Global warming, pollution, invasive species and many other human-induced problems are imperiling the Earth’s ecosystems, and artists around the world are responding. Linda Weintraub’s new book, To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (University of California Press; 2012) is a call to action. Conceived as a textbook with eco art genres, strategies, issues, and approaches carefully schematized and indexed, To Life! will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary art and saving the Earth.
Pollution, overdevelopment, climate change…the list of degradations to the environment is extensive, posing huge challenges. But perhaps the biggest threat in the Hudson Valley is more insidious.
One hot, sunny morning in late June, Amanda Higgs, a fisheries biologist with the New York State Department of Environment Conservation’s (DEC) Hudson River Estuary Program, was fishing for Atlantic sturgeon, the Hudson’s largest and most ancient fish.
Sometime in April, when the little white clusters of Dutchman’s breeches and the aptly named shadbush are in bloom, schools of shad enter the Hudson from the Atlantic Ocean and swim up the river to spawn.
America’s epidemic of child obesity is a health crisis in the making, which has prompted new concerns about what’s being served in the school cafeteria. The federal and state governments have instigated new nutritional standards for school lunches, an initiative that’s in line with county concerns as well: Here in Ulster County, 24 percent of kids are overweight, a statistic the Ulster County Department of Health hopes to reduce to five percent through its “Healthy Kids” initiative, which includes addressing the food served in schools.
