On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules was a front-page story at the NY Times this past week. The gist: China is cranking up its exports of wind turbines and PV, eclipsing other leaders like the US and Germany. However, they’re doing it largely on the strength of subsidies illegal under international trade agreements, namely the […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has paved the way to end years of blocking approval of genetically modified (GM) salmon, making it the first GM animal introduced into the U.S. food supply. GM animals like the salmon, which can grow faster and larger than in nature, have raised public concern, not only for […]
What if there were a product that could beat back the costly effects of malnutrition? What if this product could be made cheaply, anywhere in the world and have a near-indefinite shelf life? The New York Times Magazine’s recent article “The Peanut Solution” describes how this product may have already been created. Plumpy’nut, “…an edible […]
That’s the title of this special report from the Financial Times. (You can register for free for limited monthly access to the FT online. It’s worth it. See also their many RSS feeds. I subscribe to “Energy Source,” a highly useful blog.) There are articles here on adaptation to climate change, dealing with the critical […]
In the fall of 2007, Australians threw out the government that had been dragging its feet on action on climate change for years. The first thing that Kevin Rudd, the new Prime Minister, did was to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Australians had been experiencing the crush of drought and heat and were more than ready […]
Standard Bank Africa announced a major private sector and purely Africa-based initiative for aiding African farmers with a $100 million pledge. The pledge came is support of the goals of African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), which convened its inaugural session in Accra, Ghana, starting on Thursday. “The scheme will hand out loans to some 750,000 […]
“Lisa Jackson is doing exactly what an Environmental Protection Agency Administrator is supposed to do – thoughtfully and carefully but aggressively implementing our environmental laws to protect public health and our environment. The job of the EPA Administrator is not to make people happy but to make them and their environment healthier.” That was Time’s […]
I took a quick look at Heidi Cullen’s new book The Weather of the Future recently. (I still have to read it. But I’ve got an Ian Rankin and Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0 ahead of her in the queue.) But don’t wait for me. See her here with Stephen Colbert. Then read the book. […]
I’ve been off the air for a week because we’ve been on vacation: Vienna for a few days, then down to Istria for some beach, mountains and sight seeing. We visited a wonderful Croatian national park today: Risnjak. Meanwhile, here’s just a quick hitter on an item I saw on “green curtains” from the excellent […]
Anna Lappé is the co-founder, along with her mother Frances Lappé, of the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, an international network for research and popular education about the root causes of hunger and poverty. They have also founded the Small Planet Fund which has raised more than $500,000 for democratic social movements worldwide. Anna’s first book […]
The future of the world’s first seed bank, maintained by the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry near St. Petersburg, Russia, is threatened by real estate developers looking to build new homes on the prime real estate owned by the Institute. According to the Washington Post, The station was founded in 1924 by Nikolai Vavilov, a […]
The Global Food Security blog will be running a “Five Questions for…” series beginning with Anna Lappé, co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of your Fork and What You Can Do about It. The format will consist of a short profile […]
The British research agency Maplecroft released a report ranking the countries most likely to experience food shortages. The list is topped by Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Liberia, Chad and Zimbabwe. In addition to taking 9 of the top 10 spots on the list, African countries come in 36 of […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about green building this week, as I’ve been working on a big writing project with that, among other things, as an important component. See also my last post below. I’ve been meaning to flag this article – Slash bills and save the world – from a month ago in the […]
Sounds like a great vacation. (It is. I’ve been there a couple of times.) But the Portuguese are putting their ocean waters, abundant wind and sun to another use as well: producing renewable energy. Libby Rosenthal had a characteristically interesting and informative article in the NYT last week on Portugal’s inspiring push to provide 45% […]