New economics – Feb 18
Green collar jobs study
Paul Krugman: Poverty is poison
New book: Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail
The crisis is so bad the financial press turns bolshie
Food & Water
The lure of the city
The history of the 19th and 20th centuries could fairly be characterized as the history of urbanization. Will the history of the 21st century be more of the same?
Food & agriculture – Feb 16
Michael Pollan: The omnivore’s next dilemma
Energy Farms – blogging from the epicenter of relocalization
AI (Agricultural Intelligence)
Obesity – key driver for food localization?
Two reports at odds on biotech crops
Hard times – Feb 15
Heat or eat – an expanding crisis
The growing battle for the right to water
UN says soaring prices leave poor hungry
Cooking gas crisis hitting India’s poor hard
Seize the day – Threshold moments and the hope for change
We have only to look at historical events to see that it is perfectly possible, for both good and ill, to radically change circumstances in a host of ways that looked completely impossible not very long before.
The little steps that matter
As we move deeper into the twilight of the petroleum age, grand pronouncements and proposals for massive “solutions” abound. Far more useful, if less noticed, are simple, scalable, low-energy technologies that could make a big difference in the unraveling of industrial society.
Biofuels and the fertilizer problem
If we transition to cellulosic ethanol — which utilizes whole plants, not just the seeds, as in conventional ethanol — we’ll need even more phosphorus. And demand for this finite resource, located mainly in geopolitically troublesome places, will grower at an even faster clip than the current 2.3 percent compounded annual rate.
A death in the family
A tragedy, like the dead chickadee in the photo, seems small compared to what is happening in the calamitous world we live in now, but not to me.
Food & agriculture – Feb 13
California’s corn production skyrockets
Insect explosion ‘a threat to food crops’
Global demand lifts grain prices, gobbles supplies
Farmers and carbon offsets
Biofuels – Feb 13
A really bad day for biofuels
Robert Rapier: The politics of biofuels
Biofuels leading to rights abuses: report
Dark side of a hot biofuel (palm oil)
Ethanol’s effects bother boaters
Hard times – Feb 12
Energy crisis hits Tajik press
As Asia food prices bite, analysts warn of worse to come
Rainfall shortages threaten Costa Rica power
Black smoke over China (book reviews)
Food & agriculture – Feb 10
The upside to peak fertilizer
Nitrogen pollution stomps on biodiversity
Astyk: Time for a new Victory Garden movement!
Studies conclude that biofuels are not so green
