Tag archives for Dan Klotz
Explosive Agriculture and That Larger April Fireball
Posted by Dan Klotz on April 29, 2013 
Two days after the Boston Marathon bombing, a humongous explosion rocked the Texas town of West when a fire broke out at an agriculture retail facility storing ammonium nitrate. 14 people were killed, more than 200 injured, but despite leaving a crater 93 feet wide and 10 feet deep, the incident played second fiddle in…
The Fight Against Climate Change Needs a Retrofit
Posted by Dan Klotz on February 16, 2013 
The New York City apartment building where I grew up was built in the early 1960s. The building’s heating system still has only one thermostat for more than 150 apartments, and that thermostat is usually set in the mid-70s. If it’s too hot, you must manually adjust each radiator in the apartment (and there’s one…
Climate Change Wins Big in 2012 Elections
Posted by Dan Klotz on November 7, 2012 
Clint Eastwood was on the right track when he talked to an empty chair at the end of August. There was an empty seat all through the fall, as the candidates for U.S. president went back and forth on most of the critical issues that Americans face. The one crisis that neither candidate mentioned during…
Can National Happiness Survive on an Organic Diet?
Posted by Dan Klotz on October 18, 2012 
The small kingdom of Bhutan is known for establishing the “gross national happiness” tool, a “multidimensional measurement” that looks at its citizens’ quality of life and well-being. Lately, it has been making waves for its government’s ambition to become the first 100% organic country in the world. Its only competition? The Pacific Island of…
A few years ago a scientific survey was released that mapped out where fisheries were being depleted around the world. This was about the same time that pirates from Somalia achieved a large degree of prominence by seizing a cargo ship full of tanks, with news reports bemoaning how global shipping lanes brought cargo…
Twenty years ago, a single sockeye salmon traveled 900 miles up the Columbia and Snake Rivers. It was an epic journey; travelling against the current the fish climbed more than 6,500 feet in elevation and up the “fish ladders” of eight dams. Bears, eagles, bobcats and other predators tried to grab this fish along the…
Can Banning Big Gulps have an Environmental Benefit?
Posted by Dan Klotz on July 9, 2012 
At the end of May, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on “Big Gulps” in the Big Apple. Food service establishments would not be able to sell “sugary drinks”—defined as non-alcoholic beverages that are not more than half made up of milk or milk substitute and are sweetened by the manufacturer with…
The Farm Bill Rollercoaster Gets Ready to Roll
Posted by Dan Klotz on June 5, 2012 
This week, the Senate began debating the “Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012,”the latest name for the Farm Bill. This legislation comes up for renewal every five years, and the back-and-forth always been larger than life and somewhat crazy. If you follow the coverage closely this year, you’ll learn about Southern peanut and rice…
Where’s the beef?
Posted by Dan Klotz on March 20, 2012 
The recent media hullabaloo around “pink slime,” begins with a premise that would be applauded in other situations. A private enterprise, Beef Products Inc (BPI), strives to use every last bit of a resource it has at its disposal—in this case, it’s the beef in the slaughterhouse. But what has come to light about BPI and…
New Global Land Rush Trampling Human Rights
Posted by Dan Klotz on February 6, 2012 
It is an age-old story in the developing world, one that rarely ends happily ever after. Communities without economic power that live off of land to which they do not “own” are devastated when their government transfers the property rights to wealthy outside interests, who exploit the natural resources. These land deals often result in…
Extreme Winter Weather–Groundhog Day Edition
Posted by Dan Klotz on February 2, 2012 
When is partly cloudy and 70 degrees Fahrenheit considered extreme? When it happens in Washington, D.C., on February 1st and the temperature ends up more than 25 degrees above normal. To be fair, no weather records were set yesterday and we average about one 70 degree day every other February here at the nation’s capital.…
“The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions, and needs, and attempts to defend it in isolation from human concerns have given the very word ‘environment’ a connotation of naivety in some political circles.” These words come from the foreword of “Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on…
Do we Really Need to use Human Medicine on Farm Animals?
Posted by Dan Klotz on January 6, 2012 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took action on Wednesday, January 4 to ban certain uses of one class of drugs, cephalosporins, in raising cattle, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. Cephalosporin drugs are used to treat pneumonia, urinary tract infections, gastro-intestinal diseases, and other life-threatening infections in people; the FDA’s action will help preserve the…
Did the Chesapeake Bay Turn the Corner in 2011?
Posted by Dan Klotz on January 4, 2012 2011 may go down in history as the turning point for the Chesapeake Bay. The largest estuary in the United States, the Bay’s watershed includes almost 20 percent of the country’s Atlantic coast and produces an estimated 500 million pounds of seafood every year.
