food

Revolution and realism required: UN report

by Bryan Walker July 14, 2011

I’ve been looking at the The World Economic and Social Survey 2011: The Great Green Technological Transformation which Gareth drew attention to in his recent post.  It’s a long document prepared by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), not intended for casual consumption, and I haven’t read all 250 pages.  But the [...]

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Oxfam on food justice: clearheaded and admirable

by Bryan Walker June 22, 2011

I thought of Oxfam’s recent report on food justice while I was reviewing Christian Parenti’s book Tropic of Chaos. He wrote of how climate change impacts are compounding the existing economic and political problems of many poorer populations. This is also very evident in Oxfam’s report on the alarming new surge in hunger as higher [...]

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Hotspots hit poor hardest

by Bryan Walker June 4, 2011

Another report this week drives home the message that the world’s poorer people are going to suffer the early and potentially devastating effects of climate change. The report is the work of the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) programme associated with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a group of food [...]

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The Climate Show #7: Box and Boxsters – the cryosphere special

by Gareth February 17, 2011

Highlight of this week’s show is a fascinating — and sobering — interview with Greenland expert Professor Jason Box. His perspective on current events in the Arctic — from the dangers of permafrost methane, through rapid warming over Greenland and the potential impacts on sea level is essential listening and viewing. And he can surf, [...]

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Lester Brown: Russian heat hits world grain supplies

by Bryan Walker August 13, 2010

One of the things that persuaded Gwynne Dyer that it was time to write his book Climate Wars was the realisation that “the first and most important impact of climate change on human civilization will be an acute and permanent crisis of food supply”. He’s not the only one to recognise that. Many of us [...]

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The size of a cow

by Gareth August 12, 2009

NZ’s farming leadership remains in denial about the need for action on climate change, as a remarkable speech [full text, Stuff report] by Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson demonstrates. Addressing the Plant Protection Society’s annual conference in Dunedin yesterday, Nicholson took swipes at Keisha Castle-Hughes, Greenpeace and the Green Party: It’s not the reality that [...]

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Climate alarmist spouts nonsense

by Gareth June 4, 2009

New Zealand agriculture is doomed and the country will go bust if it adopts measures to restrain carbon emissions, claims Dennis T Avery of the “centre for global food issues” at right wing US think tank the Hudson Institute. Avery is notorious as a vocal climate crank, and was invited to speak at last month’s [...]

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Right and wrong

by Gareth February 23, 2009

Estimating the economic impact of climate change and climate policy is controversial — not least in New Zealand, where some economists have been happy to generate specious forecasts to serve political purposes — so it’s a relief to read an article about climate change by a leading NZ economist that gets the issue “right”. Infometrics [...]

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Mrs O’Leary’s Cow

by Gareth July 2, 2008

Did you know that all cows are carbon neutral? That all the fuss about forcing farmers into an emissions trading scheme is stuff and nonsense? You do now, thanks to the sterling efforts of the Carbon Sense Coalition, an Australian organisation. They issued a press release yesterday, news of which reached me via the Royal [...]

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Friday on my mind (once more)

by Gareth June 6, 2008

Before you ask, the picture shows the shell of a coccolithophore, and it’s in trouble. We’ve been adding a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and a good chunk of it has ended up in the oceans. The water is getting more acidic, and some sea creatures are finding it harder to build their [...]

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