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Images of a sustainable-food revolution

Imagine a place where residents pull together to create a thriving store and restaurant serving fresh, local food. Imagine a place where the money appears, the dreams become real, the produce and pastured meat taste like home. Imagine a place where officials support these dreams with policies that fund organic farmers and encourage the purchase […]

Find a ride to our reader party!

Heard the hype about Grist’s hometown throw-down and purchased your ticket, but haven’t quite figured out what to wear how you’re gettin’ there? You’re not alone. Grist reader Diana from Olympia, Wash., wrote to us asking if anyone else from her area might be carpooling, and we thought to ourselves: selves, might there be others […]

Notable quotable

"People use fossil fuels because the good Lord put them on earth for us to use." — Fred Palmer, senior VP of PR for coal giant Peabody Energy

Anti-bottled-water campaign kicks off in cities across U.S.

A Think Outside the Bottle campaign kicked off today, urging municipal governments to cut off bottled-water contracts and to press for greater disclosure of the source of bottled H2O. The campaign is spearheaded by Corporate Accountability International and joined by cities including Boston, Minneapolis, Sacramento, and Portland, Ore., many of which held taste tests today […]

In the farm belt, a look at the extremes of agricultural production

When I arrived in Iowa on a reporting trip this summer, I expected to experience it with city eyes: frankly, as a rural backwater. I’ve lived on a farm in the Appalachians of North Carolina since 2004, but the ten years before that, I lived in Mexico City and New York City. I don’t know […]

New developments in WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations

Some new ideas by Brazil and Argentina during the Doha round negotiations at the World Trade Organization have left me feeling rather optimistic about the ability of the WTO to actually help address one of the world's biggest environmental problems: global overfishing.

Their proposal is a real attempt by developing countries in the ongoing negotiations about fisheries subsidies to establish some rules to prevent countries from subsidizing their fishing sector without regard to the fish!

The proposal still needs work. But finally, leadership by the developing world to try a find a workable approach to ensure that development keeps the best interest of marine life and habitat in mind while also tending to the needs of people.

Evaluating U.S. and EU policies

The last couple of months I've been busy preparing two major reports on government support for biofuels, both for the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). These reports follow on from our October 2006 report on support for biofuels in the United States, which we commissioned from Doug Koplow of Earth Track, and which has been cited numerous times on these pages.

Last month, we issued what we call our "Synthesis Report," our overview of government support for biofuels in selected OECD countries. Coming out right on the heels of the so-called "OECD Paper" (actually, a discussion document for a meeting of the Round Table on Sustainable Development, to which I contributed), "Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in Selected OECD Countries" hasn't yet attracted much attention in the press. It is rather dense in parts, I'll admit. But it contains some crunchy numbers.

For example, we estimate that total support to biofuels in OECD countries was at least $11 billion in 2006, with most of that provided by the U.S. and the EU. Expressed in terms of dollars per greenhouse-gas emissions avoided, the levels vary widely, but in almost all countries, whether for ethanol and biodiesel, they exceed $250 per tonne of CO2-equivalent. That is several multiples of the highest price of a CO2-equivalent offset yet achieved on the European Climate Exchange.

Then, last week, we released our long-awaited report on "Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in the European Union" ...

Boosting crops for fuel will hurt water supplies, says report

Increased production of corn and other crops to fulfill America’s biofuel gluttony could threaten both availability and quality of water supplies, according to a report released today by the National Research Council. Fulfilling President Bush’s stated goal of producing 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2017 “would mean a lot more fertilizers and pesticides” […]

Want environmentally conscious effervescence? DIY

If you’re a fan of sparkling water but feel guilty about having to buy it bottled, you might enjoy this NYT story about home seltzer makers that provide "environmentally conscious effervescence." Myself, I don’t care for the bubbly stuff, but I did find this part amusing (emph. mine, obvi): Plain tap water has become the […]

LCV declares Sen. James Inhofe a target for unseating in 2008

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe (R) is the first person to make the League of Conservation Voters’ “Dirty Dozen” list of congresspeople the group hopes to unseat in 2008. Inhofe is the minority leader on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, despite having called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”; […]