Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

The Invisible Sea Creatures Worth More Than Uranium, Silver, and Kobe Beef Combined

April 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
elver

There is something happening in Maine, which is notable in itself because, well, Maine. But it's also notable because it involves Native Americans, the government, and obviously lots of money. Oh, and these crazy-expensive, glass-colored baby eels. So, these eels. They're called elvers, and in North America they're usually born near the Bahamas and then carried up the East Coast—as far north as Canada—by currents. The Economist says they "look rather like clear noodles." They're worth about $2,600 a pound. For reference: uranium is around $42.25 per pound, silver $445 per pound, ... Read More

Is Our Disconnect From Nature a Disorder?

April 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: EUGENE SERGEEV/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Somewhere during the American experience, between Teddy Roosevelt and color TV, being outdoors and maybe even working up a sweat started to lose its universal appeal. There remain those who fetishize the outdoors, from Ted Nugent to REI shoppers, and the urge to connect with nature never vanished. But as Americans became more urban and more cocooned in their cars and air conditioning, the values of nature were honored more by their absence than in their activities. The price of this disconnect is usually tallied via our bodies, with a simple equation that a lack of outdoor activity must ... Read More

‘Let’s Work Together’ Message Can Be Counterproductive

April 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: LEXAARTS/SHUTTERSTOCK)

When it comes to climate change, we’re all in this dilemma together, and forcefully addressing it will require collaboration and cooperation. A stirring sentiment, but if you’re looking to spur white Americans to action, it’s actually counterproductive. That’s the conclusion of a Stanford University research team, which found invoking the idea of interdependence undermined the motivation of European-American students to take a course in environmental sustainability. The researchers, led by MarYam Hamedani of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, argue ... Read More

Is That Plastic in Your Trash a Hazard?

March 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: RECHITAN SORIN/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Plastic has taken its lumps of late. Plastic bags are being chased from store checkouts around the world. Bisphenol A, or BPA, in plastic containers has been linked to a Pandora’s box of hormonal and genetic problems. And the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans each have a gigantic soupy concoction of plastic waste at their centers—the Pacific and Atlantic have one such patch in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Despite this, the world’s general attitude to plastic has been pretty cavalier. And since we’re not sweating the advent of peak oil as much, at least not in North ... Read More

The (Air Pollution) Picture Improves at National Parks

March 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Moro Rock steps

I used to live in California’s Central Valley, and as a result could hop up to Yosemite or Kings Canyon/Sequoia national parks a dozen or so times a year. Aside from its giant trees, Sequoia has a particularly august feature, Moro Rock, a gigantic chunk of granite with stairs—lots of stairs—that allow you to reach an amazing vista point looking out over the Southern Sierra Nevada and into the Central Valley. Except that the air quality usually was so bad that in addition to breathing lots of dreck as you huffed and puffed the steps, when you did make the top it was next to impossible ... Read More

Who Wants the Nuclear Waste?

March 11, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: BIORAVEN/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Two years ago today, a tsunami devastated the coast of Honshu in Japan. Twenty-four hours later an aftershock from the earthquake that caused the tsunami triggered sparks that ignited hydrogen trapped in Reactor 1 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. The reactor exploded. Over the next three days, two other reactors exploded. Those exploding reactors remain one of the indelible images of the disaster. But as it turns out, they’re not the real problem. What keeps safety officials up at night are Fukushima’s spent fuel rods. Fuel rods are 14-foot-long metal tubes about the ... Read More

Wanna Save the Rhino? Legalize Horn Farming

March 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
The African White Rhino (PHOTO: JASON PRINCE/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Like the dodo, the dinosaur, and the pig-footed bandicoot (maybe), the western black rhinoceros is now a thing of the past, hunted to extinction for its horn. And small wonder. Despite being banned in 1977, the rhino horn trade is flourishing. Twenty years ago, a kilo of horn went for $4,700. Today, it sells for $65,000, making it more valuable than either gold or cocaine. Poaching is on the rise, and by some accounts, the number of endangered (but not yet extinct) white rhino killed doubles each year. By 2035, African wildlands could be devoid of the animal. As parties to the international ... Read More

The Energy Debate We Aren’t Having

March 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Anti-fracking activists hold a rally outside a Democratic Party policy summit in New York in August 2012 to express their opposition to fracking to Governor Andrew Cuomo. (PHOTO: ALLAN TANNENBAUM/NEWSCOM)

BY RIGHTS, the events of 2012 should not have happened: for the seventh straight year Americans reduced their oil consumption, while for the first year since 1859, the U.S. increased oil production by more than 800,000 barrels a day. For 40 years Americans have fretted about our increasing thirst for oil, declining production, and consequent reliance on oil imports. Suddenly all that has been reversed. Inspired by high fuel prices for oil and gas, and new applications of fracking, (see “The Deluge” ) a drilling boom spans the country. Last year was really a dual victory: for ... Read More

The Deluge

March 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: CHRISTOPH MORLINGHAUS)

OIL SEEPING TO THE SURFACE of the lazy Kern River, just north of Bakersfield, California, first caught James Elwood’s attention in 1899. The state was in the midst of an oil boom, and Elwood wanted in on the action. He rounded up a few relatives, got some picks and shovels, chose a patch of sun-baked earth near the river seep, and started digging. Forty-odd feet down, they switched to an auger, and punched down another couple of dozen feet. Oil—trapped in the stone’s pores for millions of years—began oozing into the crude well. The strike made the front page of the local ... Read More

Deadlier Than a Hurricane

February 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Warning signs mark a dangerous shore break and rip current along the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii. (PHOTO: JOSHUA RAINEY PHOTOGRAPHY/SHUTTERSTOCK)

On a late summer afternoon off the North Carolina coast, a young graduate student in civil engineering waded into a scary first-person experiment. Tuba Ozkan-Haller was the daughter of an admiral in the Turkish navy, but despite that oceanic upbringing, “I was always very tentative and extremely afraid of the water,” she says. “My poor dad was always frustrated.” As she grew up she found that the more she learned about the ocean, the less afraid she was. “I felt like I had more control.” On this partly cloudy afternoon she stepped into the surf—the waves weren’t very ... Read More