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While it's hard to ignore the bad news about fish stocks - U.N. statistics show 75% of wild fish stocks are depleted or exploited - the world's clamoring for protein sources is increasingly loud.

That's why a long-term sustainable fish farming experiment with a fish called Branzini (also known as European sea bass) is so promising.

Aquaculture is one key to supplying people with fish, and nearly half the fish consumed is now farmed rather than caught. But the most successful aquaculture experiments have not been entirely sustainable environmentally. And using smaller fish as the ground-up food for farming larger varieties has been decried as a huge waste.

The Center of Marine Biotechnology at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute has come up with a green fish, it says.

Well, actually silver-colored and farmed, with a delicate taste, but using much greener aquaculture methods.

UM is raising branzini in 12-foot-in-diameter tanks in 3,200 gallons of water that is constantly filtered and has wastes removed using microbes, with water temperature controlled by computer.

The tanks' artificially created seawater is kept as clean as possible and continually recirculated rather than being released into Baltimore harbor waters to create a closed-loop operation.

Key to the experiment is the group's experimenting with using plants and algae, rather than ground-up fish remains, to feed the branzini.

"I'm not a businessman," project leader Yonathan Zohar told the Baltimore Sun. "What really drives me is ... feeding the world."

Zohar is hoping to get funding to build a warehouse producing 200 tons of branzini a year.

And in the meantime, if you plan on having fish for dinner, don't shop for it at Trader Joe's, which garnered another "F" from Greenpeace for its lack of sustainable seafood at stores.

Instead, if you are standing at the fish counter wondering what's greenest, send a mail message to the Monterey Bay Aquarium FishPhone and you'll see whether your choice raises a red flag or is green for go.

Read more about green fish and fish choices at TreeHugger
::Mark Bittman on the Future of Fish
::Is This the End of the Line for Fish?
::Fish Farming Moves to the Condo
::The Carbon Footprint of Sushi
::Trader Joes Flunks Sustainable Seafoods 101 (Again)
and on Planet Green
::Feed 8 Friends for Under $100 with this Green Frugal Feast: Sustainable Fish Fry

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Bright Idea? Citizen-Controlled Street Lamps
::Naked Bikers and the True Cost of Traffic
::Jellyfish Spaghetti and Your Own Carry Container
::Twitter Feeding Your World
::Electric Cars Will Be Cheaper Than You Think
::E-Bike: Car-Free Encouragement or Bike Balkanizer?
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature

The German town of Dorentrup originally turned out the street lamps because it felt it couldn't afford to pay the electric bill. A frustrated citizen suggested that residents should have some way to turn on the lights when they needed to, and the county council in nearby Lemgo took his concerns seriously.

Now registered citizens can make a quick call or message with their mobile phones (called a 'handy' in German) to a modem connected to software that can remotely control the on and off switch on streetlights. Turning on the lights requires the six-digit code from the area, but is said to take just a few seconds. The lights are also on a 15-minute meter.

This German Dial4Light system on on-call street lamps is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 tonnes annually. That's equivalent to 11 four-person households, according to the UK Guardian.

It also reduces light pollution.

After 18 months of piloting, Lemgo is now ready to launch Dial4Light to the rest of the world, as the council has made the system into a business idea, and says it has gotten interest from all over the globe.

In Dorentrup the cost of the phone call will turn on the lights for a quarter of an hour. In another German town, Rahden, getting an hour of street light will cost nearly $5.

While charging citizens for streetlamp use seems a bit twisted, it does help us all realize that electricity isn't free. On the downside, someone in need of lighting for safety probably won't have the time or ability to phone for light help.

Dial4Light says the system is really meant for low-use routes that seldom have any people around between midnight and dawn.

There are other innovations happening in street lighting - LED lamps have lowered energy requirements in tests in Oslo and Stockholm. In Los Angeles, 140,000 street lamps will be retrofitted with LEDs. Solar-powered LED lamps called Solar Trees show promise on the streets of Vienna, and hybrid wind and solar lamps are working as far afield as Athens, the Canadian province of Ontario, and Aichi, Japan.

One intrepid tinkerer proposes piezoelectric controlled trigger switches that would light up the lamps or street lights right ahead on a roadway, so that even remote highways or seldom-traveled paths could have light when needed.

Putting together these more efficient and/or renewable-energy-driven street lighting with citizen-controlled switching seems like a great concept that with a bit of ingenuity could have lots of applications.

Read more about street lights at TreeHugger
::On Call Street Lamps: Light By Phone Saves Energy and City Budgets
::Los Angeles to Retrofit 140,000 Street Lights with LED Bulbs
::LED Street Lights Are Coming
::The Autonoma: Self-Powered Programmable Street Lights

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Naked Bikers and the True Cost of Traffic
::Jellyfish Spaghetti and Your Own Carry Container
::Twitter Feeding Your World
::Electric Cars Will Be Cheaper Than You Think
::E-Bike: Car-Free Encouragement or Bike Balkanizer?
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature


::On Call Street Lamps: Light By Phone Saves Energy and City Budgets

"The poor are world traffic's victims," read a recent headline in a Swedish newspaper. The UN World Health Organization's latest report is a country-by-country survey of traffic injuries and deaths, and the results are sobering.

Traffic is deadly -- 1.2 million people are killed annually in traffic accidents. Traffic accidents are the world's 9th leading cause of death, behind lung cancer and ahead of diabetes, and are the leading cause of death for those between five and 44 years old.

Most measures up to now, WHO says, have been on improving safety to vehicle occupants. Now the focus should shift to what it calls "vulnerable road users" -- i.e. pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.

Naked Cyclists who braved the elements last weekend couldn't agree more. Some people have a hard time understanding what being in your birthday suit has to do with bicycle advocacy. Cyclists themselves, especially those braving city streets, totally get it.

While the Washington Post's headline: "Half of Traffic Fatalities Not in Cars," points to this "naked" vulnerability of walkers and bikers, it kind of fails to reveal that while fewer deaths are now occurring in the cars themselves, the vast majority of fatalities are due to cars and other vehicles.

Speed is only one of the five main factors contribution to traffic injuries and death -- the others are drunk driving, lack of helmets, and lack of seat belts and child restraints -- but it is a biggie. Only 29% of countries set speed limits of 31 miles per hour or less on urban roads.

If current trends continue, about 2.4 million people could be killed each year on the road by 2030, according to the report. It will move up the list to become the world's fifth leading cause of death. It's not an intractable problem, though.

Calming traffic by reducing speeds isn't only safer, it's also greener, saving gas and millions of pounds of pollutants. In Tom Vanderbilt's book Traffic, it is actually 20 miles per hour that is the considered the maximum speed at which drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians can have eye contact and still respond safely to each others' signals in a shared streets environment.

Which just happens to be around the maximum speed of an e-bike. Naked e-biking, everyone?

Read more about speed, and traffic calming at TreeHugger
::The Inalienable Right to Speed
::TreeHugger Homework: Drive the Speed Limit
::55 MPH: It's Time to Bring it Back
::Can Painting the Pavement Make Streets Safer?
::Streetcode Proposes New Rule for the Road: Heaviest Vehicle Bears Weight of Responsibility

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Jellyfish Spaghetti and Your Own Carry Container
::Twitter Feeding Your World
::Electric Cars Will Be Cheaper Than You Think
::E-Bike: Car-Free Encouragement or Bike Balkanizer?
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature

Amidst the massive algae blooms and the strange invasions of non-native fish, in the Baltic Sea there's a bit of good news this year - seriously threatened cod stocks are experiencing something of an unexpected comeback.

Otherwise, it's a bit hard to find good news about our oceans. Yesterday was World Oceans Day - does that mean today we can go back to bluefin Tuna sushi?

Not quite. Better if it's jellyfish spaghetti and bring-your-own container from here on out. Fish is good for us, we've heard the message incessantly, and it is likely true. But if environmentalists eschew beef only to pile high the fish sticks or the tuna, the oceans are doomed. And farmed fish (generally carnivorous) is not a realistic answer.



The oceans need diversity, too, and bottom trawlers and population pressures on Earth are not helping. Jellyfish are now invading many marine ecosystems.

In spite of their slimy and stinging qualities, jellyfish aren't all bad. Some species transport carbon to the ocean floor. They also are a great environmental bellweather, signaling a change in an ecosystem. And if the Chinese palate is any indication, they don't taste half bad.

Of course, there are other important ways each individual can still make a difference for the oceans, starting with reducing plastic consumption (all the plastic we've dumped is now so integral in the ocean food chain that we're starting to ingest our own plastic trash along with the tuna salad); choosing greener detergents; getting a reliable seafood buying guide, and of course, not dumping any trash at the beach.

Getting off the plastic habit is hard, especially if you live in a city and love take out. The options for your own tiffin carrier are still pretty slim - there's a cute one at Darryl Hannah's online store. But they are out there.

So eschew tuna, take away your trash and cut out plastic.

And like blogger La Vida Loca, if you are ever offered haizhe at a Chinese restaurant, get your cup of green tea nearby and give it a try. The oceans may thank you.

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature

The sun's still got maybe 2.3 billion habitable years, scientists have recently stated. It helps to put our climate troubles in a bigger perspective.

While climate woes are real and we need to respond to them, there are other reasons to rethink how we now are in the world. As human beings, we deeply need the soothing sights and sounds of the natural world, and to keep battling the nature deficit disorder so many city kids suffer from. Nature conservation also needs a makeover to help it keep pace with the environmental changes the earth is experiencing.

Being in nature make us smarter, and better able to concentrate. Walking in nature can help kids focus as well as a dose of medicine does (and no, urban walking didn't have the same effect).

Why? It seems our brain has a 'directed' mode, which we use extensively while working, say, in front of a computer screen. 'Involuntary' attention, on the other hand, takes over when we're peering out at a beautiful view, for example.

As you might have guessed, too much directed mode can make us fatigued, and nature's swaying branches and rippling ponds help us switch back to involuntary mode, giving the brain's directed mode time to rest.

EcoAmerica's Nature Rocks campaign is one effort to get families to get their kids outside more to reap the benefits. (Contributing to the group's Facebook page might even help snag you a t-shirt).

If the scientists are correct, nature will probably be around for quite some time. But it seems like the smartest thing we could do for ourselves is to take just a bit more responsibility for protecting whatever piece of it is closest to us.

Read more on TreeHugger and Planet Green about nature conservation
::Battling Nature Deficit Disorder
::Raising Environmentally Conscious Kids
::Outdoor Industry Pledges to Take Kids Back to Nature
::Do You need Nature Therapy?
::Top 25 Environmental Threats of the Future
::How Better Conservation Measures Can Help Reduce Poverty
::Conflict's Unexpected Link to Conservation
::Earthwatch Sends Volunteers on Conservation Missions

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Twitter Feeding Your World
::Electric Cars Will Be Cheaper Than You Think
::E-Bike: Car-Free Encouragement or Bike Balkanizer?
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature

Amazingly, one in eight Americans is still 'food insecure' which means they don't have enough of it to feel like they can be sure where the next meal is coming from. Forty thousand food banks exist in the U.S., but most aren't well known.

And on the other side of it, many Americans throw away masses of food. In some places, health regulations make it harder for leftover food to get officially donated. But it seems like the power of the net and social networking should be able to help skirt some of this issue.

At the most basic level, let's say you are having a big party or event. Halfway through, you realize you've got too many cheese cubes, celery sticks and tortilla chips (and not enough beer). Sending a tweet from your cell phone to followers about the extra food swag should mean that dumpster divers and freegans of all stripes can be alerted by Twitter to come and pick up the bonanza of goodies.

Secret Freegan has the right idea -- she has rescued over $40,000 of discarded food grocery stores won't donate due to liability issues and turned it over to the needy. Twitter could help keep these networks connected.

Fast food restaurants, suffering in these whatever-they-are economic times, have really tapped into social networks to give away food and drum up new biz. Quiznos gave away a million subs in three days as part of a promotion; Kentucky Fried Chicken did a similar promo.

Social networking and restaurants are a logical match, says Reggie Bradford, CEO of social media marketing consultancy Virtue, in Marketing Daily. "Food is naturally social. This is translating to online conversations around restaurant brands. We've seen tremendous adoption of social media strategies among QSRs and fast-casual restaurants."

Isn't it time to spread that success to the community food movement?

Veggie Trader is just one of a handful of new web sites developed to link farmers, growers, and victory gardeners with eaters. Oooby (Out of Our Own Backyards) is another social network site dedicated to connecting locavores with their sources.Freecycle and even Craigslist have been a fantastic boon to the reuse/recycle movement, and now it seems like we need to pull tools like Twitter into the mix to make sharing that most basic gift - good food - easier.

Read more on TreeHugger about food swapping and free food:
::Feed the Hungry with Local Food--Stock the Nation's 40,000 Food Pantries
::Take a Dive in a Virtual Dumpster
::100 Cinnamon Rolls for a PC: Swapping Takes Off in Sweden
::S-COOP is s New Form of Money
::Mass Transit Makes You Skinny

There are lots of uncomfortable truths about the electric car industry.

For one, a switch to electric vehicles may encourage new coal-fired power generation. (It is still worth switching to due to CO2 savings and electric engines' superior efficiency compared to internal combustion engines).

For another, despite the hype, EVs will take longer to become mainstream than people hope or believe. The car industry is masterful at hedging its bets and playing into the EV hype while selling millions more of the gas-driven variety.

Boston Consulting, in its optimistic view, says 1.5 million EVs might be rolling off global assembly lines by 2020, if the U.S. chips in tens of billions of dollars in investments in the cars, batteries, and charging networks.

And guess what. All that money and that 1.5 million cars would represent just three percent of the global 2020 automobile market. Three percent.

On the bright side, however, there's a gold rush of entrepreneurial activity in EVs right now, and just as price pressure is now heating up in the limited hybrid electric car market segment, it will surely happen in the coming EV slice of the market.

In fact, while so many pundits have bemoaned the high price of concept cars come to life, like the sleek Tesla Roadster (around $100,000) and the Chevy Volt (actually a hybrid), in other parts of the market prices are already dropping on newly introduced EVs.

For starters, Mitsubishi's cute, bug-like i Miev is available in Japan and is rolling into the UK soon, priced at between $31,000 ad $38,000 including the battery. The i Miev has a range of up to 100 miles and a top speed of 80 mph and is freeway zippy according to test drivers.

Even better, Electric Car Corporation's EV IE, now on sale in the UK, has a Citroen body, a top speed of 60 mpg and a range of around 75 miles. Its price? $25,660. And on its heels, UK homegrown car company Bee Automobiles says it is working on the Bee.One to be priced at just $18,500. With the lower cost of ownership of EVs, these prices are great. Kind of puts the $49,500 TH!NK City pricetag (in Holland) to shame.

Now, as auto journalist Jim Motavalli noted recently in an interview, not all of the EV companies now pitching products will actually make it to delivering the goods. The industry is too young and immature, and the demands and the competition are many.

But it's good to know that self same competition is driving EV manufacturers to get more real with prices.

Read more about electric cars of all stripes at TreeHugger
::17 Electric Cars You Must Know About
::23 Electric Cars Driving the Evolution
::Video: Recharging Transportation Alternative Energy Cars
::Green From China: BYD's Plug-in Hybrids and Electric Cars

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::E-Bike: Car-Free Encouragement or Bike Balkanizer?
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature
::Should We All Just Drive 35?
::Let's Do Big Lunch
::Shouldn't the G20 Just Stay Home, Skype, and Tweet?
::Mass Transit Makes You Skinny

Perhaps this has happened to you: Pedal-pushing along the bike path, lost in a nature reverie or thoughts of what's for dinner, you hear a slight buzzing sound in your left ear. Before your brain can help you identify the buzz, you are speedily passed, on the left, by a swift and thrumming electric bike.

All in a rush, as you eat the e-bike's dust, you think three things: 1) Wow, you can go pretty fast on those things. 2) I'd be at work already. 3) Should that guy/gal be allowed on the bike path?

A whopping 21 million electric bikes were sold in China during 2007, and Chinese e-bike manufacturers are looking to export markets to keep their sales buoyant as domestic demand becomes saturated.

That means more, and less-expensive, e-bikes may be in stores such as Best Buy and your field of vision soon.

Some bike advocates maintain this is a good thing, and may be particularly helpful in getting more women on bikes. The theory goes, that in the UK, for example, where just 20 percent of women ride while over 40 percent of them own a bike, an e-bike experience with its low-sweat quotient could coax more women to bike, and bike commute. (E-bikes do nothing about helmet hair, of course).

Extending your range and getting a little assist on long or grueling hills, especially if you are regularly hauling your dog, your kids, or a lot of your stuff, is a great thing. Gruber Assist just introduced an electric-assist system that "hides" in the seat tube - making those clunky electric motor attachments possibly a thing of the past.

However, electric bikes, which have the end result of making those of us that have them go faster than the bulk of bike traffic, can create an us versus them situation.

If you are happily cruising in the bike lane using nothing but your own human power, the guy or gal whizzing by you at top speed on an e-bike may seem like a jerk. A lazy jerk to boot. This division creates what one bike advocate calls bike Balkanization. In other words, a splintering of the bike communities that in some towns have been fairly tightly-knit.

But just like drivers that must learn to accommodate all sizes of vehicles on the roads, getting along with e-bikers seems like something we'll all need to do, especially if putting a little power into the pedals helps give us more sustainable transport systems. Ride on!

Read more about electric bikes on TreeHugger
::Go Cycle: The Electric Assist Bike We Have Been Waiting For?
::The $350 Electric Commuter Bike
::A Resolution for 2009: Around the World in an Electric Bike
::University of Washington to Create Electric Bike Share Program
::Wayback Machine 1947: Electric Bike
::Schwinn's New Line of Electric Bikes

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature
::Should We All Just Drive 35?
::Let's Do Big Lunch
::Shouldn't the G20 Just Stay Home, Skype, and Tweet?
::Mass Transit Makes You Skinny

Former vegan Lierre Keith in her recent book The Vegetarian Myth posits that the search for a kinder, gentler world is not necessarily only the province of animal activists and vegetarian/vegans.

Keith believes that "factory" farming in all its forms is cruel, wasteful, and destructive. Industrial agriculture - which is barely 50 years old - is more to blame for planetary problems such as ecosystem destruction, she says, than meat eating per se.

Keith fairly successfully makes the case that vegetarianism is not necessarily virtuous.

Yet simply peering at our beliefs and at industrial ag systems - and swine flu is making us do that a little more closely - doesn't, of course, entirely answer the question of what to have for dinner...tonight.

Keith argues for sustainable food systems with mixed farming and moderate (grass fed) meat eating. In practice, that argument - that industrially-produced soybeans are no panacea - still means more Meatless Mondays and fewer Mickey D's.



In order to further our commitment to sustainable, local eating, there is also something else we can do. Something that will help the global, and our local dinner menu. Wild food foraging.

Right now, it's spring in most of the Northern Hemisphere, and that means the foraging is starting to get good. At least if you ready to try dandelions.

The yellow heads are poking up on roadsides, between the cracks of the sidewalks and probably even in your victory garden.

Instead of considering them a pesky weed spoiling the front yard, we might view them as part of our next meal. Collected dandelion leaves, which look a little like arugula, can be eaten in salads or quickly blanched and doused with balsamic vinegar.

The dandelion heads can also, surprisingly, be made into a sunny yellow risotto. (Later in the summer, you can dry the roots for a not-too-delicious ersatz coffee or a liver-cleansing tonic tea).

Try it for your next Meatless Monday.

Read more on Meatless Mondays at TreeHugger
::Go Meatless On Monday: Even Just One Day a Week Makes a Difference (Video)
::Vegetarian Diet Could Cut Climate Change Mitigation Costs by 70%, If Enough of Us Make the Switch
::Reduce the Meat in Your Diet: Become a Weekday Vegetarian

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature
::Should We All Just Drive 35?
::Let's Do Big Lunch
::Shouldn't the G20 Just Stay Home, Skype, and Tweet?
::Mass Transit Makes You Skinny

In some ways, headlines have never been scarier. After waiting some years for the horrible promise of bird flu to materialize, instead we're now staring down the barrel of a possible swine flu pandemic.

Aside from not planning any junkets to Mexico, there's not much we can do. Right? Wrong.

First, let's just be clear. Properly-cooked pork (to 70 degrees Celsius) will not transmit swine flu. And confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have not been directly confirmed as the source of the outbreak, though conditions at these close-quarters operations (Mexico's Granjas Carroll, owned by Smithfield, processes nearly one million pigs per year) have been implicated as helping the quick spread of the contagion.

Yet there are so many reasons that CAFOs are inhumane ways to raise animals. Now seems like as good a time as any to just stop eating CAFO meats. Could we reach an eco-tipping point in saying no to CAFOs?

"An ecotipping point represents the moment in time when one or more people act, and through their actions, tip the environment in more positive direction," says the Earthwatch Institute.

Nicolette Niman says yes. Niman, a livestock rancher that also happens to be a vegetarian, has written Righteous Porkchop, Finding a Good Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms.

Niman purposefully kept the title of Righteous Porkchop a little enigmatic to help signal that she doesn't see what she calls "inherent ethical problems" with meat, though our move to vast CAFOs that prompt inhumane treatment to animals (and by extension, humans and the environment) is not sustainable.

Niman in the book charts a course out of the CAFO nightmare - by using government subsidies to make farming a full-time job on more on smaller, organic and sustainably-oriented farms.

Of course, the other side of it is we, the consumers, and our choices. By eschewing CAFO meat we would perhaps be able to afford less meat overall (Meatless Mondays, anyone?). But we would get a higher quality of protein in exchange.

Niman promotes a more seasonal approach to meat, similar to the seasonal approach locavores must take with their favorite vegetables. It's one way to start to move our food systems toward sustainability.

And Niman's next suggestion? Well, she wants to put some pastured chickens on Michelle Obama's front lawn.

Read more from TreeHugger on CAFOs, meat eating
::Pork Chops Won't Give You Swine Flu, But Here Are Other Reasons to Abstain
::Vegetarian Diet Could Cut Climate Change Mitigation Costs by 70%, If Enough of Us Make the Switch
::7 Cheap and Easy Vegetarian Meals
::Foodprint: The Surprising Ecological Footprint of a Little Meat
Future of Food: Fish Farms in Condos


Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature
::Should We All Just Drive 35?
::Let's Do Big Lunch
::Shouldn't the G20 Just Stay Home, Skype, and Tweet?
::Mass Transit Makes You Skinny