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Food for thought in thinking about food: 2009 World Summit on Food Security
On November 13, 2009, Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General, Jacques Diouf, embarked on a 24-hour public hunger strike, in the lead up to this week’s World Summit on Food Security in Rome. more…
COP15’s Indigenous voices on climate change film festival
As a part of our contribution to a robust discussion at the COP15 climate negotitions in Copenhagen, the United Nations University has been working hard with partners to organize the Indigenous Voices on Climate Change film festival at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen (4pm-6pm, 9th-13th December,2009). more…
How things work: Canada’s oil sands
With the topic of peak global oil production moving more into the mainstream, you have perhaps heard of the Canadian oil sands. There, huge tracts of remote forested land are strip-mined to obtain a type of thick crude oil called bitumen. more…
Energy descent from peak oil: Not a collapse, more like evolution
There is an unhealthy tendency to categorise environmentalists and members of the peak oil community as ‘doom and gloomers’ predicting the end of the world. more…
Oil reserve estimates inflated?
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. more…
Grow a green roof (and eat it too)
Cities are called concrete jungles for obvious reasons: cluttered skyscrapers overlook congested streets and highways amidst a constant bombardment of neon lights and billboards. more…
Fashion from trash
It may not be obvious, but the 3Rs of the ‘Waste Hierarchy‘ are in a particular order for a reason. ‘Reduce’ comes first, since it has zero impact. Following closely, ‘Re-use’ cuts waste and engenders no or little energy use. ‘Recycle’ comes next because it requires more energy (yet still less than to manufacture using new resources). more…
Climate change is a feminist issue
When it emerged earlier this year that Obama’s science star John Holdren had once, back in 1977, co-authored a textbook discussing possible methods of population control, among them sterilisation, America’s rightwing fury machine triumphantly seized upon it, dubbing him Obama’s “science fiction tsar“. more…
Cutting carbon by degrees
When the first Cool Biz campaign was implemented in the summer of 2005, I just couldn’t understand why air conditioners in Japanese offices were being set at 28°C. I used to think, “Isn’t it better just to switch them off?” more…
High and dry
The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is referred to as the Third Pole because it is the third largest mass of ice on the Earth, after the Arctic and Antarctic. Its glaciers provide a water source for 1.3 billion people in Asia. more…