Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage.
Drinking your garden with EB founder Adam Grubb (Audio)
Red Symons, ABC Melbourne
Adam Grubb is a fellow who knows a thing or two about weeds. He swung by the studio today to entice Red into drinking various liquid weed concoctions. He told Red about some of the health benefits associated with eating weeds, but also warned against gobbling down any old weed as some of them can be poisonous.
Adam will be presenting “Very Edible Gardens” as part of Gardening Expo Australia which runs October 1-3 at the Caulfield Racecourse.
Download the audio file (MP3)
(30 September 2010)
Funny interview in which Energy Bulletin founder Adam Grubb tries to entice a reluctant radio interviewer into drinking a smoothie of weeds with fruit. Adam is fascinated by permaculture and wild foods. He writes:
I left the weeds for this interview on my kitchen table so had to run outside the ABC building and scale a fence into a locked carpark and to harvest some. I was somewhat flustered…
-BA
One in Five Plant Species Face Extinction
Juliette Jowit, The Guardian/UK
One in five of the world’s plant species – the basis of all life on earth – are at risk of extinction, according to a landmark study published today.
At first glance, the 20% figure looks far better than the previous official estimate of almost three-quarters, but the announcement is being greeted with deep concern.
The previous estimate that 70% of plants were either critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable was based on what scientists universally acknowledged were studies heavily biased towards species already thought to be under threat.
Today the first ever comprehensive assessment of plants, from giant tropical rainforests to the rarest of delicate orchids, concludes the real figure is at least 22%. It could well be higher because hundreds of species being discovered by scientists each year are likely to be in the "at risk" category.
(29 September 2010)
$5,000,000,000,000: The Cost Each Year of Vanishing Rainforest
Matt Chorley, The Independent/UK
British scientific experts have made a major breakthrough in the fight to save the natural world from destruction, leading to an international effort to safeguard a global system worth at least $5 trillion a year to mankind.
[80 per cent of the world’s remaining terrestrial biodiversity live in forests. (Getty images)]80 per cent of the world’s remaining terrestrial biodiversity live in forests. (Getty images)
Groundbreaking new research by a former banker, Pavan Sukhdev, to place a price tag on the worldwide network of environmental assets has triggered an international race to halt the destruction of rainforests, wetlands and coral reefs.
With experts warning that the battle to stem the loss of biodiversity is two decades behind the climate change agenda, the United Nations, the World Bank and ministers from almost every government insist no country can afford to believe it will be unaffected by the alarming rate at which species are disappearing. The Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, later this month will shift from solely ecological concerns to a hard-headed assessment of the impact on global economic security.
The UK Government is championing a new system to identify the financial value of natural resources, and the potential hit to national economies if they are lost.
(3 October 2010)
