When the fish are coming on board a dozen at a time, five to ten-pounders still alive and thrashing, and you’re pulling them out of the net as fast as you can, blood and slime flying and the captain yelling at everyone to go faster and clear the net before we drift into another boat or out of the district, it’s pretty exhilarating. And when the fishing is good you’re making about $500 an hour, which is also exhilarating. More…
The cumbersomely titled Yasuní-ITT Initiative is more elegant than its name wouldsuggest. It proposes a neat response to two major global problems: North-South inequality and climate change. Recently signed by the Ecuadorian government and the United Nations Development Program, the initiative secures funds from developed countries to preserve a section of Ecuador’s untouched Amazon rainforest from oil exploitation. More…
The farm is owned by a couple in their mid-thirties who live there with their 4-year-old son and a beagle named Barney. They sell most of their produce through a CSA, and the rest at a weekly farmer’s market, along with meat, eggs, and baked goods. At the moment I’m the only intern. More…
The Bella Center sits on the edge of Copenhagen, kilometers from the city center, past a processional of Socialist-bloc apartments, car dealerships, and smoking power plants. It is here that the UNFCCC has been meeting for the last week, as frustrated negotiators try to hammer out a new international climate framework. More…
The texture of the glacial wall, from a distance, like a block of hard cheese, though the ice is unearthly blue, color somehow of the afterlife; a stranded iceberg in the middle of the bay with a look of dark blue molten glass. And now the glacier calves! Ice shears off in a great sudden flake and explodes into the water below with a colossal sound of detonation. More…
Allison Lorentzen,
Anthony Graves,
Carla Blumenkranz,
Chad Harbach,
Emily Votruba,
Keith Gessen,
Marco Roth,
Medi Blum,
Nikil Saval,
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow,
Wesley Yang
When I was in elementary school, we used to play a game that was called “Would you prefer to be frozen or burned alive?” At the time, I always chose frozen. It seemed like it would be possible to just curl up in the snow and die, which I had read about in White Fang. Whereas with burning, what I really imagined was boiling—in a big pot. More…
Only in the last few decades has ecosophy begun to assume its rightful place alongside ecology and economy, with ever greater numbers recognizing the folly in pursuing either of the latter without plenty of the former. Like the IRS agent, who, if provoked, will duly explain that ignorance of the economy is no excuse, I’m here to tell you that ignorance of ecosophy is no excuse. More…
