(Rome, 18 November 2009) The blatant absence of the heads of states of the

G8 countries in the World Food Summit, held in Rome from 16 to 18th of

November was one of the key causes of the total failure of this summit.

There were no concrete measures taken to eradicate hunger, to stop food

speculation or to stop the expansion of agrofuels. There were no measures

to stop the devastating effects of corporate agriculture or to support

domestic peasant based food production. Continue Reading »

An Amazon Culture Withers as Food Dries Up

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

XINGU NATIONAL PARK, Brazil – As the naked, painted young men of the Kamayurá tribe prepare for the ritualized war games of a festival, they end their haunting fireside chant with a blowing sound – “whoosh, whoosh” – a symbolic attempt to eliminate the scent of fish so they will not be detected by enemies. For centuries, fish from jungle lakes and rivers have been a staple of the Kamayurá diet, the tribe’s primary source of protein. Continue Reading »

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“Quite a lot is known, and very little is reassuring.”

“The remedies are not hard to grasp. Politicians, however, are supine.” “Yet the mass extinction, however remote, that should be concentrating minds is that of mankind. It is not wise to dismiss it where CO2 emissions, the other great curse of the oceans, are concerned.”
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The Economist Dec 30th 2008

The oceans

A sea of troubles

Man is assaulting the oceans. They will smite him if he does not take care

NOT much is known about the sea, it is said; the surface of Mars is better mapped. But 2,000 holes have now been drilled in the bottom, 100,000 photographs have been taken, satellites monitor the five oceans and everywhere floats fitted with instruments rise and fall like perpetual yo-yos. Quite a lot is known, and very little is reassuring.

Continue Reading »

American Geophysical Union 2008 Fall Meeting

#1
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“… motivations for advancing corn-based ethanol production
in the USA, such as reduced reliance on foreign oil and increased
prosperity for farming communities, must be considered separately,
but the greenhouse-gas-mitigation rationale is clearly unsupportable.”
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Greenhouse-Gas Consequences of US Corn-based Ethanol in a Flat
World.

Davidson, E A., et al     edavidson@whrc.org
The Woods Hole Research Center, 149 Woods Hole Road, Falmouth,
MA 02540- 1644, United States.

Continue Reading »

Cattle, Chemicals, Climate, and Oxygen in Gulf of Mexico

American Geophysical Union 2008 Fall Meeting

The GHG and Land Demand Consequences of the US Animal-Based Food
Consumption

Martin, P A Dept. of Geophysics, 5734 S. Ellis Ave., Chicago,
IL 60637, United States.

Eshel, G  Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale, NY 12504-5000,
United States.

Abstract: While the environmental burdens exerted by food production
are addressed by several recent publications, the contributions
of animal-based food production, and in particular red meat-by
far the most environmentally exacting of all large-scale animal-based
foods-are less well quantified. We present several simple calculations
that quantify some environmental costs of animal-and cattle-based
food production. First, we show that American red meat
is, on average, 350% more GHG (greenhouse gas)-intensive per
edible calorie than the national food system’s mean. Second,
we show that the per calorie land-use efficiencies of fruit and
beans are 5 and 3 times that of animal-based foods. That is,
an animal-based edible calorie requires the same amounts of land
as 5 fruit calories or 3 bean calories. We conclude with highlighting
the importance of these results to policy makers by calculating
the mass flux into the environment of fertilizer and herbicide
that will be averted by reducing or eliminating animal-based
foods from the mean US diet. This also enables us to make preliminary
quantitative statements about expected changes to the size and probability
of Gulf of Mexico anoxic events of a certain O2 depletion levels that are
likely to accompany specific dietary shifts.

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The report, “The Climate Crisis and the Adaptation Myth,” is
published by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and
is available at
www.environment.yale.edu/publication-series/climate_change/.

Public release date: 2-Dec-2008
Yale University

Contact: David DeFusco
david.defusco@yale.edu
203-436-4842

Most US organizations not adapting to climate change

New Haven, Conn.-Organizations in the United States that are at the
highest risk of sustaining damage from climate change are not
adapting enough to the dangers posed by rising temperatures,
according to a Yale report.

“Despite a half century of climate change that has already
significantly affected temperature and precipitation patterns and has
already had widespread ecological and hydrological impacts, and
despite a near certainty that the United States will experience at
least as much climate change in the coming decades just as a result
of current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, little
adaptation has occurred,” says Robert Repetto, author of “The Climate
Crisis and the Adaptation Myth” and a senior fellow of the United
Nations Foundation.

Continue Reading »

Access to water must be high on climate agenda: group

Fri Nov 28, 2008 11:02am EST

By Svetlana Kovalyova

MILAN (Reuters) – Access to water is a basic human right and should be high on the agenda of climate change talks in Poland next week, the head of an Italian advocacy group said on Friday.

With more than 1 billion people having no access to safe water, the World Water Contract group for years has sought to make availability of water a basic right and add it to the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Given that water is threatened by climate change, it is time to include the human right to water in (the new climate) protocol,” Emilio Molinari, chairman of the group’s Italian branch, told Reuters on the margins of a water conference.

Continue Reading »