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The great sockeye salmon run from the Pacific Ocean to Canada’s Fraser River was for decades an example of nature’s fruitful bounty. Some 60 million fish returned annually to spawn. But starting in the 1990s, the sockeye’s productivity declined precipitously—and in 2009 only 1 million fish returned to the run.
On the main page I have a piece on a fascinating Science study that showed how scientists were able to genetically engineer chickens to make them virtually unable to pass on avian flu. That could have major implications for influenza—birds can spread new flu viruses to human beings—and for veterinary disease, if researchers can engineer [...]
In a decision that could have a major impact on both the mining industry and the Obama Administration’s relationship with conservatives, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it was vetoing the largest single mountaintop mining removal permit in West Virginia history. In using its authority under the Clean Water Act to block approval [...]
Residents of Brisbane, Australia must have woke up Thursday morning with at least some sense of relief. The swollen Brisbane River that runs through the nation’s third largest city did not reach the catastrophic levels as they were predicted to overnight. With at least 25 dead and a dozen still missing, Australia did not face [...]
New Yorkers like myself awoke this morning to a fluffy layer of fresh snow. (And the sound of scores of plows sweeping the streets clean, as our billionaire mayor tries to make us forget about the Blizzard of 2009.) New Englanders are being walloped with a full-on major snowstorm—though hardened Bostonians just shrug it off—while [...]
One of the surprising facts about the devastating earthquake in Haiti, which struck the island country a year ago today, is that by seismic standards it wasn’t all that big. The temblor was 7.0 on the Richter scale—strong, but hardly record-breaking. The earthquake that hit Chile a month and a half later was an 8.8—some [...]
Even before the earthquake a year ago that killed at least 220,000 people, Haiti was an ecological nightmare. Large-scale deforestation has left less than 2% of the original forest cover standing—a fact that is starkly apparent when flying between Haiti and its neighboring country the Dominican Republic, which has conserved far more of its forests. [...]
It won’t surprise readers of this blog that I agree with the BP Oil Spill Commission that there are serious safety problems with offshore drilling that need to be tackled to prevent another Deepwater Horizon. But the oil industry doesn’t quite see it that way. From the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) response to the commission’s [...]
My time.com piece on the Gulf oil spill report—and the impact it will have on the deepwater drilling industry—is up on the main page. Check it out here.
The National Commission of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling released its final report this morning. (I know—you were watching the Verizon iPhone launch.) We’ll have a story up soon on the mainpage about the report and the impact it may have on the offshore drilling industry—I’m guessing not that much—I wanted [...]
