Recent Articles

Climate

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 […]

Ecosystems, Forests, Human Landscape, Indigenous Peoples

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 […]

Actions, Conservation, Ecosystems, Energy, Fisheries, Human Landscape, Oceans

An Unsettling Experiment: Dispersants in the Gulf

On April 20th, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, kicking off a long summer of videos of crude gushing into the sea. Two years later, the offshore oil business is booming, and conventional wisdom has it that the Gulf has fully recovered from the disaster. Not so fast, says Sandy Aylesworth, in an in-depth investigative report.

Culture

Dear Earth: Happy 400th Birthday! Love, Groupon.

Ah, Earth Day: an opportunity for the country’s worst polluters to rise, phoenix-like, from puddles of industrial effluent and recreate themselves as environmentalists. An opportunity for America’s retailers to shamelessly hijack the words “eco-friendly” and “sustainable” and repurpose them to quicken the pulse of fetishistic shoppers. An opportunity for a free canvas shopping bag with every purchase!

I was hardly surprised when Groupon sent me an email proffering Earth