What is sustainable development?

Really interesting article in the NYT that makes you think hard about whether their is such a thing as fair and equitable sustainable development. The piece discusses a debate about how we must intensify many human activities to eliminate poverty which some argue is the first step towards addressing biodiversity conservation.

West Coast Sardine Fishery Collapse

One of the themes in the book and the blog has been that by choosing what we eat we can lessen our impact on Earth. I'd previously suggested that eating fishes like sardines could be a sustainable food choice. But the rapid crash of US West Coast sardine fisheries took me a bit by surprise.  Read more about this and its consequences at this Pew briefing.

The take-home message:  constantly reevaluate your assumptions and modify behavior based on new data.

Food requires water!

I've been silent for a long time (not through lack of ideas or concerns...but because I've been busy) but the graphic I just explored in the LA Times is amazing and must be shared.

I'd long realized that red meat requires a lot of water per pound to produce so if we want to conserve water (something that's at the top of the news in California these days) we should eat less meat.  And, I'd realized that nut trees require a lot of water as well. But what I'd not realized is that chickpeas require so much water to grow! This amazing interactive graphic in the LA Times lets you calculate the water footprint of your meals--explore and be surprised.

Talk about this at your next dinner party!