Articles by Grist staff

Bob Geldof takes a big ol' swig of biofuel

Back in the 1980s, Bob Geldof urged Westerners to send food to famine-stricken nations in Africa. Now, evidently, he wants Africans to burn food in their car engines. Get this:

Sir Bob Geldof will be a keynote speaker at the 2009 World Biofuels Markets (WBM) congress and exhibition, to be held in Brussels on the 16-18th March.

Evidently, Sir Bob will make the case for biofuels as panacea for Africa's economic woes. As is often the case, Geldof -- organizer of the 1985 bi-continental blowout Live Aid concert -- will be in exalted company. Only this time, it's not the likes of Jagger and Jacko, rather, it's big-time energy execs and pols.

Sir Bob joins Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, Dr Hermann Scheer, Member of German Parliament and nearly 200 CEO's and expert speakers.

The events list of main speakers includes another exec tied to BP, as well as the head of Brazil's sugarcane ethanol trade group (UNICA) and the chief of struggling U.S. cellulosic ethanol company Verenium.

Biofuels may speed up, not slow global warming: study

CHICAGO — The use of crop-based biofuels could speed up rather than slow down global warming by fueling the destruction of rainforests, scientists warned Saturday. Once heralded as the answer to oil, biofuels have become increasingly controversial because of their impact on food prices and the amount of energy it takes to produce them. They […]

UN unveils ambitious ‘green’ food programme

NAIROBI — The UN Environment Programme has unveiled an ambitious seven-point plan to feed the world without polluting it further by making better use of resources and cutting down on massive waste. A survey of the current state of food production and consumption released to a forum of the Kenya-based UNEP and world environment ministers […]

The case for small-scale fishing communities

Over on the Foreign Policy website, Daniel Pauly of The Sea Around Us Project has an excellent set of info graphics on the dismal state of the globe's fisheries. 

The whole thing should be studied and gaped at by anyone who values the oceans as living ecosystems. You should know, for example, if you don't already, that the world's appetite for sushi has driven three species of bluefin tuna to "near extinction," and that it will take decades to revive them -- if and only if we "stop eating them now."

But what really reeled me in (sorry, everyone) was the comparison between small-scale and large-scale fishing operations. Turns out that small operations are actually much more efficient. Key fact: