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The Health Department didn’t show up when I made dinner for my neighbors last night. Fortunately, our health and safety laws don’t usually dictate how we prepare food in our personal and private realms. But humans have a natural tendency, an urge to feed each other, and the shareable food movement is taking that to new levels—levels that bring up some legal curiosities.

Four summers ago, Sue Cudd couldn’t keep a baby oyster alive. She’d start with hundreds of millions of oyster larvae in the tanks at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts, Oregon. Only a handful would make it. Sometimes, they’d swim for a couple of weeks. But they’d stop developing before they grew a critical shell structure, or maybe the foot or eyespot. They’d feed poorly. One day, the larvae...

Inside a cramped Seattle laboratory, the researchers look like fishermen who got sent to a construction job. Wearing orange waders and yellow boots, they thread their way between shelves of tubs filled with what look like giant mason jars. Overhead, a rainbow of colored tubes bubble gases into tanks, changing the water chemistry to reflect different points in time—past, present and future—as increasing amounts of fossil fuel pollution make the...

Five years ago, many scientists probably thought they’d never see large pools of corrosive water near the ocean’s surface in their lifetimes. Basic chemistry told them that as the oceans absorbed more carbon dioxide pollution from cars and smokestacks and industrial processes, seawater would become more acidic. Eventually, the oceans could become corrosive enough to kill vulnerable forms of sea life like corals and shellfish and plankton. But scientists believed...

Sightline’s reluctant cyclist checking in here—although I might have to take “reluctant” out of my title: over a month into my cycling adventures and I can count the days I haven’t been on my bike on one hand. Drivers and cyclists alike probably noticed that today is National Bike to Work Day. (I’m still coming down from the caffeine buzz of slurping down three cups of free coffee provided to...

Hi. My name is Anna and I’m a sugar addict. (“Hi, Anna…”) But I’m giving it up. Really! Since my toddler started mimicking my every move, I decided that instilling in her the best possible food habits meant kicking my own worst ones. For the past two months, I’ve had a zero-sugar policy on all weekdays. (Next step: no-sugar weekends). I’ve been clean for, um, let’s see, about 43 hours...

According to this piece in the Vancouver Sun, British Columbia’s aspiring political leaders are mostly lining up in favor of an increase in the provincial minimum wage.  Which is perfectly reasonable: BC’s minimum wage hasn’t budged for almost a decade, and now stands far lower than that of any other Canadian province. (This fact sheet from the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives-BC has the details of BC’s minimum wage situation.) While...

Sprawl is a scourge on so many fronts. It paves over evergreen forests and productive farmlands. It sends expensive asphalt highways snaking into rural areas. It creates long, polluting commutes. And it threatens to undermine efforts to cleanup filthy stormwater runoff by pocking the landscape far and wide with impervious surfaces. Some great stories recently published in Crosscut by Robert McClure of Investigate West, an independent journalism nonprofit group, tackle...

One of the most despicable chapters in the history of the United States is the hundred years of segregation following the Civil War. As if slavery wasn’t bad enough, the United States tolerated—and through court decisions mandated—a system that fundamentally deprived people of the rights afforded to their fellow citizens because of their race. All of this in spite of the 14th amendment guaranteeing equal rights to everyone.   The story...

One of the more encouraging developments in Northwest conservation has to be the quiet but steady advancement of marine reserves off the Oregon coast. A couple of smaller pilot reserves have already been set aside; and then yesterday a key advisory council strongly endorsed three larger reserves. As the Oregonian reported: The proposed reserves—at Cape Falcon [south of Cannon Beach], Cascade Head near Lincoln City and Cape Perpetua near Yachats—will now move...