The PBS program, Need to Know, had an important segment recently on the implications for human health from climate change. These are, unfortunately, many and various, and include disease vectors exacerbated by warming, allergies, health impacts from too much or too little water, and heat. The show looked at a number of concerns, articulated by […]
Germany’s Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen announced that Germany is going nuclear-free by 2022. The country’s seven oldest reactors were taken off-line shortly after the Fukushima meltdown, and an eighth (the glitch-prone Kruemmel facility in northern Germany) has been off-line for technical reasons and won’t be returned to active service. Six more will go into shut […]
A new report on global water stress out last week from the British risk assessment firm Maplecroft highlights countries at “extreme risk” for water shortage, declaring, “current and future water availability as one of the foremost global challenges.” Nine of the top ten countries on the list are from the Middle East/North Africa region, with […]
Switzerland’s government has decided to go nuclear-free in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. Last week-end, 20,000 rallied against nuclear power. Earlier today, the cabinet decided to build no new fission plants while allowing those currently on line to operate through their designed lifespan. “Existing nuclear power plants will be closed at the end of […]
Share Our Strength has enlisted Academy Award winning actor and child hunger activist Jeff Bridges to promote its “No Kid Hungry” campaign. The initiative aims to end child hunger in the United States by 2015 by building a community of supporters who commit to participating in programs and initiatives organized by Share Our Strength. Share […]
I was talking to a fellow sustainability geek the other day. He was telling me about the new gadget, installed by his friendly, neighborhood electric utility, that very closely monitors his home energy use and gives vivid color readouts on just how much juice is being consumed. You won’t be surprised to learn that he […]
There’s a great blog on many things tech, including clean tech, called GigaOm, if you don’t know it. I dropped in for a comment the other day on the estimable Katie Fehrenbacher’s piece about the recent LinkedIn IPO and its impact on clean tech finance. She suggested that VC money would be migrating away from […]
What’s the best way to aid the hungry? Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spend their time trying to answer this question, and they wrote about their findings, as well as the findings of other researchers, in the recent food issue of […]
Last week, Alberta’s Energy Minister Ron Liepert was in the US to promote his province’s energy sector. During breakfast at the Penn Club in Manhattan organized by the Canadian Consulate-General, he discussed a wide array of energy-related subjects. The message he had for US foreign policy was simply that Alberta (and by extension Canada as […]
What can we expect for the future of global food security when factoring in the impact of global warming, population and consumption patterns? Recently published reports may help illuminate the discussion. Researchers at Stanford University and Columbia University analyzed the impact that global warming has had on food production from 1980 to 2008. The study […]
How green are the Tories? was the question from The Independent a few years back. “Vote Blue, Go Green” said the Conservative leader, David Cameron. Now he’s the PM and he’s backing up his words with actions. His government’s announcement yesterday that it is going to halve the UK’s GHG emissions, relative to 1990 figures, […]
A deal between BP and Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft to explore the Arctic seems to have fallen apart after the two failed to come to an arrangement on a stock swap. It is now doubtful that BP will get a piece of the Arctic action at all. Rosneft was to take a 5% stake […]
Foreign Policy magazine has come out with their “food issue,” in which authors discuss how food is a driver of world politics. While the authors discussed food’s role in the recent protests in the Middle East, and well as the intersection of hunger and poverty (the hungry are the poor and the poor are the […]
“Action This Day” is what Winston Churchill demanded in his World War II memos. That’s what the National Academies are calling for in their fifth and final report on America’s Climate Choices. Their press release said the report, prepared by a blue-ribbon panel of the National Research Council, “… reiterated the pressing need for substantial […]
That’s how I imagine Variety would have headlined last week’s very big news that Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, is abandoning any push for new nuclear power and will make a concerted effort to promote renewables. I lauded Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, when she made essentially the same decision in March. A panel of experts […]