sustainability

Via Serious Eats’ Required Eating comes a NY Times story on a London fish and chips shop that is trying to go fully sustainable. It’s a thoroughly difficult process.

Part of [Tom Aikens’] mission is “to broaden fish tastes outside of cod.” His fish and chips will be made from cod imported from countries where it is not overfished as well as from sustainable species like pollack, gunard, rays and sole. He said he hoped to “raise awareness” among the top chefs in London to help bring about self-imposed moratoriums on severely depleted stocks like North Sea cod or Mediterranean bluefin tuna. A portion of the cheapest fish and chips at Tom’s Place, ray for takeaway, will run about £10, or $20.

“A Favorite Meal, Now Offering a Side Order of Environmental Awareness”

Partly it’s the stirring musical score; partly, the memorable footage of animals and plants in unfamiliar, dramatic shots.

Whatever the case, the trailer for the upcoming 11-part Planet Earth mini-series on the Discovery Channel gives me chills every time I see it.

More than five years in the making, PLANET EARTH redefines blue-chip natural history filmmaking and continues the Discovery Channel mission to provide the highest quality programming in the world. The 11-part series will amaze viewers with never-before-seen animal behaviors, startling views of locations captured by cameras for the first time, and unprecedented high-definition production techniques. Award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver is the series’ narrator.

PLANET EARTH airs on consecutive Sundays from March 25 through April 22, 2007, on Discovery Channel and in high definition on Discovery HD Theater.

Even better, they’ve created a Google Earth tour with video clips from locations around the world their crews visited.

Thanks to the Modern Hiker for pointing to this beautiful website, Forests Forever.

Apparently Fujifilm got bit hard by the environmental bug when they launched Forests Forever, a multimedia tour through the world’s forests.

In an effort to raise awareness of the more sylvan areas around us, the site has incredible pictures from forests on all of the planet’s forested continents. Along with the stunning scenery, the site’s also got tons of information on each forest, along with musings from the photographers and longer essays from other treehuggers around the world.

Take an hour or three and do some exploring in the forests of the world. The ambient music is awesome as well, so much so that it has inspired me to start looking into midi keyboards. ;)