Latest Articles
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With food riots raging, let’s open the books on the finances of Big Ag
When we talk about the crisis in food prices, we should scrape below the surface to explore who's actually benefiting from the crisis.
Unless you've had your head stuck in the freezer at Dean & Deluca, you've heard about the food crisis across the planet.
A recent Financial Times displayed this staggering map of the globe: Black dots marked each of the countries were food riots have been sparked in outrage against the rising prices of food. Thirty dots in all. A recent CNN report noted that "Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket." These surging costs, warns World Bank President Robert Zoellick, "could mean 'seven lost years' in the fight against worldwide poverty."
With the food crisis as front page news, I couldn't help but notice which agribusiness company has just reported an 86 percent jump in its quarterly earnings.
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Pope preaches environmental protection to United Nations
After gallivanting around Washington, D.C., Pope Benedict XVI traveled to New York Friday to make an address to the United Nations General Assembly. In a speech largely focused on human rights, the pope also made note of the world’s plentiful other problems, including “the protection of the environment, of resources, and of the climate.” Our […]
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A bright trend for dark times: kitchen gardening
Last week, we ran a guest post about a topic dear to my heart: serious home vegetable gardening. In that piece, Bill Duesing argued that the USDA should take home food production seriously, by providing research and extension services to gardeners. Now Anne Raver, the veteran New York Times garden writer, has come out with […]
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The unthinkable humiliation of biking, part two
Remember that dumb State Farm ad? Here’s another of the same ilk: State Farm bowed to pressure and pulled their ad. Will the same happen to Farmers? (via Streetsblog)
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Governors will pester candidates about climate
A gaggle of governors will conclude a meeting at Yale with an agreement to pester the presidential candidates about climate change. Governors of 18 states, representing more than half of the U.S. population, pledge to “reach out to major presidential candidates as a means of shaping the first 100 days of the next administration.”
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Polar bear listing decision delayed, again
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it needs 10 more weeks to decide whether to list polar bears as a threatened or endangered species. The agency’s self-imposed deadline is now June 30; the original deadline was Jan. 9. The USFWS says it needs time to review the legal and policy implications of […]
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McKibben kicks off 350.org, a new international grassroots climate campaign
If only atmospheric chemistry gave you points for trying. A year ago this week, we were celebrating. I and six college-age colleagues of mine, joined by thousands of organizers across the country, had managed to pull off 1,400 simultaneous demonstrations against global warming in all 50 states. Though we didn’t have much in the way […]
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Does the IPCC dangerously assume ‘spontaneous’ decarbonization?
No.
The central point of the recent Nature article "Dangerous Assumptions" (available here [PDF]) is that the IPCC made dangerous assumptions in their reference scenarios:
... the scenarios assume a certain amount of spontaneous technological change and related decarbonization. Thus, the IPCC implicitly assumes that the bulk of the challenge of reducing future emissions will occur in the absence of climate policies. We believe that these assumptions are optimistic at best and unachievable at worst, potentially seriously underestimating the scale of the technological challenge associated with stabilizing greenhouse-gas concentrations.
That would be a powerful conclusion, if it were true. But it isn't, as this post will make very clear. In fact, I suspect most people will be quite surprised at how clear it is that this conclusion is not true, given that it appears in a major science journal.
First, I think it is worth noting that the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, said late last year:
If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.
Does that sound like the head of a group that has underestimated the scale of the climate challenge?
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