Are rising global food prices here to stay? Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute thinks so, and warns that things will only get worse in the face of climate change, increasing population, water scarcity, and soil erosion. In “The Great Food Crisis of 2011” published in Foreign Policy Magazine, Brown argued the difference between […]
(For more on this graphic, go here.) The venerable Matt Wald at the NY Times reported the other day that CO2 emissions in the US peaked in 2005 and, according to the latest estimates, we’re not going back to those numbers until ten years down the road. How come? In part – and in part […]
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has released their “Rural Poverty Report” for 2011. Some of the major points of the report are as follows: The population of the developing world is still more rural than urban: some 3.1 billion people, or 55% of the total population, live in rural areas. At least 70% […]
As a phenomenon like the continuing production and growing stocks of greenhouse gases by our industrial societies intensifies, it creates a warming effect that thaws the cryosphere – that part of the planet that is frozen. So, more melting gives more dark surfaces which leads to the earth absorbing more solar radiation which makes it […]
Read recent posts from the Foreign Policy Blog network that also relate to food security issues. Yuppies to the Rescue from the Development Aid blog As Goes the Price of Corn from the Mexico blog Enjoy!
FPB blogger Sarah Repucci wrote recently about the frustration over which drove “…a single jobless youth set himself ablaze as a statement…” to protest against corruption and “the regime’s self-enrichment.” Soon after, protests against the government of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali picked up in intensity until the president ended his 23-year reign and fled […]
Incessant flooding in Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland is battering the area and could take a toll on global food prices. According to the Associated Press: “Queensland…has been devastated by weeks of pounding rains and overflowing rivers. Eighteen people have died since late November and about 200,000 have been affected by the floods…Queensland officials have […]
Invoking a rarely used feature of the Clean Water Act that allows EPA to bar actions that would cause “unacceptable adverse effects” to the environment, water quality, or water supplies, the agency halted a major mountaintop removal mining project. The EPA release quotes EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Peter S. Silva: “The proposed Spruce No. […]
I gave a lesson, Temperature 101, about a year ago. It garnered a lot of comments – for this blog anyway. It is truly astonishing, I thought then, how obtuse the Denialists are, and how marvelously blithely indifferent they are to the sources of their Flat Earth thinking: the paid shills of the fossil fuel […]
Could a survey of 33 questions be the difference between whether a person qualifies for food aid or not? We often talk about food aid organizations and the projects they implement to combat food crises or the chronic challenges to food security. But who are the people who make these projects happen? How do they […]
There’s a video today from Reuters describing how London is piloting an advanced hydrogen hybrid bus, complete with a waste-to-energy hydrogen production facility. This reminded me of a really great little TV show from Nova that I flagged to you a few years back: Car of the Future. Nova visited Iceland for the segment of […]
Global food prices have surpassed the peak reached during the 2007-2008 Global Food Crisis, according to the BBC. The new information comes from the Food Price Index, compiled by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) to track global food prices by measuring monthly price changes for a food basket composed of dairy, meat and […]
Dioxin contamination of eggs and poultry originating from small farms in Germany have led to products being pulled from shelves as an expanding investigation continues. A growing fear of food laced with the carcinogenic compound have led some countries to scrutinize or even block German food imports. The source of the contamination is thought to […]
On New Year’s Eve, I took a look back at 2010 and a look ahead too. Jonathan Lash and the venerable World Resources Institute are pretty clued in, so you might like to have their perspective too. His presentation covers the gamut, from EPA’s authority, to food and water issues, to transportation, deforestation, and the […]
An astounding report from ABC news shows how the western diet has led 95% of one Pacific island nation’s population to become overweight. The island of Nauru is in the South Pacific, 400 miles away from the nearest civilization and with a population of nearly 10,000 people. According to the ABC news report, the people […]