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After years of depletion, California's fish populations appear to be bouncing back. 
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The Sustainable Working Waterfronts Toolkit is a web-based information portal that contains a wealth of information about the historical and current use of waterfront space, the economic value of working waterfronts, and legal, policy, and financing tools that can be used to preserve, enhance, and protect these valuable areas. The Toolkit also features case studies of successful working waterfronts initiatives from communities around the country. Sharing this information with stakeholders – including waterfront businesses and industry, waterfront landowners, users and residents, and planners and governments – is an essential first step toward increasing knowledge, awareness, and implementation of the range of tools and options are available.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
We need vibrant, working waterfronts that provide jobs and endeavors that are more than simply boat docks and tourist jumping off points. Working ports are central to a just and (ultimately) sustianable coastal zone.
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The cardboard box has always been the quintesential toy for kids. With this creative design, it also becomes a puzzle and teaching tool.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
A fantstic idea and well designed packaging. This is what happens when you have a designer that actually knows ther environment in which the material will be use. Cool!
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As the climate changes, trees and shrubs are poised to take over tundra and alter the Arctic's ecosystems
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The promise of oil has heated up a global argument over the Arctic’s true borders
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A technicality has spared Exxon from having to pay any money into the fund that will be covering most of the clean up costs of its Arkansas pipeline spill. Via clare wormald
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The MIDWAY film project is a powerful visual journey into the heart of an astonishingly symbolic environmental tragedy. On one of the remotest islands on our planet,…
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Joseph Massenburg, 18, was shot and killed on Eagle Street on Monday night
PIRatE Lab's insight:
While I normally do not post on events such as this, this particular incident has greatly saddened me and hit close to home. Mr. Massenburg was only 18 and arrived in New Orleans a mere two days before my studetns arrived in town last month. He was there to volunteer and help with bettering the City of New Orleans via an energy efficiency non-profit. This senseless act against someone who was dedicating his time to helping those in a difficult neighborhood and pushing us all towards a more sustainable place is just heart-breakingly sad.
None of us knows how long we have on this blue planet of ours, but we would all have a much better time during our journey were we to have more folks like Mr. Massenburg. Our thoughts and prays are with his family and friends.
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GADDANI, Pakistan — Gaddani is three dimensional maze of hazards, as chaotic as a major industrial site can get. Steel assaults the senses: the shrieking of metal saws, the ferocious, unnerving thump of massive slabs falling to the sand.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Here lies one of our moder recycling facilties. These shipbreakers in developing countries have largely replaced modern and safe (and increasingly expensive) decomissioning efforts with modern environmental and labor standards. This is the face of globalization. Read William Langewiesche's chapters on India's shipbreakers from his The Outlaw Sea (2004).
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In-depth news and investigations for New Orleans
PIRatE Lab's insight:
A great new in-depth news service (ala ProPublica) created from the wreckage of The New Orleans Times-Picayune. This investigative news site includes great environment beat reporters like Bob Marshall. Check out their recent investigations.
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It all started in 2007, after a fateful call to Executive Director of The Woodlands Conservancy Katie Brasted from Brenda Puckett of Hands of Hope in Belle Chasse.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
One of two recent overviews of our work to help restore coastal Louisiana, this one from the Times-Picayune. Check out the audio slideshow embedded at the start of the story from about four years ago.
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Belle Chasse, which has about half of Plaquemines Parish’s 23,000 residents, is the one community in the parish protected by the federal government’s new risk reduction system. Its elevation requirements would not increase under the new maps.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Our friends in Buras, LA are on limited time. What time remains is a roll of the dice. This is what ineffeective leadership, a failure to engage and educate the genearl public about coastal risks, and the lack of will to deal with the restricting of sediment into the Mississippi River delta thanks to the array of dams and thousands of miles of levees on the Mississippi. Those at the bottom of the pipe always pay the harshest prices incurred by those at the top of the watershed.
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The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority was a study in stark contrast Wednesday night in Morgan City, with the group approving more than $760 million in projects designed to protect coastal residents, while officials from FEMA and coastal...
PIRatE Lab's insight:
We are finally geting real about beginning to manage risk, butmany have become comfortable with their incorrect perceptions of that risk
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I will always remember the day I woke to the news that more than 2,000 fires were burning in California. I thought I must not have heard correctly. Two thousand fires? How could that be?
PIRatE Lab's insight:
A nice little piece on climate change, but the title promised something more interesting...
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JAPAN's fisheries minister has blamed "sabotage" by the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group for a record low catch of just over 100 whales from this season's Antarctic hunt.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Paul's efforts and the reality television mega-hit have given them a platform to both grow their direct action campaign and to (apparently) have a significant impact on the harvesting of whales for "science."
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An app allows boat travelers to track declining levels of phytoplankton, a microscopic organism at the base of the marine food chain
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Specifically placed small wetlands can help capture watershed runoff, helping city planners to guard against flood disasters
PIRatE Lab's insight:
The more tools like this that are out there, the fewer obstacles exist for the average citizen to do the right thing.
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New research suggests that perhaps, for some animals, evolution might be kicking in and helping birds adapt to avoid cars Via clare wormald
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The end is in sight for the civil trial of BP and its partners in the ill-fated Macondo oil and gas exploration well, but not before the British oil giant has its day in court.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Here they go...
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Residual contamination from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is still killing dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life in record numbers. ->
PIRatE Lab's insight:
While we do indeed appear to have an elevated number of dolphins impacted in the Gulf post spill, the exact cause is still somewhat equivocal. The real critters that suffered the most include midwater plankton and demersal critters in the midwater and deepwater where cameras rarely snap pictures.
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
This (and related stories on ABC, etc.) seem to not be going deeply enough into the actual goings on. In my experience the situations outlined in the first 15 comments on this article provide a much more nuanced and complete picture. While we should of course be cracking down on fraud, I fear the real casualty here will be the folks in the next disaster who will have the federal support tightened too much for fear of massive fraud. This seems to be much more about setting up a good program from the get-go which is properly monitored, etc.
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Time was that Malibu's celebrity-studded Broad Beach lived up to its name. Not anymore. Via clare wormald
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Again, the difficulty in maintaining structures on an eroding coastline continue. This is neither a game nor lesson. Rather it is a somewhat early salvo in one of the greatest struggles our coastlines will be facing; armor it all for the protection of an elite few/select vulnerable infrastructure and detroy/vastly alter the littoral dynmics of the system...or find a more realistic, cost-effective, and mature answer to our increasingly erosive coasts. We should recall that ill-advised coastal development in Malibu (such as Broad Beach here) was one of the key motivators for the landmark California Coastal Act.
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BELLE CHASSE — As the Gulf of Mexico creeps closer and closer to New Orleans, the forested wetlands in between provides a crucial storm buffer between …
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Our second piece from last week's Louisiana newspapers. This great piece from the Advocate provides an excellent overview of the course I have been teaching for the past seven years.
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PIRatE Lab's insight:
A nice overview of how Protected Areas were created in California and how they have come to be an essential part of our coastal state's character and identity.
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“We’re not runners.” — Clyde Jones, Plaquemines Parish resident Clyde and Stella Jones are rebuilding in the tattered Braithwaite community in the wake of Hurricane Isaac, but they likely will forgo flood insurance to do so.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Here comes the onslought of the reality of a sinking coastline and increasingly severe mix of coastal storms and rising sea levels. Thank you climate change and inept management!
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Many of California's fish stocks are now heading in the right direction. The challenge now is to assure ourselves that we continue to see improvement AND to make sure we have a viable seafood industry.