India, #1 in shrimp

The US imports about $4-5 billion worth of shrimp every year, a mix of fresh, frozen, and prepared products. Most of it comes from southeast Asia, but some is from Latin America, and in particular Ecuador and Mexico (not shown).

(source data from the USDA's Economic Research Service)

As you can see, for a long time Thailand has been the biggest exporter of shrimp: they are blessed with a lot of mangrove coastline, and farming shrimp is extremely profitable, so naturally there are a lot of people in the business. Unfortunately, the business apparently isn't very well regulated: wastewater from one farm is often the intake water for the next farm downstream, so diseases like "early mortality syndrome" can sometimes run amuck, devastating the entire country's production. That's the cause of the drop in the graph above. Making matters worse, the NYT recently had a piece about slavery on board shrimp boats. (Shrimp are both farmed and wild caught in places.) With all the chaos in the Thai government these days, I doubt that regulations will soon clean up the industry.

Notice that others such as India are stepping into the gap. In 2008 and 2009, India produced just about $150 million worth of shrimp, but in 2013 they broke the $1 billion barrier, increasing exports to the US by a factor of six over just five years. It's definitely possible to have a cleaner production system: according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" guide, the best choices for shrimp are from aquaculture done in North America. It is much less damaging of the environment, and I'd think that it's less likely to involve slavery as well. If Thailand reins in the human rights abuses, their costs will probably go up, giving India and others even more of an opening. A market that works is a good thing for everyone!

Food in America

Interesting graphic....

Gasland & FrackNation

A couple of interesting finds by Garrett in his response to the movies: in this peer-reviewed article by Popkin et al., the researchers find that being close to a (fracked) gas well hurts property values, so the story that McAleer tells of happy landowners enjoying the "most productive cow on the lot" isn't quite true. On the other hand, he notes that some of the people Fox interviews in his movie were found to be not telling the full story. It turns out that the land in Colorado was damaged not by fracking but by a nearby coal mine.

Nice work digging up the truth! Documentaries aren't there to tell the full story, that's for sure.

Deer and water in the news

Bonnie wrote her paper on hunting the state of MD this year, and noted that some hunted deer end up as food for the homeless. There's an article in the NYT today about just that: they hunt the deer in Rock Creek Park and give the food to the homeless. The reporter sounds like she went around asking people if they no longer wanted it after knowing it was deer, and that's a strange question to ask. What's wrong with deer meat? I'd much rather it end up on someone's plate than on the side of the road after damaging someone's car. Overpopulation is bad; food for the homeless is good. Seems like a good choice.

Another article is about fracking and how it's being banned in some places to protect the water. This isn't because they're afraid fracking will poison the water a la Josh Fox, but because fracking uses up a great deal of water as part of the process. This is certainly true but it's a new tactic being used by the anti-fracking movement, and as such it too has garnered the notice of the NYT. Sure makes sense to me: I don't like the anti-fracking propaganda machine, but fracking does use up a lot water, and in places that don't have much to begin with, some attention to the issue is definitely appropriate.

Fracking bringing car crashes

Patrick wrote last week to make me aware of this article: as fracking brings jobs to places that were pretty rural, there are a lot more people traveling roads that weren't meant for so many folks to travel. One unfortunate outgrowth of this increased traffic is increased collisions. Hopefully as fracking expands, so do traffic controls.

Cobia- the other fish meat

After our discussion of aquaculture today, Claire wrote to suggest this article. She says, "From my perspective at least, this seems like to be a more effective way to practice aquaculture. Obviously not all practices are perfect, but innovation is always the key to progress, and I see this new fish in open ocean areas and a big step in the right direction. If for nothing else because it is a more humane practice, keeping the fish swimming and alive for as long as possible until its quick demise."

Maryland Air Quality

           Although improvements in air quality have been made in Maryland as well as nationwide over the past fifteen years, summertime smog levels in Harford County and Prince George’s County are among the worst in the nation. According to the new report released by the American Lung Association about two weeks ago, one-half of Americans live in places where smog and soot pollution makes it dangerous to breathe at times. Harford County was ranked 13^th worst, and Prince George’s County was ranked 21^st. In addition, in 22 out of the 25 metro areas with the worst ozone pollution, which includes the Baltimore-Washington Area, there was a peak in smog from 2010-2012, compared to the previous three years. In Maryland, the abnormally hot summer of 2012 drove smog levels up to dangerous levels for 30 individual days, compared to only nine days in 2013. George Aburn, director of air management of the Maryland Department of Environment says that ozone pollution primarily comes from other states, so state officials have pressed the EPA to resolve the problem.

            After many attempts by the EPA to determine a “legally acceptable” way to regulate states contributing to pollution problems in downwind states, the Supreme Court ruled that 27 Midwestern and Appalachian states will be forced to reduce power plant pollution that blows downwind. Last Tuesday, there was a 6-2 decision that ruled that the EPA may limit emissions that create smog and soot that drifts into the air above states along the East Coast. This was adopted because the cross-border pollution prevents cities and counties from complying with health-based pollution standards by law, because they have no authority to control it. This new ruling would cost power plant operators $800 million in 2014 and annually; however, the EPA states that the investment is worth it because of the hundreds of billions of dollars in health care savings from cleaner air. Also, there would be a prevention of 30,000 premature deaths and thousands of illnesses a year with the new rule. There is much opposition coming from power-plant operators who believe that this is a way for the administration to shut them down, as well as from states who claimed they had no voice in determining their individual impact on emissions in neighboring states.

            In my opinion, there is no one formula to determine how much each state has individually contributed to the pollution in downwind states. I don’t believe it is fair to have each state take accountability for more or less than they contributed. Furthermore, it is complicated to regulate a rule like this when wind patterns are not uniform. I applaud the initiative to want to reduce emissions in order to have clean air, especially since I suffer from asthma. However, it seems as if there is miscommunication between the Clean Air Act and the EPA and they are supposed to be working cooperatively. Overall, it is nearly impossible to determine the exact amount of pollution that a state produces. As a result, it becomes expensive to implement, ineffective to regulate.

--Malshauna Hamm

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