The human race and our planet need a new water ethic.
Saving Our Blue Future
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biofuels
NAFTA at 20: State of the North American Farmer
In the United States and throughout North America, NAFTA has accelerated the industrial consolidation of agriculture and pushed out smaller, more sustainable food producers.
Mother Earth’s Triple Whammy
This essay originally appeared in TomDispatch, a website run by Tom Engelhardt and associated with The Nation magazine.
Mother Earth’s Triple Whammy: Are We All North Koreans Now?
Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39% last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global economy appears on the verge of a TKO, a triple whammy from energy, agriculture, and climate-change trends. Right now you may be grumbling about the extra bucks you’re shelling out at the pump and the grocery store; but, unless policymakers begin to address all three of these trends as one major crisis, it could get a whole lot worse. Just ask the North Koreans.
Now Class, Let’s Review Iraq’s Lessons
The American people have expressed themselves clearly on the Iraq War itself for quite a while now. By large majorities hovering around 70 percent, they want it to end. Fulfilling this expressed will of the people is our most urgent foreign policy priority, one that can’t be forgotten, ignored or deferred. But there is other, related, unfinished business to which we as a people need to attend. The worst foreign policy disaster in U. S. history may actually have an upside of sorts: that the war has served as a tryout for a number of policy innovations. “Thanks” to the war, we know enough now to cross them permanently off our list.
Destroying African Agriculture
Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.
The Agrofuels Trap
Agrofuel development has arrived on the global stage. Just this year, the number of declarations, dollars, and development plans that have gone to agrofuels are unparalleled in any other sector. An idea that languished for decades has suddenly become the darling of politicians, big business, international financiers and the media.