Skip to main content

News Tip: Experts Available to Comment on Earth Day Issues

With the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on Thursday, April 22, experts from Duke University are available to address two key environmental issues: ocean and coastal governance under the Obama administration, and the importance of earth-friendly food policies.

-- Linwood Pendleton, director of ocean and coastal policy at Duke's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, specializes in coastal issues. Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute in 2009, he was a senior fellow and director of economic research at The Ocean Foundation, and director of the Coastal Ocean Values Center.

"The Obama administration has done more to modernize ocean and coastal governance than any administration in the last 25 years," Pendleton says.

He noted that U.S. ocean waters and coasts are governed by more than 140 laws and 20 different agencies, often with conflicting goals and mandates that have resulted in "ocean sprawl." He praised Obama's proposed new national ocean policy that would coordinate regional ocean management plans within the next three to five years.

"It could provide a framework for coordinating the different uses of an increasingly crowded ocean, and for making sure that our ocean and coasts live up to their economic and ecological potential," he says.

-- Kathy Rudy, an associate professor of women's studies, specializes in food politics, ethics and animals. Her latest research project, "The Ethics of Earthlings: Animal Advocacy for the Rest of Us," takes a new approach to animal advocacy based on earth-friendly principles and themes.

"Eating organically is the answer," says Rudy, who is concerned about the herbicides and pesticides some farms use. "It is the way to solve both human health and environmental problems. It's important to increase awareness around the nation about the contaminants in foods so that people will re-think what they eat."

She says Michelle Obama's White House garden is setting a good example for American households. "It's so crazy that we're eating this contaminated food when we can grow our own," Rudy says.