LIMITS TO PEOPLE
If the world is to have another Green Revolution to feed its
soaring population, it must be far more sustainable than
the first one.
Yale Environment 360
New Green Challenge: How to
Grow More Food on Less Land
For researchers trying to figure how to feed a world of 10 billion people later in this century, the great objective over the past decade has been to achieve what they call “sustainable intensification.” It’s an awkward term, not least because of conventional agricultural intensification’s notorious record of wasting water, overusing fertilizers and pesticides, and polluting habitats. But the ambition this time is different, proponents say: To figure out almost overnight how to grow the most food on the least land and with the minimal environmental impact. The alternative, they say, is to continue plowing under what’s left of the natural world. Or face food shortages and political unrest.
Australia adds 100MW of rooftop solar in first two months of 2016
Port Augusta 'busting a gut' to reinvent itself as a solar city
Russia’s Ultimate Lethal Weapon
What we had as a result was a tectonic geopolitical shift; the reconfiguration of the entire world balance of power as Russia and China deepened their strategic partnership, based on a mutual external threat coming mostly from the US, with the EU as accessories. Russian intelligence now knows the alliance makes Russia and China invulnerable, whereas separately they could easily fall victim to US Divide and Rule.
Is Climate Change Putting
World's Microbiomes at Risk?
Researchers are only beginning to understand the
complexities of the microbes in the earth’s soil and the role
they play in fostering healthy ecosystems. Now, climate
change is threatening to disrupt these microbes and the key
functions they provide.
In 1994, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory moved soil from moist, high-altitude sites to warmer and drier places lower in altitude, and vice versa. In 2011, they returned to the sites and looked again at the soil microbes and found that they had done little to adapt functionally to their new home. That's a bad sign, experts say, for a world convulsed by a changing climate.
