Twilight Greenaway

What Does It Take to Make an Impact?

Doing without is big in the world of food activism. So the fact that Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin—the couple behind the recently released documentary No Impact Man—centered their year-long project to reduce their impact on the environment largely around food will come as little surprise to many.

Beavan and Conlin appeared on the big screen in a handful of major cities this week, and their story—converting to locavorism, learning to compost, discovering their farmers’ market, and volunteering in an urban garden—was nothing if not familiar. For all its grandiose promises and dramatic scenes showing the family huddled in their unheated New York apartment by candlelight, No Impact Man may just be the latest high note in a chorus of similar projects.

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The Lesson of ‘Less’: Why ‘The End of the Line’ Seafood Documentary Doesn’t Go Far Enough

I walked out of the screening of “The End of the Line” feeling deeply uneasy. Most of my discomfort had been carefully orchestrated by the film’s director, Rupert Murray, who filled the 80 minutes with straight-talking scientists and image upon image of wild fish being violently removed from the ocean.

Fishermen stabbed endangered bluefin tuna (left) in roiling pools of bloodied water. Giant trawl nets scraped across the ocean’s bottom, decimating coral and seaweed in its wake, leaving pounds of wasted sea life to be tossed back over the side of the boat. Then there was the sheer number of industrial-size factory vessels, crawling ominously over the surface of the ocean with their highly precise tracking systems, often blatant disregard for quotas, and the ability to catch several times the number of fish remaining in the ocean below them.

Read more on the Ethicurean >

Editorial: Whole Truth?

A response to the February 2007 debate between author Michael Pollan and Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey.

"Between the gratuitous shots of paralyzed farm animals and other visual pyrotechnics, Mackey inserted a series of subtly antagonistic points that did the double duty of agreeing with the dominant perspective in the room while picking it apart. Read more on Culinate.