You’ve probably eaten seaweed, used it for walking, or taken it along with your morning vitamins.
Recent Articles
Wager for Rain
For decades, Southwestern scientists have tried to engineer their way out of a chronic water problem. Are their best solutions any less an act of prayer than a rain dance?
If You Love Your Electrons, Set Them Free
For a nation so devoted to capitalism, our energy markets are heavily rigged to price out clean-tech. If a carbon tax is out of the question for now, mechanisms to favor CO2-free electrons may lie in transmission.
Talking Tongass: First Impressions from the Last Frontier
After several weeks of traveling, I’ve finally arrived in Sitka, Alaska, where I’m working with the US Forest Service in the Tongass National Forest.
Perspectives from the People’s Land: When the Cree Say No
Ed. note: This is the third installment in Perspectives from the People’s Land, Naomi Heindel’s blog about her summer research in James Bay, Quebec. Follow the links to check out Part 1 and Part 2. What does it mean when a Cree steward, or tallyman, says “no” to proposed development? “Sometimes there’s something very large behind that two-letter word,” explains […]
Conga No Va: Peruvians Die in Gold Mine Protests
Protests against a planned gold mine in Cajamarca, Peru, turned violent last week, resulting in five deaths. The conflict pits American mining giant Newmont against locals who claim that the mine will poison their water and destroy their livelihoods. FES’ own Vrinda Manglik was in Peru to witness the protests.
Climate and the Coast: The Frontlines of Poverty
Editor’s note: This post is the second installment of Climate and the Coast, Angela Whitney’s summer blog about her research on fishing communities in the Philippines. Click here to read the first entry. he baby’s head is so swollen that her eyes are forced back into her head. Flies swarm over her when they remove the mesh covering her prostrate […]
Will Nanotubes Create an Environmental Health Crisis?
Carbon nanotubes are among the most extraordinary materials ever constructed, capable of revolutionizing industries from solar energy to space travel. But for all their futuristic promise, nanotubes pose a grave environmental health threat, and have been linked to lung cancer. Will nanotubes change the world for better, or for worse?
Three reasons America should ratify the Law of the Sea right now
For three decades the United States has shamefully failed to ratify the UN’s Law of the Sea. Now more than ever, it’s time for America to get with the program.
Climate and the Coast: Learning to Love Filipino Culture
Maybe it was the first time I rode on a sakayan, a handmade pontoon boat; or perhaps it was when I sat down to hire my research assistant; or possibly it happened when I first saw bags of live, brightly colored reef fish being offloaded from boats into a truck, destined for sale to a pet store: somewhere along the way, […]
Perspectives from the People’s Land: First Nations, Forestry, and Ferocious Flies
Have you ever been in northern Quebec in bug season? Black flies, horse flies, deer flies, moose flies, then a fifteen minute “bug window” – usually just before dusk, during the changing of the guard – followed by mosquitoes and no-see-ums. I’ve spent my summers in northern Quebec canoeing and portaging, splitting firewood and scouting rapids, and the bugs have […]
Preserving Subsistence: A Land Use Battle in an Alaskan Wilderness
Preserving Subsistence was originally published on May 6, 2012 in These Fifty States, a Yale College publication devoted to capturing different aspects of place across America. Find them at thesefiftystates.org. Ricky Ashby is not an easy man to track down. He has no phone, no office door, no email address. He lives alone in a cabin on the Noatak River in […]