Biofuel Use Causing Poverty?

With the recent release of a study completed by Sandia National Laboratories and General Motors that projects that America could conceivably generate 90 billion gallons of ethanol by 2030, the United States seems bound to ignore the warnings OXFAM has made regarding the impact biofuel is making on the world food crisis. Over the [...]

New digital soil maps to help fight hunger

On January 13 the International Center for Tropical Agriculture introduced a new digital map technology that covers 42 countries, and will allow for soil scientists to pinpoint areas of soil degradation. According to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, “Low soil fertility is one of the major factors responsible for depressed yields on [...]

China Leads World Growth in Carbon Emissions

According to a report issued this week by Worldwatch Institute, world carbon emissions from fossil fuel jumped 22 percent between 2000 and 2007, to an estimated annual output of 8.2 billion tons
The United States and Europe accounted for roughly 4 and 3 percent, respectively, of the growth during this decade. India contributed 8 percent, [...]

Climate change affects Bangladeshi poor

Global poverty and climate change are interconnected issues. This story is one example.

Holy light sabers, solar power from space

With a barrel of oil costing $120, more and more renewable forms of energy are receiving new looks. One of the latest is solar power from space.
To produce solar power from space, miles-wide solar panels orbiting 22,000 miles in space collect light from the sun and turn it into microwave radiation [...]

USAID: Global food crisis unlike any in 50 years

Testifying before Congress Wednesday, the Acting Deputy Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development James R. Kunder said the global food crisis is unlike any other food crisis we have faced in 50 years:
We are in the midst of a global food crisis unlike other food crises we have faced in the past half [...]

Could Pond Scum Save the Planet?

Energy policy promoting the production of ethanol from food crops such as corn and soybeans is widely recognized as having a calamitous affect on global food prices and climate change. But just when you thought we’d have to choose between food and renewable energy, there is a new hot plant: algae.
Biofuel from algae is being [...]

Millennium Development Goals Threatened

The heads of four United Nations agencies meeting at a session of the U.N. Social and Economic Council in New York Friday said current global economic factors have hurt international development programs and called for urgent action. The agency heads agreed that rising food and energy prices, global climate change and slow investment to improve [...]

The G8, Food Poverty and Climate Change

The G8 leaders held their annual summit this week in Hokkaido, Japan and had much to say about food poverty and climate change, just not together.
In their Statement on Global Food Security, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United States and the United Kingdom said they “are determined to take all possible [...]