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A review of 'God's Last Offer' by Ed Ayres
In 1998, S. Sailam, a farmer living with his pregnant wife and two children in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, found that the pesticide he was spraying on his cotton crop had ceased to do its job. In desperation, he killed himself by squirting the pesticide down his throat. More than 100 of his fellow farmers in the region took their lives with this same tragic gesture in January and February of last year. They had been pressed by the Indian government to abandon their tradition of diversified agriculture in favor of high-tech operations growing monoculture cotton for export, and they needed big yields to pay back the loans that financed their switch. When the farmers' crops were decimated by caterpillars, their lives were destroyed as well.
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Southern Exposure
Radioactive water leaked at a South Korean nuclear power plant last night, exposing at least 22 people to radiation. The government says the radiation was contained within the facility and would not affect the outside environment. The incident follows an accident last week at a uranium-processing plant in Japan, which exposed at least 49 people […]
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All Roads Lead to Rome — Except on Wednesdays
Starting tomorrow, Rome’s historic center will be off-limits for six hours each Wednesday to vehicles without catalytic converters, city officials said on Monday. The ban, aimed at reducing levels of toxic benzene, is expected to affect about 1 million cars. Starting August 31, 2000, all of Rome will be closed to cars without the pollution-filtering […]
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Wind-Win Situation
Ten percent of the world’s electricity could come from wind by 2020, up from just 0.15 percent today, if governments make development of wind capacity a priority, according to a new report released by Greenpeace International, the European Wind Energy Association, and the Denmark-based Forum for Energy and Development. Wind power grew by an average […]
