Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Umbra on garbage disposals
Dear Umbra: When my garbage disposal died recently, I replaced it with a clever new design that uses no electricity (just water pressure), but it led me to wonder which is really kinder to the environment: putting kitchen waste in the disposal or just trashing it? I compost whenever possible, of course, but there are […]
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The Rootworm of All Evil
In a major win for the biotech industry, the U.S. government yesterday gave Monsanto the green light to sell corn that has been genetically modified to resist rootworm disease, the most significant threat to the crop. The effort to combat rootworm has been the single biggest reason farmers use pesticides, so the decision will be […]
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The Hunger! The Hunger!
The world’s population is growing, yet world hunger is on the wane — a testament to the success of agriculture. But with the global population expected to increase 50 percent by mid-century, many doubt whether our current food system can continue to provide. The problem isn’t the ability to keep producing more food; the problem […]
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One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Dead Mississippi
Six states whose waters feed the lower Mississippi River agreed this week to work together to reduce the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Fertilizers, sewage, and other nutrient-rich pollution flowing from 42 states into the Mississippi produce the annual dead zone at the mouth of the river — a stretch of water with […]
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The Fish-scales of Justice
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is suing five major grocery store chains to force them to warn customers that tuna, swordfish, and shark may contain dangerously high levels of mercury. In the suit, Lockyer claims that Safeway, Kroger, Albertson’s, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods are violating Proposition 65, which requires companies to provide “clear and […]
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Weed Wackos
The widespread use of Roundup, a common herbicide developed by Monsanto, has caused weeds that are resistant to the chemical to spring up on a half-million acres of agricultural land across the U.S. At fault, scientists say, is the popularity of bioengineered crops that are “Roundup Ready” — that is, created by Monsanto to be […]
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GM’s My Anti-nutrient. What’s Yours?
Genetically modified food could contain excessive amounts of dangerous compounds because of the government’s failure to adequately regulate the production of such foods, according to a report being released today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The report says the Food and Drug Administration made “obvious errors” in reviewing some GM crops, […]
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The Rain in Lesotho Caused Mainly Lots of Pain
Rain. Drought. Hailstorms. Tornadoes. Frost. You’d be hard-pressed to name a weather phenomenon that hasn’t afflicted the African kingdom of Lesotho in recent times, destroying its crops and leaving one-third of its 2.1 million people on the brink of starvation. Now, many scientists are saying that those people, along with nearly 40 million other Africans […]
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Filling Up Wide Open Spaces
Forget about urban sprawl; the new menace facing the U.S. landscape is rural sprawl, according to some experts. In seeking refuge from city life, Americans started by moving to the suburbs; then they started building beyond the suburbs, creating “exurbs”; now, they’re gradually expanding into some of the country’s most remote areas. Growth rates of […]
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Drain, Drain, Go Away
Now, back to typically depressing fare: California’s Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board said yesterday that it would extend exemptions on pollution limits for farmers, meaning that pesticides, salts, and other pollutants will continue to drain from agricultural fields into the region’s watershed. The exemptions were set to expire on Dec. 31, a deadline […]
