Iceland_geothermal
  • January 20, 2015

Why Iceland is (Still) So Hot Right Now

by Dan Stone

About a year ago, during a trip to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, I had the strange and rare experience of emailing a head of state, being invited over for coffee, and knocking on her front door. That’s just Iceland, people told me. You can look up anyone in the phone book, even the president. These days, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is a former head of state in semi-retirement after sitting in office from 1980 to 1996.  As we talked, I asked her one of the most softball questions in politics:

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir“What would you say was your biggest accomplishment as president?” I said.

Without even ...

LightBulb
  • December 17, 2014

Here’s the Only Way You Can Stop Climate Change

by Dan Stone

Every few months, a new report on climate change comes out that spells doom for the future of the planet. Sometimes it’s from the International Panel on Climate Change. Sometimes it’s the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Just as often, individual scientists present their papers and studies at conferences.

The news is almost never good, Elizabeth Kolbert, the environmental scribe and thinker, has observed over years writing about the planet. Every year, scientists warn time is running out to reel back emissions. And each year, the world emits about three to five percent more greenhouse gases. In the western nations that burn the most fossil fuels, what needs ...

Taxi cabs New York
  • December 4, 2014

Should We Raise the Gas Tax?

by Dan Stone

The biggest barrier to innovation is sometimes the fact that it’s cheap enough to do things the old way. Why develop new foods when the old ones are popular? Why create new cars when existing ones fit everyone’s needs?

That rationale is particularly true at the moment for energy, and especially gasoline. As environmental groups call for cleaner and more sustainable ways to produce energy, the inconvenient fact is that fossil fuel is cheap. Natural gas continues to be found in great abundance. And for much of 2014, as a result of booming supply and advanced technology to drill in more remote places, oil prices have cratered, reaching their lowest ...

ThanksgivingTurkey
  • November 25, 2014

The Thanksgiving Feast Is Getting Cheaper

by Dan Stone

For a supermarket to look clean, fresh, and full, a complex equation needs to be constantly balanced. Food needs to be grown on time, shipped on a deadline, and purchased wholesale at the peak of perfection. If any piece doesn’t fit, things fall apart. That equation helps determine the price of food which, if we’re lucky, doesn’t fluctuate dramatically. Sometimes I buy overpriced orange juice, sometimes I get it on sale. Over time, for most of us, it evens out.

But over the long term, how is the price of food changing? This week, in observance of Thanksgiving, the American Farm Bureau Federation has an answer: if you account for inflation, ...

Passport
  • November 17, 2014

Here’s What It’s Like to Be Stateless

by Dan Stone

When whistleblower Edward Snowden gave his first interview to American media in May, one of his chief laments was that, with his passport deactivated and threat of jail time in the United States, he had turned into a stateless person. From his apartment in Moscow, where he is neither a citizen nor allowed to stay any longer than his visa can be renewed, he claimed he simply has no viable place to go.

As a complaint, Snowden's lament is sad. But in context, Snowden, in a secure apartment in a developed capital city, has it far better than others. According to the United Nations and its refugee arm, the

Graphic by NGM Staff
Graphic by NGM Staff
  • October 30, 2014

The Fastest Route Across America

by Dan Stone

Last spring, we took an unconventional road trip. An NG photographer and I followed a truck of strawberries across the U.S. in three days, from California to Washington, D.C., to understand what it takes to deliver food grown thousands of miles away. The story appeared online, and in the November edition of National Geographic Magazine.

We received several questions about the trip, like why we chose to follow strawberries (they're a classic American food, agriculturally isolated, and extremely fragile) and whether the truck drivers knew we were behind them (yes, and they even slowed down for us).

But one question was more complex. From John Daly in Chelsea, Michigan:

"Why did the truck travel ...

Photograph by Adam Bowie
Photograph by Adam Bowie
  • October 29, 2014

Can Sardinia (Or Any Place) Change Countries?

by Dan Stone

Usually, when small restive territories want to secede from their guardian countries, they try to become independent. Just look to Scotland or Catalonia this year, both of which had rumbling groups wanting to release themselves from the laws and economic tethers of the U.K. and Spain.

But down in Sardinia, the sun-bathed Italian island in the Mediterranean, the goal is more complicated. Sardinia is one of Italy’s five autonomous regions, relying for decades on Rome to boost its economy and provide its services. Neither has delivered for the island, where unemployment is more than 18 percent. Yet rather than secede and form its own nation and currency, a large group of Sardinians want ...

Photograph by Spencer Millsap
Photograph by Spencer Millsap
  • October 14, 2014

You’re Eating Too Many Avocados

by Dan Stone

The avocado, that green, slimy, deliciously fatty fruit, the one chiefly responsible for bringing guacamole to humanity—and in recent years earning the rare and elusive title of a super food—is a botanical anomaly that shouldn't exist. It should have disappeared long ago.

Avocados come from an era before humans, when gomphothere, large elephant-like creatures that lived two million years ago, walked the earth and ate the fruits by the dozen. Avocados, like any other plant, grew with the ambition of spreading seeds and avocado seeds could only be eaten—and later pooped out—by large animals with big enough throats. When gomphothere went extinct, avocados lost their chief consumer. Yet, as ...

Mecca from above
  • October 3, 2014

The Growing Pains of the Ancient Hajj

by Dan Stone

Most cities experience a high season and for centuries, Mecca’s has been early October, when Muslims from all over the world visit the Saudi city for a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage.

Islam, their faith, requires the 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide to make the holy journey to the birthplace of the religion. Through a series of rituals and historic reenactments, pilgrims pay tribute to God and walk the ground where the prophet Muhammad was born and lived. During the one-week event, three million people visit the city, which takes on an air of piety. The faithful are urged to reflect the spirit of the ...

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  • September 19, 2014

The Next Frontier in Farming

by Dan Stone

If we have any hope of reaching the United Nations' goal of doubling Earth’s food production by 2050, farmers will have to innovate—and not just farmers, but the seed and fertilizer companies who work in labs to make food grow more efficiently and reliably.

What if there’s another way, however, to dramatically boost food production? Crops that withstand drought or drive away pests can only go so far. Once you can get plants to literally grow faster, it may be possible to boost production. That’s the thinking of several Columbia University researchers who have an idea to make plants photosynthesize ...