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% […]
Rick Cook is one of the top green architects around. He and his partner, Bob Fox, designed the truly extraordinary Bank of America Tower, the most sustainable office building in the world today and one of the most aesthetically impressive to boot. (It’s also the second tallest building in New York City now.) The BofA […]
In an article I wrote for Grist on biochar systems, I noted its virtues: * (potentially) store billions of tons of carbon in soil for centuries; * dramatically reduce agricultural waste, forest debris and some municipal solid waste, thus eliminating the production of greenhouse gases that result from their decomposition; * generate energy to both […]
To date, over 1,600 people have died and around 14 million people have been affected by the floods in Pakistan which have followed the country’s worst monsoon rains in 80 years. Sir John Holmes, the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN, has stated that “if we don’t act […]
With Russia’s worst heatwave on record expected to last for the next ten days, experts begin to worry about the potential for devastating economic losses; in this case, a possible $14 billion off economic growth. On August 5th, Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, announced a ban on grain exports after more than a third of […]
That, of course, is the title of James Baldwin’s famous two-essay collection. Baldwin took it from the old spiritual, “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep.” “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!” Well, I don’t like to get all biblical, but I bet a lot of folks in Russia and […]
A recent BBC article reports that more people are classified as “poor”in India’s eight poorest states than Africa’s 26 poorest countries. In this case, an estimated 421 million Indians are in poverty. Recently, many have argued that the Indian government should replace its inefficient social safety net of subsidized government food, cooking fuel and education […]
(copyright Lee Lorenz and The New Yorker) This recent New Yorker cartoon reminded me of the old Wizard of Id strip that I referenced in my post on Nature’s Way.
Dysfunctional Senate seems to me to be redundant. Nevertheless, there are those who, with noses held closed, continue to try to deal with a legislative body that is, by its very nature, undemocratic, and by long habit, works in ways that are infuriatingly inappropriate to the creation of good public policy. What choice do we […]
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