Articles by Sarah Laskow
Sarah Laskow is a reporter based in New York City who covers environment, energy, and sustainability issues, among other things.
All Articles
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How a company you've never heard of could destroy the ocean ecosystem
Omega Protein, Inc. (a company you've never heard of) is quickly overfishing the Atlantic menhaden (a species you've never heard of). As a result, a number of fish that you have heard of -- striped bass, bluefish, tuna, dolphin, seatrout, and mackerel -- as well as the ocean ecosystem as a whole, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Long Island Sound (which you’ve heard of) are suffering.
Menhaden are tiny, bony, oily fish that humans can't eat, but which, according to marine scientists, are "the most important fish in the sea." Menhaden are the main consumers of phytoplankton, and without them, areas like the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound are clogged with algae. They are also a staple food for bigger, tastier fish, who, deprived of menhaden, are growing sad and malnourished.
In the past 25 years, the menhaden population has shrunk from 160 billion to about 20 billion. -
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Study: Earth losing its climate change defenses
Like your body, the planet can heal itself a little bit. Some places, like forests and oceans, are carbon sinks -- they absorb carbon from the atmosphere, slowing down the rate at which everything goes to hell. But climate change is no papercut, and as it gets worse, it’s actually breaking the planet’s immune system. Two new studies in Nature argue that two types of carbon sinks -- oceans and soil -- are becoming less effective as climate change advances.
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Critical List: Yellowstone pipe could have carried tar-sands oil; L.A. survived Carmageddon
The Yellowstone River spill could have included heavier, more corrosive tar-sands oil, federal officials said. This type of oil eats through pipes more quickly, and if ExxonMobiil was using those pipes to transport tar-sands oil, that decision could have contributed to the spill.
Carmageddon = over. And it turns out that, given the choice to avoid the freeway by plane or bike, it’s faster to bike.
It's not the best idea to buy meat from Japan right now. Just saying.
Your fish oil tablets are destroying marine ecosystems. -
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2011 natural disasters cost a record $265 billion
Politicians might not believe in climate change, but insurance companies do. They track disasters, and it turns out that disasters just in the first six months of this year already cost the world more than any other year of disasters on record.
The price tag for 2011 disasters reached $265 billion.
