South Korea’s biggest is 1.3 million hectares in Madagascar. China’s is 1.24 million in the Philippines. With rich, resource-poor nations increasingly outsourcing their food production to less developed nations, a new website aims to expose the extent of the agricultural land-grab epidemic. It’s a simple if iniquitous equation: rich countries with limited land resources snap …
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Category:Living
Greenwash undermines green living – the 7 sins of greenwash.
Natural. Non-toxic. Biodegradable. It’s possible for manufacturers to cover a multitude of environmental sins with a carefully – if inaccurately – chosen word. And most of them do, as a US House of Representatives committee on greenwash recently found. 98% of the products claiming to be environmentally friendly are guilty of greenwash. That in itself …
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Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Famous for his ‘earth from above footage’, photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s new film, Home, is a feast for the eyes with a strong ecological message. It’s not the usual eco-movie. It’s filmed from above, which makes it spectacular. It gradually unfolds a story, starting with the birth of Earth, and then moves onto how it developed, …
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US over-regulation to outlaw organic growing?
There are concerns circulating on the internet that organic farming could be ‘banned’ by a new Bill about to be presented to the US House and Senate. The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (bill HR 875) proposes measures to enforce the use of pesticides and fertilisers to ensure ‘food safety’. The Bill’s jurisdiction might …
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Watch the planet breathe.
Sometimes its hard to see the big picture. Its difficult to step outside ourselves and realise that we are part of something larger than ourselves. Our plant is a living system and we are an organism on its skin – one that is rather parasitic at the moment though we could be benign. To get …
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Hexayurt – a great design for low impact building.
The Hexayurt is a prize-winning shelter you can build yourself for about $200 (backup link). Suitable raw materials include common building materials ( fire safe insulation boards,) hexacomb cardboard and plastic. You cut six 4′ x 8′ panels in half diagonally to make the roof, and use six more whole panels to form the walls. …
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The destruction of the Amazon is real (in pictures).
We are destroying the Amazon rain forest so that we can have cheap burgers. The slide show linked here shows the rapid decimation of the ancient forest. It takes centuries to regrow. Without it our biosphere is made vulnerable to climate volatility. It sounds like a foolish, short sighted trade-off doesn’t it? (The solution? Fewer …
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20 years on, the ozone hole lingers
The global recognition of CFCs’ destructive potential led to the 1989 Montreal Protocol banning the production of ozone-depleting chemicals. Scientists estimate that about 80% of the chlorine (and bromine, which has a similar ozone-depleting effect) in the stratosphere over Antarctica today is from human, not natural, sources. Models suggest that the concentration of chlorine and …
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Females more valuable, but still undervalued.
The Irish Central Statistics Office has just released a study on gender demographics for Ireland with some comparisons to the EU. The data shows that females are better educated, healthier and more peace-abiding than men, but they still earn far less and don’t get as much say on how the country is run. This may …
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Can we go “cold turkey” on fossil fuels?
Scientists now warn that we must effectively halt fossil fuel use if we are to avoid global climate warming of 2 degrees C by 2050. That’s probably a realistic estimate. But we are unlikely to do it. In fact we probably won’t even try. (See previous post.) But we could take a big step in …
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