A far more sophisticated approach needs to be taken when developing biofuels as an environmentally-friendly energy option according to a recent report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management.
Governments should fit biofuels into an overall energy, climate, land-use, water and agricultural strategy if their deployment is to benefit [...]
Demand for water has never been as great as it is today, and it will only increase due to population growth and mobility, rising living standards, changes in food consumption, and increased energy production, especially biofuels. Access to basic water-related services (safe drinking water, sanitation and food production) remains inadequate in much of the developing [...]
Shifting seasons are destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger, and that is just one of the multiple climate change impacts taking their toll on the world’s poorest people, according to a recent report from Oxfam International. Oxfam is a U.K.-based confederation of 14 like-minded organizations working together and with partners and allies around the world [...]
The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering previous predictions, according to a recent report from The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC).
Newly emerging science is directly pointing to some events thought likely to occur in the longer-term are already happening or set [...]
While wind-generated energy accounts for only 0.4 percent of China’s total current electricity supply, the country is rapidly becoming the world’s fastest growing market for wind power, trailing only the U.S., Germany, and Spain in terms of installed capacities of existing wind farms.
Scientists and researchers estimate that wind alone has the potential to meet China’s [...]
Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest extent since the start of satellite measurements in 1979. While this year’s minimum extent is above the record and near-record minimums of the last two years, it further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the [...]
Kenya, one of the world’s most popular and exotic wildlife ecosystems, has all but been decimated by loss of forest cover in recent history, severely threatening the health of the land, its people and once powerfully robust wildlife.
To address the country’s massive losses in forest cover, Kenyan communities will plant 7.6 billion trees over the [...]
Global population numbers are on track to reach 7 billion in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999. Virtually all of the growth is in developing countries. And the growth of the world’s youth population (ages 15 to 24) is shifting into the poorest of those countries.
The Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World [...]
Some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint” on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large, long-term benefit: Â have one less child.
A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an [...]
Film Review by Lisa Rosen
The title alone conjures up a biblical vision of tranquil harmony. Nature at its most pure and innocent. The first images of “The Garden†may be more prosaic, but they nonetheless support that idea. A man, weathered by the years and by physical labor, wakes up before dawn and makes his [...]
World energy consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent through 2030, according to recently released data by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). These projections are driven by strong long-term economic growth in the world’s developing nations.
The current global economic downturn will dampen world energy demand in the near term, as manufacturing and consumer demand [...]
Delivering food security to an additional one billion people in Africa will become ever more challenging over the next four decades unless more intelligent management of natural resources and emerging opportunities are brought to bear.
In addressing this and other similar crises, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development provided some new and sobering costs on how [...]
