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 [...]

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 [...]

Microfinance continues to grow

According to the latest Vital Signs Update released by the Worldwatch Institute, the number of poor people worldwide receiving micro-loans increased 17 percent in 2006. The 2006 (latest data year) increase continued a double-digit growth rate that averaged about 29 percent annually between 2001 and 2006.
Microfinance has become an very effective tool for fighting poverty [...]

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 [...]

New Jersey-size “dead zone” in Gulf of Mexico

Scientists announced Tuesday that this year the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will reach a record size equivalent to the state of New Jersey. The record dead zone is the result of soaring production of corn-based ethanol and widespread flooding in the Midwest, according to the scientists.
The dead zone is caused by the [...]

Food Flash Point: East Africa

Across the globe, from Brunei to London, the affects of soaring food and fuel prices are having a dramatic impact on economies and governments. But one region to watch in particular is East Africa.
According to a June 30 posting on their website, FEWS NET (Famine Early Warning Systems Network) estimates almost nine million people in [...]

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 [...]

Humanitarians Respond to G8 Summit

Some leading humanitarians working on the front lines of a global food crisis that threatens to push 100 million people into hunger — in addition to the estimated 850 million already suffering — were underwhelmed by the recent pronouncements by G8 leaders at their summit in Japan.
According to a report by IRIN (Integrated Regional Information [...]

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 [...]