Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
U.S. environmental groups on Wednesday published online maps of the American West with vast areas that they said should be off-limits for renewable energy projects begun by the Obama administration. President Barack Obama's plan to ramp up the country's renewable energy infrastructure has sparked some concerns among environmentalists who fear …
Aviation leaders called on Monday for a global carbon emissions scheme for their industry, arguing that an emerging patchwork of regional and national systems could bring more, not less, environmental damage. The call, from airlines, plane and engine manufacturers, air traffic control organizations and airports, was twinned with a pledge …
Global retail sales of organic cotton apparel and home textile products climbed 63 percent in 2008 to $3.2 billion, a report said on Wednesday. The Organic Cotton Market Report said some of the leading organic cotton retailers in the United States are Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Anvil Knitwear Inc, Nike Inc, …
Wheat Acreage May Drop 7%; Corn By 1% & Cotton By 7% AFP NEW YORK SCALDED by the financial crisis, which has driven crop prices down after several auspicious years, US farmers have let their lands lie fallow this year in hopes of securing some savings. In its annual report …
AHMEDABAD : The city's garbage dump site at Pirana is being identified by the US Environment Protection Agency (USEPA) as a potential place for tapping methane the fuel used to run captive power plants. Ahmedabad will join the league of two other cities Mumbai and Pune whose landfill sites have …
The American food system rests on an unstable foundation of massive fossil fuel inputs. It must be reinvented in the face of declining fuel stocks. The new food system will use less energy, and the energy it uses will come from renewable sources. The seeds of the new food system …
The World Bank and other international public financial institutions are continuing a 15-year trend of supporting coal-fired power plant construction throughout the developing world and economies in transition. By financing this new carbon-intensive infrastructure, multilateral development banks (MDBs) and export credit agencies (ECAs) of the industrialized world are hamstringing the …
One of the most destructive developments in agriculture over the past two decades has been the boom in soya production in the southern cone of Latin America. The corporations that led that boom are now moving aggressively into sugar cane, focusing on large tracts of land in southern countries where …
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives launched a sweeping effort on Tuesday to control greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time help industries that will struggle to meet the proposed environmental requirements. The draft legislation, which will be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in coming …
The world is striving for a new U.N. climate "treaty" in December to succeed Kyoto. Or perhaps it will be a vaguer "agreement," "deal" or "decision." Delegates at 175-nation U.N. talks in Bonn on ways to step up the fight against global warming are locked in a semantic dispute -- …
McDonald's Corp, the largest purchaser of potatoes in the United States, has agreed to take preliminary steps to reduce pesticide use in its domestic potato supply, shareholder groups said on Tuesday. Following the agreement, the Bard College Endowment, Newground Social Investment and the AFL-CIO Reserve Fund withdrew a shareholder proposal …
A draft statement which would confirm G20 leaders' commitment to sign a new climate pact in December and support low-carbon growth drew mixed reactions from green groups and policymakers Tuesday. Environment analysts say more was unlikely from an April 2 summit of leaders of developed and emerging countries focused on …
In the current financial crisis, risk-weary investors worry more about keeping their own boats afloat than in pumping money into a sector noted for high upfront costs, long pay back periods and low rates of return. Add to that an inefficient use of resources, weak regulation and lack of up-to-date …
The mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder has wiped out large numbers of the bees that pollinate a third of our crops. The causes turn out to be surprisingly complex, but solutions are emerging.
Systems dynamics, cellular automata, agent-based modeling, and network analyses have been used in population, land use, and transport planning models. An overview of complex systems science as applied to urban development is presented, and examples are given of where the problems of housing people and anticipating their movements have been …
This report discusses factors to consider when evaluating transportation economic stimulation strategies. Transportation investments can have large long-term economic, social and environmental impacts. Expanding urban highways tends to stimulate motor vehicle travel and sprawl, exacerbating future transport problems and threatening future economic productivity. Improving alternative modes (walking and cycling conditions, …
The international pellet industry published the latest market figures at the European Pellet Conference in Wels, Austria. In spite of the generally depressed state of the economy, the pellet industry remains optimistic and anticipates rapid growth in industrial pellet production.
Agriculture has fueled the eruption of human civilization. Efficiently raised, affordable crops and livestock feed our growing population, and hunger has largely been banished from the developed world as a result. Yet there are reasons to believe that we are beginning to lose control of our great agricultural machine. The …
Genetic engineering has been promoted as an important means for dramatically improving the yields of staple food crops, but there is little evidence to support such a claim. In Failure to Yield, the Union of Concerned Scientists provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of more than two decades of …
