The greatest opportunity of our generation: that’s what could be waiting for us, after we leave “green” behind. Saving the biosphere and spreading sustainable prosperity is going to take a lot more than doing things in a more environmentally-conscious manner; it’s going to demand we remake much of our material civilization.

Read more at Worldchanging.com… or read the related article ‘The Problem with Big Green‘.

As drylands get drier and violence grows, new crises resembling Darfur will arise.

By Jeffrey Sachs | NEWSWEEK. July 7-14, 2008 issue.

The world will experience a growing risk of conflicts over food, energy and water in coming years. The population rises each year by about 80 million people, with most of the increase in impoverished regions already facing environmental stress. Climate change, water scarcity and tighter oil supplies will add to the stresses. As violence increases, in new crises resembling those now underway in Darfur, Somalia and Afghanistan, the tendency might be to look to the military for solutions. We’ll need to keep in mind that engineers and doctors will be the only ones who can truly keep us safe.

Read more at Newsweek….

Oliver Tickell makes the case for controlling greenhouse gases ‘close to the source’ via a groundbreaking new worldwide permits auction.

At their 2008 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan, the G8 agreed that the world should cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. Setting aside the fact that we don’t know 50 percent of which year’s emissions, this is a serious target. But it has two serious problems. 

Read more at Green Futures….

The problems of water management are at the heart of an integrated crisis of global development that includes climate change and food insecurity, says Mike Muller.

The global food crisis of 2007-08 has propelled governments and international agencies into a series of emergency responses, designed both to meet the needs of desperate citizens in many of the world’s poorest countries and to maintain their own authority in face of a surge of popular protest. The flurry of activity and discussion around the issue has tended to deflect attention from the global problems associated with the source of food: water. If the questions of agriculture, land use, supply, distribution and price that lie at the heart of the food crisis are to be addressed, the clouds over the world’s water future must also be taken far more seriously (see Paul Rogers, “The world’s food insecurity“, 24 April 2008).

Read more at OpenDemocracy

Some remembrances from two weeks fieldwork in the Southwest of England: Exeter, Devon.

Beautiful! The Girl Effect. Thanks to Anothercompany.

What’s behind the world food crisis? Yes, the growing world population is a huge contributor to the need for more food. Yes, reckless food- and oil-seed-based biofuel subsidies have added to the problem. Yes, the climate crisis will contribute enormously. Yes, greater prosperity by previously vegetarian consumers in India and China will increase demand for feed grains.

But the media only occasionally touch on why we are having this particular food crisis: market fundamentalism and the privatization of world food security. Sunday’s New York Times has a devastating article on the dismantling over the past 20 years of the network of publicly funded and accountable agricultural research centers.

Read more  at the Huffington Post…

Photo (cc) by Stephan Geyer.

Another striking article at Alertnet focuses on a barely mentioned part of the food crisis: global water scarcity. Read it here…

Photo by Enviro Warrior.

Why are oil prices soaring so high, and will they ever return to Earth? Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency in Paris, explains why peak oil is real, why biofuels are indispensable, and how China determines what you pay at the pump.

Read more at Foreign Policy…

Photo ©2008 by Anothercompany

The refugee challenge in the 21st century is changing rapidly. People are forced to flee their homes for increasingly complicated and interlinked reasons. Some 40 million people worldwide are already uprooted by violence and persecution, and it is likely that the future will see more people on the run as a growing number of push factors compound one another to create conditions for further forced displacement.

Today people do not just flee persecution and war but also injustice, exclusion, environmental pressures, competition for scarce resources and all the miserable human consequences of dysfunctional states

Read more at the UNHCR website…

Another article, from 17th June’s The Guardian, explains the complext relationship between conflicts fuelled by climate change and the amount of refugees worldwide. Antonio Guterres, UN Commissioner for the refugees, explains. Read more at The Guardian…