"Fish poaching" and "illegal fishing" may sound like misdemeanors, on the cosmic scale of crime, but they provide an astonishing mass of the fish people eat around the world. And they amount to a uniquely self-destructive problem that might one day solve itself by collapsing fish populations. “China is the largest fisher in the world, and the illegal fishers would come second,” an EU fisheries commissioner, Joe Borg, memorably told the BBC in 2009. “We are speaking of a very, very big problem.” This winter, a new proposal went before the U.S. Senate to help fight illegal fishing. ... Read More
Something’s Fishy About That Red Snapper
January 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
High-seas fish poaching is more than just a matter of sneaking marine life out of a restricted corner of the ocean; it’s an organized industrial crime that can strip coastal fishing grounds bare and deny even subsistence livelihoods to local fishermen. Foreign ships poaching in African waters, for example, have been a problem for years in Africa, east and west, and the crime fuels piracy, as well as illegal immigration. “The high seas today are like the American Wild West of the 19th century,” said the Pew Environment Group in 2011, “only the bandits are huge factory fishing ... Read More
Neo-Nazis and ‘Defensive Democracy’
November 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The weird revelations in Germany this month about a small group of neo-Nazi terrorists who killed at least nine foreigners and survived “underground” for 13 years by knocking over the occasional bank have, understandably, embarrassed a number of law enforcement officials. It’s even more confusing to Germans that the group managed to kill a policewoman in 2007 and plot against a very specific list of 88 politicians and public figures without coming to the attention of “Verfassungsschutz” authorities — Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV. The BfV ... Read More
America Edges to Brink of Armed Police Drones
November 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A county north of Houston made news in Europe at the end of October by taking delivery of a new “weaponizable” drone, a squat remote-controlled helicopter called a ShadowHawk that can fire Tasers or beanbags at people on the ground. Police in Montgomery County say the drone would chase drug smugglers or escaping criminals. Alarmed Europeans wondered if some aspect of drone warfare — so far a problem only for terrorists and other strangers in poor and distant countries — had come home to the First World. “In the end the police have the same consideration as the military,” writes ... Read More
Oklahoma Earthquakes and the Wages of Fracking
November 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When towns to the east of Oklahoma City jiggled over the weekend with two of the state’s strongest-ever earthquakes, some people asked an obvious question: Does the recent expansion of “fracking” for natural gas in Oklahoma — shooting water and chemicals and sand into shale deposits to free trapped methane — account for the trembling ground? Maybe. Oil and gas exploration has caused minor earthquakes in the U.S. since the ’30s, and a new report from Britain suggests that fracking itself can cause small quakes. It was “highly probable,” according to the report, that a ... Read More
The Icelandic Model of Handling Debt Crises
November 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The latest euro rescue plan lurched into crisis this week after the Greek prime minister decided to put the package to a popular vote. This unexpected gesture of independence "sent tremors through Europe's financial markets," according to The New York Times, and "hammered" U.S. markets, "showing once again how the domestic politics of even the smallest members of the European Union can create troubles" beyond all proportion. The panic over Greece, of course, is panic over the euro. Another European country, Iceland, took a far more radical path than did Greece, yet it went largely ... Read More
More Evidence That MDMA Could Ease PTSD
October 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
British doctors want to repeat the findings of an American study that shows MDMA — the active drug in ecstasy — to be hugely helpful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The idea is not quite to hand combat veterans tabs of “E” for a night of clubbing, but the researchers do think a number of currently illegal drugs, like LSD or magic mushrooms, could help trauma-damaged brains. “I feel quite strongly that many drugs with therapeutic potential have been denied to patients and researchers because of the drugs’ regulation,” Dr. David Nutt, a controversial ... Read More
Wood Pellets Energizing Europe, Timber Industry
October 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One strange side effect of the European campaign to slash emissions by 2020 is a boom in North American timber products. A chief at one British Columbia wood-processing firm, Pinnacle Renewable Energy, made a slightly surprising remark to Germany’s Manager Magazin this year: “We’ve grown to a size where we can fill whole cargo ships,” said Leroy Reitsma, Pinnacle’s chief operating officer, “and that makes it profitable to export wood pellets.” Wood pellets? Until recently they were a boring product for home stoves, usually found in northern supermarkets next to the ... Read More
Falling Cost of Renewables Softens Nuclear Shutdown
October 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When Germany decided this year to phase out its nuclear sector, eight of its 17 power plants were mothballed immediately, and Germans learned just how expensive it can be to shut down a reactor: about a billion euros. That didn't surprise industry analysts, but it also doesn't include the cost of storing nuclear waste. So German power companies — though they'd been ordered to sock away enough cash to decommission their reactors — will probably ask the government for more help. "Total costs [for all reactors] might yet top the €32.5 billion that companies have set aside for expenses ... Read More
Greece, North Africa Promote Their Solar Projects
September 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
If you listen to solar advocates in Europe, the upheavals on this side of the globe — revolutions in North Africa, debt misery in Greece — have only brightened the prospects for solar power. German plans to phase out nuclear power have put at least one large nation in the market for new sources of power, and two would-be providers have sworn that global crises won't hurt their ambitions. On the contrary — they'll help! (Just watch out for those other solar salesmen.) First there's Greece. Germany's perennial project to both aid Greece and save the euro might include a deal to buy ... Read More
