The Devastating Environmental Impact of the Space Program
In our rush to explore space, we made a huge mess of our environment. But it’s the space agencies that are now helping us clean it up.
Category: environment
Meet the Tiny Desert Slime that Holds our Topsoil Together. For Now.
If your eyes were microscopes and you had really good sunblock, you could lie down in the Arizona Desert and watch tiny microbes build colonies of millions around you. These greeblies, called cyanobacteria, colonize the very top layer of soil and need little more than sunshine to survive. In their wake, they leave a trail…
The Big Fish in Sustainable Seafood
So here we are, my husband and I, standing in a busy Asian supermarket on a Saturday morning and I have two cuts of frozen fish in my hands. My husband and I are discussing which one to buy and we’re considering type of fish, cut, price and how far it’s traveled to our plate.…
A Mixtape for Planet Earth
Still on a high at the end of a successful green film festival and pumped by the news that the US Government is taking real action on climate change, I have made a mixtape for the Earth of my favorite environmental tunes. These are songs that turned me into an environmentalist. I hope you love…
Can we bring extinct species back? Should we?
In the deep freeze at the San Diego Zoo, genetic material from a small, nondescript Hawaiian bird waits for a day – sometime very soon – when science will use it to improve biodiversity. What’s the catch? The honeycreeper, called the po’ouli, is thought to be extinct and scientists will have to use cloning techniques…
Recycling our environmental guilt
Between gulps of G&T, my heartbroken friend is cataloging all the things that are wrong with her freshly ended relationship: his emotional immaturity, her unmet need for stability, and then the kicker: “I can’t commit to someone who doesn’t bloody recycle!” I ask her why. Because his time and energy was worth more to him…