George Monbiot on the Rio Summit. Meanwhile the BBC rounds it up like this: Environment and development charities say the Rio+20 agreement is too weak to tackle social and environmental crises. Gro Harlem Brundtland, author of a major UN sustainable … Continue reading
Making Light has some good thoughts about resource security, abundance, and growth. Substituting non-acquisitive goals for acquisitive ones is difficult but not impossible. Our society already does that, whether people are collecting photos of themselves in exotic locations or status … Continue reading
Meanwhile, the report found that Bt corn likely provides a marginal operational yield advantage of 3 to 4 percent over typical conventional practices. Since Bt corn became commercially available in 1996, its yield advantage averages out to a 0.2 to … Continue reading
“Because France has so much nuclear power, the country has an inordinate number of electric heating systems. And because France has not added on enough additional capacity over the past decade, the country’s current nuclear plants are starting to have … Continue reading
Introduction With a rare exception or two I haven’t written here for several years. Various things have intervened – moving to a new country, starting a new business, and preceding all that some formal study. What I’d like to do … Continue reading
Greg Palast writes: So, we’ve got both candidates hawking the nuclear snake oil. But there is one difference between them. A big big BIG difference. McCain’s ready to spend a hundred billion dollars on nuclear power, no questions asked. But … Continue reading
The Weld Valley remains one of the most diverse areas of native ecology in southern Tasmania. The Weld sits at the frontier of Europe’s “ecological empire”, between the ancient rhythms/landscapes of the western wilderness and the graduallty expanding radius of … Continue reading
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service today announced its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate the use of genetically-engineered fruit flies and pink bollworm in certain plant pest programs. APHIS is … Continue reading
A documentary about the dangers of GMO foods and the way the biotech industry has covered this up. Here is the trailer, and you can find more about the film at Roundup Ready Nation.
Huon Valley Environment Centre has made a video documenting the protest against logging in the Weld Valley, in Tasmania’s southern forests. It runs for an hour, and to watch it you’ll need at least 800kbps link speed and Quicktime 7. … Continue reading
Australia is facing terrible water shortages on a continuing basis, due to climate change. We’re running out of fossil fuel, so we probably won’t be able to continue to make fertilisers in the same way, or to make heavy use … Continue reading
Christopher Alexander was interviewed recently on radio in Australia. He mentioned that several years ago he had been appointed part of the planning approvals process for Pasadena housing units. His contribution was to insist that the developers show how their … Continue reading
From The Anthropik Network: According to hydrologists, government officers and industrial leaders, water and waste pollution is the single most serious issue facing China. Presently, one in three rural inhabitants lacks access to safe drinking water. The urban situation is … Continue reading
Edgar Jacobi: Heh. Well, you know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually? Rorschach: Yes. Edgar Jacobi: Well, that ain’t the kind of cancer I got. Judi Bari and Earth First! In the 1980s some environmental activists, … Continue reading
Greenhouse sceptics argue that the proponents of a human cause of global warming have not made a convincing case. They say we need to understand things better and rule out natural causes before we make costly changes to legislation. This … Continue reading
I live in Tasmania, an island about the size of the republic of Ireland, or the state of South Carolina, which lies off the southern coast of the mainland of Australia. It has a population of just under half a … Continue reading
A number of prominent conservationists have recently been quoted in support of nuclear power as a way of decreasing greenhouse emissions. The gravity of the situation is undoubted, but it has led people to grasp at flawed solutions. In fact … Continue reading
Australian current affairs television program Four Corners had a program called Greenhouse Mafia about the way the coal industry had total control of Australian government policy in relation to climate change. The executives in that industry and the politicians in … Continue reading
I have seen attitudes to conservation split into the following categories: The Romantic-Transcendental Conservation Ethic In the mid-nineteenth century Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir waxed eloquent about the wonders of nature in a mystical, almost religious … Continue reading