June 18 – A landmark study by an international group of scientists has concluded that planet Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction event comparable in scale to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The researchers found that extinction rates are currently 1000 times higher than normal due to deforestation, global climate change, and the depletion of ocean fisheries. Ben Gruber reports.
S. L. Pimm1,*, C. N. Jenkins2, R. Abell3,†, T. M. Brooks4, J. L. Gittleman5, L. N. Joppa6, P. H. Raven7, C. M. Roberts8, J. O. Sexton9
As climate change does its thing to America, what it is going to do to the nation’s food supply is still an open question. Will California’s Central Valley, which grows a third of the produce eaten in the U.S., wither into a vegetable ghost town? Will other locations pick up the slack? Or will agriculture just take a look at the harsher droughts, crazier storms, and prolific insects that the future has in store and move indoors?
It’s this indoor farming future that Allison Kopf, founder and CEO of the agricultural technology startup Agrilyst, is curious about. In an indoor farm, water doesn’t inconveniently evaporate. LED lights can lengthen the hours of sunlight so plants can grow faster. CO2 levels can be tweaked. Even as the weather outside goes haywire, plants farmed indoors can live out an optimized version of the weather that they coevolved with — the weather of the past. The best weather of the past. Or, as Kopf calls it, a “weather-independent environment.”
Growing concern over drought in Somalia. At least 50 thousand children could die in the country, according to the United Nations. One in 10 people in the country face food insecurity. The regions of Puntland and Somaliland are worst affected, CCTV’s Abdulaziz Billow has that story.
Drought is concern in southern Africa too. Zimbabweans have spent their first weekend in an official state of disaster. Rural areas are the hardest hit. But residents in the capital Harare also are feeling the effects. CCTV’s Farai Mwakutuya has more.
Egypt has long been called Umm al-Dunya, or the “mother of the world”. Ancient Greeks described it as “the gift of the Nile” whose flooding each year provided two rich harvests. Egyptian wheat fed the pharaohs and was used by the Roman state to supply the free bread which kept its citizens loyal.With one of the oldest agricultural economies in the world, Egypt has for centuries been an economic and cultural powerhouse in the region, and at the heart of this is its capital, Cairo. Street life in the sprawling metropolis is vibrant and much of the city functions as a marketplace. Although international chains such as KFC and McDonald’s exist, their offerings are often too expensive for locals who prefer their own versions of fast food bought at carts around the city.
Many foods that are popular today have ancient roots. According to legend, for instance, Al-Hakim bin-Amr Allah, the Fatimid ruler of Egypt, loved the leaf molokhia so much that he banned people from eating it.Ful, made of fava beans, is a filling fast dish. In fact, fava beans were found in pharaohs’ tombs and were believed to be the best food to sustain a journey to the next life.Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat and has one of the highest consumption rates of bread in the world. Egypt’s poor have long survived on bread subsidised by the government. In pre-revolution Egypt, against the backdrop of rising global food prices in early 2007 through to 2008, in a country where the common word for bread is aish, meaning “life” or “survival”, Street Food investigates the cost of food staples for the average person.
We look at how Cairo’s street food vendors have been affected by the rise in cost of basic commodities. They are faced with a dilemma: raise their prices and lose customers, or keep them the same and lose profits.We speak to Abdelsalam Gomma, an economist, and Mahmoud al-Asqulany, a journalist and a founder of Citizens Against Price Rises, about the politics of bread in Egypt. Al-Asqulany holds the Mubarak-led government responsible for rising food prices: “Inflation in Egypt is caused by the greed of the businessmen, corporations, and the government, and by their desire to make more money,” he says.He presciently tells us: “The government cannot ignore this. We have warned them a million times that this is a ticking time bomb, which will one day explode.”Editor’s note: This film was first broadcast on Al Jazeera English in 2008.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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