Thanks, Diane Barber.
Edible-Nest Swiftlet Industry Growing in Indonesia – NYTimes.com
Sukadana, a small coastal city in western Borneo, is in the midst of a building boom. But the new houses are not for people. They are giant birdhouses playing an all-day siren call through booming speakers to a small bird whose edible nests — at almost $1,000 a pound — produce a broth that is highly prized, and highly priced, in China.
via Edible-Nest Swiftlet Industry Growing in Indonesia – NYTimes.com.
‘Green’ Economy Is Real but Needs a Push, Study Suggests – NYTimes.com
(My emphasis below)
The report, “Sizing the Clean Economy,” collected data from every county and major metropolitan areas in the United States from 2003 to 2010. Defining a “green” or “clean” economy as the sector that produces goods and services with an environmental benefit, the study amassed numbers on mascots of green like wind, solar and hydropower and less glamorous sectors like public mass transit and waste management and treatment.
One point the report makes is that while green initiatives are driving growth and innovation, market and policy challenges are preventing them from reaching their full potential. Those obstacles include policy gaps that undercut market demand, shortfalls in financing that lead to uncertainty and instability for investors, and an inadequate system for supporting innovation.
According to the report, the green economy employed 2.7 million people in 2010, or about 2 percent of the American workforce.
To put this number into some perspective, the health care sector, the largest private job provider in the nation, employs 13.8 million people, or 10.2 percent. Despite its relatively modest size, the green economy is still larger than the fossil fuels sector 2.4 million jobs or the biosciences sector 1.4 million jobs.
via ‘Green’ Economy Is Real but Needs a Push, Study Suggests – NYTimes.com.
Study Says Fluids From Hydraulic Fracturing Killed Trees
(My emphasis added to the last line of the excerpt.)
A study that argues for more research into the safe disposal of chemical-laced wastewater resulting from natural gas drilling found that a patch of national forest in West Virginia suffered quick and serious loss of vegetation after it was sprayed with hydraulic fracturing fluids.
The study, by researchers from the United States Forest Service, was published this month in the Journal of Environmental Quality. It said that two years after liquids were legally spread on a section of the Fernow Experimental Forest, within the Monongahela National Forest, more than half of the trees in the affected area were dead.
The researchers said that the disposal section was less than half an acre in size “to minimize the area of forest potentially affected by the fluid application.” About 75,000 gallons were applied over two days in June 2008.
The study’s author, Mary Beth Adams, a soil scientist, said that if the same amount had been spread over a larger area, less environmental damage to the forest would probably have been resulted.
She said that there was little information in the scientific literature about such impacts and that the study indicated that “there are potential effects of natural gas development that we didn’t expect.”
Fluids From Hydraulic Fracturing Killed Trees, Study Says – NYTimes.com.
Can’t Eliminate an Invasive Species? Try Eating It. – NYTimes.com
(My emphases added.)
“Humans are the most ubiquitous predators on earth,” said Philip Kramer, director of the Caribbean program for the Nature Conservancy. “Instead of eating something like shark fin soup, why not eat a species that is causing harm, and with your meal make a positive contribution?”
Invasive species have become a vexing problem in the United States, with population explosions of Asian carp clogging the Mississippi River and European green crabs mobbing the coasts. With few natural predators in North America, such fast-breeding species have thrived in American waters, eating native creatures and out-competing them for food and habitats.
While most invasive species are not commonly regarded as edible food, that is mostly a matter of marketing, experts say. Imagine menus where Asian carp substitutes for the threatened Chilean sea bass, or lionfish replaces grouper, which is overfished.
“We think there could be a real market,” said Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food and Water Watch, whose 2011 Smart Seafood Guide recommends for the first time that diners seek out invasive species as a “safer, more sustainable” alternative to their more dwindling relatives, to encourage fisherman and markets to provide them.
“What these species need now is a better — sexier — profile, and more cooks who know how to use them,” she said. She has enlisted celebrity chefs to promote eating the creatures.Scientists emphasize that human consumption is only part of what is needed to control invasive species and restore native fish populations, and that a comprehensive plan must include restoring fish predators to depleted habitats and erecting physical barriers to prevent further dissemination of the invaders.
via Can’t Eliminate an Invasive Species? Try Eating It. – NYTimes.com.
Book Review – What’s Gotten Into Us? – By McKay Jenkins – NYTimes.com
We all know by now — don’t we? — that many of the synthetic chemicals in our food, personal-care and cleaning products, toys and household goods are harming not just the environment but ourselves. Body-burden tests, for measuring exposure to chemicals, reveal flame retardants, plasticizers, pesticides and perfluorinated chemicals in the blood of almost every person studied. We see rising rates of some cancers, autoimmune disorders, reproductive illnesses, autism and learning disabilities. Meanwhile, our consumption of synthetic chemicals, a majority of which haven’t been tested for human health impacts, has skyrocketed. A growing number of books make the case that these phenomena are linked….
Consumers are hardly blameless, Jenkins says. We’ve allowed ourselves to become alienated from the products we use: we don’t know where they come from or how they’re made (let alone where they go when we’re done with them). The more this physical and psychological distance between our stuff and ourselves grows — a breach filled by brands — the more confused we get. “The dumber we feel, the less confident we are in our decisions,” Jenkins riffs. “The less confident we are, the more susceptible we become to the suggestion that everything is as it should be.” When we reach unthinkingly for a familiar brand, “we implicitly grant authority — and trust — to what manufacturers have told us, that a product is ‘safe.’ ” But doesn’t surrendering to corporate marketers cut both ways? Seventh Generation, a brand synonymous with a lighter environmental impact, is just as eager to win our trust as Dow Chemical.
excerpt from What’s Gotten Into Us? – By McKay Jenkins – NYTimes.com.