Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Who is Bombing Mexico’s Nanotech Labs?

August 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Policemen outside the Monterrey Institute of Technology after a letter bomb exploded there in August 2011. (A. FRANCO/AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES)

As if drug-war wracked Mexico didn't already have enough problems: Nature reports that  its nanotechnology research laboratories have been hit with a wave of letter bombs that have injured several people. "An eco-anarchist group calling itself Individuals Tending Towards Savagery" has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, writes Leigh Philips. Personally, I suspect this 'group' is a lone nutcase; the tactic, the obscure and narrow range of targets, and the loquacious anti-technology screeds that accompany the bombings all echo the modus operandi of Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber ... Read More

More like this: The 101, Uncategorized
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Recycling: A Free Pass for Wasteful Consumption?

May 2, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Do you get a small but palpable sense of satisfaction each time you deposit a piece of paper in that recycling bin by the copy machine, rather than the nearby trash can? Save the smugness. Newly published research suggests the presence of that receptacle may inspire you and your officemates to use more paper than you otherwise would, depleting natural resources in the process. “Consumers may view the ability to recycle a product as a ‘get out of jail free card’ that makes consumption more acceptable,” write Jesse Catlin of the University of California, Irvine and Yitong Wang of ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Findings
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Chiapas’ Coffee Growers: Accidental Environmentalists

October 17, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Chiapas Shade-Grown Coffee Practices Accidentally Protects Environment

Every steaming cup of coffee could tell a story, and the shade-grown coffee from southern Mexico’s Chiapas state tells tales of a disproportionate role in sustaining local villages, hillsides, and wildlife. It’s a story with several lumps of conflict and uncertainty stirred in. The volatility of the global coffee market makes it a difficult business, and Chiapas’ small farmers face the precarious equilibrium common to all small farms and businesses. But they face an additional set of unique challenges, including the shaky political truce between the government and Zapatista rebels ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Voyage of Kiri
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Three Reasons for Creating a Single Ocean Health Index

October 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Just over 75 years ago, there was no easy way to track how well a nation’s economy and its people were doing. Data from all kinds of measures existed, but it was hard to interpret what they all meant. Responding in part to the dramatic declines of the Great Depression, the U.S. Congress in 1934 asked renowned economist Simon Kuznets to develop a method for gauging the condition, or health, of the United States. He came up with what we now know as the gross domestic product, or GDP. Although criticisms abound about its utility or appropriateness as a measure of national well-being ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Marketing the Mystery of the Giant Squid

September 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The new canary in the coal mine could be a giant squid. Conservation efforts often rally around charismatic species like the African elephant or the bald eagle. Popular affection for these "flagship" animals can be leveraged into funding and political will. But who speaks for the 95 percent of Earth's inhabitants without a backbone? No worm has the rock-star appeal of a Bengal tiger. Enter the giant squid. Ángel Guerra, a research professor at CSIC (the National Research Council of Spain), makes the case for turning this unusual animal, the largest invertebrate in the world, into a ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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‘If a Tree Falls’ Revisits the Earth Liberation Front

September 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The trajectory of Daniel McGowan's life is a familiar one: A young man from a conventional background finds meaning in a cause greater than himself. Thanks in part to overreaction by the authorities, he gradually becomes radicalized, dedicating himself to violent resistance — a course of action that grabs attention but ultimately backfires on him and his movement. An Islamic radical? White supremacist? Perhaps an anti-globalization anarchist? None of the above. McGowan was one of the key figures in the eco-terrorism of the 1990s, a man who used arson as a weapon in the fight to ... Read More

More like this: Media, September-October 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
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Teaching Kids to Love Nature (and Buy Less Stuff)

August 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In their eloquent preface to The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It), Charles Saylan and Daniel T. Blumstein wistfully recall how freely they roamed an immense wilderness when they were young, only to find, as adults, that the "unexplored places that inspired us so deeply are now mostly gone." They had lived through a doubling of the world's population, initially with "a sense of pride and wonder at technologies that seemed like something out of science fiction" — among them, the green revolution that seemingly averted a Malthusian catastrophe. But then came the ... Read More

More like this: Education, September-October 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
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Budget Hawks, Enviro Doves Offer Budget Cuts

August 24, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The Heartland Institute and Friends of the Earth don't agree on much of anything. Heartland, based in Chicago, is a free-market think tank widely viewed with suspicion by environmentalists. Friends, as its name suggests, is a progressive environmental advocacy group that's fought for action on climate change. Neither of them, though, can stand the federal government's flood insurance program. It spends billions of dollars offering insurance to property owners at rates much kinder than they'd find on the private market. And it encourages the development of watersheds where no one should be ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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U.S. Pledges to Reform Electronics Recycling

July 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Melinda Burns wrote in January about the difficulty in keeping hazardous materials — among them batteries, fluorescent lights, hypodermic needles and electronics — out of landfills. She described how state and local governments were taking the lead in the U.S. in calling for companies to take responsibility for their products at the end of their lifecycles, something known as "product stewardship." But even if a company does recycle its wares, that alone is not always a satisfactory solution. As Emily Badger reported recently, there is a shameful practice in which electronic ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Environment
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Why E-Waste Should Be Kept, Recycled in U.S.

July 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As laptops, flat screens and smart phones grow ever more ubiquitous, so does the problematic trash they ultimately become. It’s a quandary for the Information Age that seldom gets the attention of the cool tech tools themselves. Individual communities in the U.S. have been struggling with how to dispose of electronic waste, who should pay for its recycling and whether companies that manufacture electronics should be responsible for their full life cycle. But much of this e-waste is never disposed of anywhere in the U.S. — whether at local municipal dumps or corporate facilities. It ... Read More

More like this: Environment, The Idea Lobby
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