focused on the mistakes he made, his tragic death.

Many people who heard of this story didn't want to take time to follow a reckless youth. I was one of them. But then I saw the movie, and I saw the young actor playing Chris McCandless make him become the man he wanted to be -- "Alexander Supertramp."

He had an extraordinary life; giving away his inheritance, burning his cash, walking off into the desert. He wanted meaning, more than anything. You could question his sanity, but not his sincerity. And nearly everyone he met fell in love with him, one way or another.

Six tons of fish soup in Russia, 500 tons of pee in the Pacific

Investigators found that fisherman caught twice their legal quota of bluefin tuna in European waters this year, despite an early closure to the season due to the stocks' precipitous decline ...

... a trout farm in Nova Scotia was torn apart by Tropical Storm Noel, freeing an estimated 500,000 fish and causing $1 million in damages ...

... endangered humpback and fin whales swam hundreds of miles north of their usual habitats in search of colder waters. "All signs point to global warming," said an advocate ...

... Korean scientists successfully transported a live flatfish out of water for a 20-hour transatlantic flight to Los Angeles. The fish went into an induced hibernation inside a plastic bag ...

... an Australian company was planning to use 500 tons of industrial urea in a bid to promote plankton growth in the Pacific. The company preferred the term "nutrient injection" to "dumping" ...

Friday music blogging: The Go! Team

2005’s debut album from The Go! Team — Thunder, Lighting, Strike — was a revelation. It sounded like nothing else on the planet. Reviewers fumbled for descriptions: late-’70s-cop-show-theme-song funk meets […]

New study finds that pollution from ships kills 60,000 a year

It's surprising how much pollution ships emit: over 2,000 tons of diesel soot a year in southern California, for example, about 10 percent of the total in the region.

Worse, a new study by researchers at the University of Delaware and Rochester Institute of Technology finds that the burning of cheap, dirty, sulfurous "residual oil" on ships kills an estimated 60,000 people around the world. "Premature mortality" is the phrase used in the study.

Annual average contribution of shipping to (particulate matter) PM<sub>2.5</sub&gt concentrations for Case 2b (in µg/m³). Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society

(h/t: The Blue Marble)

FEMA prohibits employees from entering toxic trailers

Concerned about formaldehyde fumes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has prohibited its employees from entering thousands of stored trailers. And the hurricane victims living in some 50,000 trailers in Louisiana […]

Beijing temporarily clears the air

I arrived in Beijing in late October, in time for the last days of the Communist Party's 17th National Congress. That's the top political conference that takes place once every five years, and the city was swarming with national and international visitors and press.

That day there were blue skies in Beijing. No kidding. The streets were swept clean, the sidewalk vendors gone, the DVD hawkers on holiday. There were many more police on the street, fewer cars. The sunset looked oily, a slick translucent glow to the clouds -- but the last time I visited Beijing in April, I hadn't even seen the sun through the smog.

Beijing during the Congress. Photo: Christina Larson

I spoke with a representative from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau the following Monday who neither confirmed nor denied -- typical here -- what everyone else told me: In time for the big event, the city had ordered official cars off the road and shuttered surrounding factories. And voila, brighter skies. (As a test, I even went for a run.)

Two days later, the conference was over. The skies were grey, the sun obscured. There were once again cigarette butts and orange peels on the sidewalk; the clack-clack of sidewalk cobblers, and the men waving "Bourne Identity 3" DVDs. I coughed as I walked down the street; the air left a strange aftertaste.

Why Bush’s water-bill veto was actually a good idea

Michael Grunwald, senior correspondent for

He was the toast of Congress earlier this year, but yesterday Bush was less popular.

Photo: whitehouse.gov

Hooray! The Everglades and coastal Louisana have been rescued! Activists and politicians alike are giddy over the news that Congress overwhelmingly overrode President Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act yesterday. The override authorizes $5 billion worth of new Army Corps of Engineers projects for the dying Everglades and the devastated Louisiana coast, plus another $18 billion worth of new projects for the rest of the country. It was the first veto override of the Bush era, an unprecedented bipartisan rebuke to an anti-environmental White House. The Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Parks Conservation Association are celebrating. So are the elected officials of Florida and Louisiana, even Bush-friendly Republicans like Senators Mel Martinez and David Vitter.

You'd think I'd be fired up, too. I wrote a book about the plight of the Everglades. I wrote an angry Time Magazine cover story about the plight of coastal Louisiana. I hold no brief for the global warming denier in the White House.

But this time, Bush was right.

Simon & Schuster joins the ranks of greener publishers

Random House has done it. Scholastic has done it. Even a publisher of the Bible is going green. So hey, Simon & Schuster: welcome aboard! The publisher, which counts such […]

Congress squabbles over how to spend oil fund … that doesn’t exist

There are plenty of reasons we’re glad we aren’t members of Congress. Tops among them? Having to argue, with a straight face, about who’s misspending money that doesn’t exist. This […]

California sues feds over vehicle-emissions rule

After months of tough talk and finger-wagging, the state of California on Thursday filed suit against the U.S. EPA to force a decision on a contentious greenhouse-gas emissions rule. At […]