Published on February 4th, 2008
What do you do when fisheries collapse? With a quarter of the world’s fish stocks depleted, there’s concern that by 2050 we’ll have no other fish to fry. This may be the biggest fish crunch in history. Still, it’s not the first.
When fishermen in Sinnam, South Korea started pulling up empty nets, they did the only logical thing. Finding themselves in a hard place, they erected huge penis statues.
It turns out that not long before the fishing scare, a young woman–still a virgin–had drowned near the village within sight of her lover. Locals feared that her frustrated spirit was spooking the fish away.
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Published on February 2nd, 2008
While Mark’s Green Team blazes its way through Europe by high-speed rail, I start my public transportation journey through South Korea in a slightly more humble place: in front of a dried squid.
The squid is between a pair of tongs, which an elderly Korean woman holds over an indoor propane stove. As the squid crisps, I look around. I’m standing in front of one of the dozens of shops and small restaurants lining the spacious hallway of the main bus terminal of Gangneung, a city on the Sea of Japan, where my trip begins.
Already, we’ve come the first advantage of car-free travel: outside of a car, you see things that you probably would never see inside a car. BBQ squid, for example.
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Published on January 23rd, 2008
In December, Samsung was responsible for the worst oil spill in Korea’s history, a spill about 45 times larger that the recent spill in California. The oil caused widespread economic devastation up and down the coast and affected some of the most delicate marine ecosystems in the Yellow Sea. Still, nearly two months later, the electronics giant remains silent on its role in the spill, hoping, maybe, to sidestep its financial responsibility for the spill.
Last weekend, fish sellers affected by Korea’s massive oil spill held a protest calling for financial support as they try to recover their livelihoods. The protest turned tragic when one protester committed suicide by lighting himself on fire to demonstrate the severity of the troubles caused by the spill. His was the third such suicide since the spill.
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Published on January 20th, 2008
Like the U.S., South Korea has seen a massive popular shift of focus toward health and the environment. The word that sums up this generation’s mentality best: “wellbeing” (with an e).
What is wellbeing? Outside of norebang (Korean kareoke) and polar bear hats, it’s just about the biggest trend to hit South Korea. Since 2000, it’s helped Koreans to stop smoking, buy organic foods, and get back to nature.
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Published on January 19th, 2008
If the foot feels the foot when it feels the ground, as the Buddha said, then does the hand feel the hand when it feels a tree?
Due to commercial and illegal logging, the rate of deforestation in Thailand has been one of the highest in Asia.
Most of the primary forest in Thailand is gone, with secondary forest only covering roughly 20% of the land area. This is compared to over 70% forest cover prior to World War II.
As Perry Garfinkel states in Buddha or Bust: “The environmental impact [of this deforestation] is inestimable—from silting that kills fish and leaves riverbeds dry, to the loss of nesting and feeding for birds and other wildlife.”
Enter the forest monks of Thailand, who have come to be known as environmental or, “Ecology Monks.”
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Published on January 15th, 2008
Some environmentalists see palm oil, which makes up about one third of all vegetable oil, as a biodiesel blessing. Others blame palm biodiesel for deforestation and species extinction. The pros and cons make biodiesel one of the hottest environmental topics in Southeast Asia, where oil palms grow.
Together, the Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia and Malaysia control about 85% of the world’s crude palm oil market. In Indonesia, the biodiesel industry employs 1.5 million people and Malaysia has already approved 91 new biodiesel plants. Currently, about 30% of Malaysia’s total oil production is biodiesel from palm oil.
The pros of palm oil for use in biodiesel have drawn interest from the international business community. Finnish biodiesel mogul, Neste Oil, is working on opening the world’s largest biodiesel plant in Singapore using a palm oil feedstock. The plant is set to go online in 2009 with a production capacity of 800,000 metric tons per year of biodiesel–16,000 barrels, in oil terms. Neste is followed by many other companies, including Australian Mission Biofuels, which opened a new Malaysian plant in December and will produce 100,000 tons a year.
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Published on January 9th, 2008
At night, South Korea is literally aglow. When the sun goes down you’ll find a vibrant night life of kareoke (”norebang”), street markets, and sujo bars. Still, per person, Koreans use only a little over half the energy used in the United States. How do they manage to light up the night–every night–and still save energy?
Part of the answer might be South Korea’s high usage of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
It took me almost two months of living in Korea before I saw my first incandescent (”old fashioned”) light bulb. All of the others were energy efficient CFLs, like the one pictured here at this outdoor market.
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Published on January 1st, 2008
Dear United States of the Past,
I am writing from the future. Well, kind of. You see, for me, it’s already January 1st of the year 2008. (Living in Korea, we’re a bit ahead of the trend, I guess you could say.)
I’m writing to remind you to enjoy a safe New Year’s Eve.
Enjoy today. These are the last moments of 2007, and for the environmental movement 2007 was a beautiful year. So cozy up with your favorite New Year’s grog and enjoy how far we’ve come. Here from the future are some of the greatest environmental victories of this past year.
In this year,
The environmental movement in general went mainstream around the world under the fashionable banner term “green.”
The United States finally made a commitment to international action on climate change.
The word “localvore” was the word of the year in the Oxford American Dictionary.
Demand for organic food continued to grow; in fact, organics caught on in a huge way and prices for organic products actually began to drop.
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What do you do when fisheries collapse? With a quarter of the world’s fish stocks depleted, there’s concern that by 2050 we’ll have no other fish to fry. This may be the biggest fish crunch in history. Still, it’s not the first.
