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  • Don’t eat Orange Roughy

    ACT Greens MLA Deb Foskey today called for all fishmongers to promote the consumption of sustainable seafood.

    "In fish shops and supermarkets around Canberra you can see fish for sale, such as orange roughy, flake and southern blue fin tuna, that we know is endangered" Dr Foskey said today.

    "Today is Sustainable Seafood Day. Most people would like to eat fish that is sustainably harvested so it’s time to make it easier for consumers to make an informed choice when they buy."

    "The easiest way to start the process would be to require retailers to put up a poster identifying the conservation status of the fish they sell. It will still be up to the consumer, but at least they would be informed."

    "There is no shortage of information out there, it’s just that it isn’t visible where you buy your fish."

    "The Australian Marine Conservation Society produces a great Sustainable Seafood guide, for example. They could probably help the ACT Government produce a poster that would suit the ACT situation."

    "Most fish we eat in Australia is caught in the wild. And many of our fisheries are overfished. Until governments around Australia are prepared to take strong measures to control the catch it is up to consumers to make the right choice."

    "I’d like to the see the ACT Government work with fish shops and supermarkets to make the choice easier" Dr Foskey said.

  • Armed conflict for Arctic seabed

    The Council of International Relations in the United States has warned that armed conflict is likely over the resources of the Arctic Seabed unless a framework for international negotiations is set up as soon as possible. The Arctic sea floor has been the subject of a number of claims and counter claims since 2001 when Russia applied to the United Nations for sovereignty over 460,000 square miles of the resource rich area. The combination of spiralling resource prices and the disappearance of sea ice, has made it viable to mine resources that have been buried under ice for millenia. Britain, Canada, the United States and Scandinavian countries are also claiming large areas of the Arctic Ocean. As reported previously on The Generator, similar claims are being made over the Antarctic Ocean and large parts of the continent.

    Read the background story

    Other Generator stories  

    UK Claims Antarctic sea-floor 

    Antarctic melt speeds up 

  • Blood diamond’s day in court

    A Crimes Against Humanity hearing in the Hague heard in February that 75,000 people have died and up to one million had their hands amputated in Sierra Leone and Liberia, in a quest to control the diamond trade. Millions of land mines have been spread across the region to prevent ordinary people getting the diamonds, then children have been used to clear the mine-fields. The story has had limited media coverage, despite being the subject of a film, Blood Diamonds, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The dictator of Liberia, Charles Taylor, is in court, but neighbouing governments, Western arms manufacturers and diamond cartel, de Beers, who have been implicated in the tragedy have, apparently, broken no laws.

    Read the background story

  • Tide power makes waves

    The United States changed regulations last December to speed up the approval of wave and tide power generators. Many environmental groups are concerned about the impact on wildlife in the estuaries where the rush of new plants using different approaches are to be built. Projects involving dams are specifically excluded. Hydro-kinetic companies hope to supply as much as ten per cent of the United States electricity.

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  • Scientists find sweat gene in plants

    One of the world’s most primitive plants has yielded the secret of how plants open and close the pores in their leaves, known as stomata. Finnish scientists have discovered the gene that controls the mechanism and are now working on ways of stimulating it. Drought resistant plants, such as many endemic Australian species, can close their stomata in hot and dry weather, reducing evaporation to survive drought. Some scientists plan to use the knowledge to genetically engineer drought resistant food crops.

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  • Banning bad bio-fuels good for renewables

    The European Union has announced regulation banning bio-fuels grown on high conservation lands. The law has been established to protect tropical rainforest that is underthreat from soya bean and palm oil plantations. Both crops have become considerably more lucrative with the increased demand for bio-diesel as a result of rising oil prices. Some European bio-diesel companies have complained that the regulations will slow the fight against global warming which partly relies on the adoption of bio-fuels. The World Watch Institute published a statement on February 28th refuting this argument. “The only way forward is to keep working on sustainability standards, measurements and labelling,” the statement said.

    Read the full story