Food & Agriculture
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Global Warming and Meat: A Debate with a Bite
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Does Eating Less Meat Really Stop Global Warming?
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Stop Global Warming, or the Coffee Gets It
Pope: Global Warming Will Not Starve the World
Published November 20, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Monday, on the opening day of the World Summit on Food Security, Pope Benedict XVI tried to put the panic about global-warming-induced food crises to rest.
According to the UK's Times Online, the Pope said that the Earth can produce enough for everyone despite the ravages climate change might inflict. It is greed, he said, that has driven up prices and increased hunger in the world.
His remarks emphasized that food should not be treated like any other commodity, especially because "there is no cause and effect relationship between population growth and hunger." Nobel Prize-winning economic Amartya Sen has long commented that hunger is not a problem of production but one of access.
What Will Global Warming Look Like on the Ground?
Published November 19, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
It's easy to talk about global warming on grandiose terms (the word "global" is in the title, after all). But it's sometimes harder to imagine what the concept really means for our daily lives. Some of us want to know what will happen when all the analysts and number-crunchers have gone home and the climatic disturbances start appearing one by one.
The UK's Telegraph recently published an article detailing some of the changes those of us not exposed to the extremes of a drowning island or a melting Himalaya might experience as the climate warms. What can we expect? Here's a run-down of some of the possibilities in Europe.
Why Climate Change Will Hit Women Hardest
Published November 11, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
I wrote the other day over on Change.org's sustainable food blog about the fact that women produce the lion’s share of the world’s food but own only 2 percent of the Earth’s tillable land. Considering that climate change is going to present special challenges to farmers, who depend on abundant resources and stable weather patterns, women are, as they say, in for it. And I haven't even mentioned disease or disappearing drinking water yet.
A new “Gender and Climate Change Manual” from the Global Gender and Climate Alliance rightly states that “the poor, the majority of whom are women living in developing countries, will be disproportionately affected. Yet most of the debate on climate so far has been gender-blind.”
This topic is remarkably important and almost entirely ignored. The issue pops up infrequently and peripherally, as when the 52nd session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women last year took “gender perspectives on climate change” as its “emerging issue.” It's only "emerging" now because no one was paying attention before, but this should have been part of the debate since the beginning.
Eat Meat to Help the Earth? You Grass-Hugger!
Published November 02, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Eating meat contributes to climate change, right? Hamburgers must be abolished if we are to save the Earth. Many staunchly support this point of view, while others scoff at what they see as radical buffoonery. But it's not quite so black and white. You see, it all depends on what kind of meat you're talking about.
A recent post of mine on the subject over on the sustainable food blog drew an interesting comment from alert reader Harry Hamil: "it is clear that well designed, intensive grazing of grasslands by domesticated livestock offers the quickest and greatest opportunity to reduce atmospheric carbon."
So, producing meat could actually be good for our climate?
Pig Poo into Clean Fuel
Published October 28, 2009 @ 02:54PM PT
What if we could turn our nastiest waste products into clean energy?
Considering that we have so many millions of animals penned up in concentrated animal feeding (or should I say “fattening”?) operations, their waste is a resource we possess in spades. We’ve long known it’s possible to capitalize on this mess but weren’t sure of the best way to do it.
New research is giving us a clue, reports New Scientist. If you’re ever stuck with a big lagoon of pig poo and you’d rather have electricity instead, your best bet, according to a team from Denmark’s Aalborg University, is anaerobic digestion. The anaerobic digestion process, by which the manure is broken down by bacteria in an oxygen-free environment to release methane that can power gas turbines, gives the best bang-for-your-poo.
Jatropha Will Not Save Us
Published October 13, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
People still want more and more biofuels, despite the fact that these crops often commandeer land used for food production, which pushes food crops into rainforests, and we know how that turns out.
Just a year ago, reports SciDevNet, a Central American shrub called jatropha curcus was being heralded as the Earth's saving grace. The seeds of the plant produce a diesel-like oil that many predicted would power planes and basically save the world at the same time as pulling millions in the developing world out of poverty.
Some speculated that the booming new industry would spark investments of up to $1 billion a year. The plant was for obvious reasons widely known as the "wonder weed."
One of the main advantages of jatropha is that it can grow in very dry conditions. At least that's what everybody said. However, according to the Green Inc. blog at the New York Times, a June study in the American Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that jatropha was one of the least water-efficient biofuels, comparing only to rapeseed in its thirst. How was that little detail overlooked?
As if that stumbling block weren't enough, according to Green Inc., a report by an environmental and human rights NGO Envirocare, leaked to The East African newspaper last week, tells how the trade in this plant is causing upheaval in Tanzania. Farmers and food crops are being displaced by biofuel production, and water is being consumed at an alarming rate.
Biofuels investors have galloped ahead of the plant science and the community-based planning needed to productively make such sweeping agricultural changes. The journal Nature concludes that we need to go back to the drawing board with some basic research on the wonder weed before this little shrub is going to save anybody at all.
Photo courtesy of treesftf on flickr
Fatalistic Friday: Climate treaty still stalled, catastrophic climate change forecast, more
Published October 02, 2009 @ 03:53PM PT
Above: At a press conference held midway through the Climate Change Talks in Bangkok, Yvo de Boer told reporters that progress has been made key areas including adaptation, technology and capacity-building in developing countries. However, progress on rich nation emission reduction targets and financial support for climate change action in developing countries is still elusive.
Grab a stiff drink and take in this week's bad news about global warming:
Climate talks stall on targets, finance: Efforts to convince rich nations to toughen emissions cuts have failed to make much headway at climate talks in the Thai capital, the U.N. said on Friday. "Progress toward high industrialized world emissions cuts remains disappointing during these talks. We're not seeing real advances there," Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters. "Movement on the ways and means and institutions to raise, manage and deploy financing support for the developing world climate action also remains slow." (Reuters)
Catastrophic climate change could happen with 50 years: If average global temperatures arc toward a rise of 7.2 deg. F (4 deg. C) by 2100 (over those of the mid-19th century), according to a study released this week by the UK's Met Office, we'd be screwed in diverse ways as soon as 2060: Arctic temperatures would increase by 28.8 deg F (16 deg C), while parts of sub Saharan Africa and North America would be devastated by an increase in temperature of up to 18 deg F (10 deg C); rainfall could decrease by 20 per cent in Central America, the Mediterranean and parts of coastal Australia, causing mass drought; Temperature rises in the Amazon would cause the rainforests to die, while Alaska and Siberia would see the melting of the permafrost causing more carbon dioxide to be released. (The Telegraph)
