Climate Change
Tom Vilsack's selection as Obama's USDA secretary may be 'agribusiness as usual,' since words 'food' or 'eaters' unspoken in news conference, says Michael Pollan, author. Food system responsible for one-third greenhouse gases, 'catastrophic' diet that causes chronic disease in half the U.S. population and drives up health care costs (click 'See also'). Food must be included in plan to address climate change, energy independence, health care.
By Renee Montagne
National Public Radio/Morning Edition 2008-12-18 (entry)
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Media coverage of food system effects on climate change is improving slowly, study reports. Changes needed on individual, business, government levels, but actions unlikely without public support that begins with knowledge as 'floor.' Obstacles: Experts' lag on highlighting problems; lack of reportable data; framing food, nutrition as 'lifestyle' story; lag in advocacy interest; under-the-radar industry approach.
By Karla Cook
The Food Times 2008-07-07 (entry)
Biochar - created by heating crop waste in airtight conditions - can store carbon dioxide, enrich soil, raise crop yields. Plowed into ground, it may forestall global warming, scientist and supporters (click 'See also') say, pointing to ancient Amazon examples. Ambitious goal would sequester 10 percent annual emissions.
By Gerard Wynn
Reuters; NewsDaily 2008-12-05 (entry)
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Brazil vows to reduce deforestation 70 percent in 10 years, will create environmental police force and pay farmers - who cut forests for cattle, soybean ranches (click 'See also) - for conservancy. Target would prevent 4.8 billion tons carbon dioxide, more than combined commitment of industrialized countries under Kyoto Protocol. Now, it's Obama's turn, says advocacy group.
By Joshua Partlow
The Washington Post 2008-12-06 (entry)
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Large-scale agriculture, meat production coming under scrutiny as policy makers, farmers, scientists seek solutions. Trillions of farm animals generate 18 percent of emissions that raise global temperatures, UN says; meat eating expected to double between 2000 and 2050. Only 98 of 2,000-plus UN-backed emission-curbing projects are in agriculture. And: greenhouse gases by the numbers (click 'See also').
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
International Herald Tribune 2008-12-04 (entry)
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Radical transformation expected at EPA, which holds sway over water, air pollution, and Department of Interior, which administers Endangered Species Act, federal land holdings. Interior will cope with climate change already happening - droughts, wildfires; EPA will lead regulatory response. And: Leading candidates for environmental jobs (click 'See also').
By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post 2008-11-28 (entry)
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In move that could impede investigation of snowpack loss and its impact on
salmon, proposed changes to Endangered Species Act would exclude climate change
from triggers for review of federal projects. Bush administration argues language eliminates 'back door to climate-change policy' (click 'See also').
By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post 2008-11-21 (entry)
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Obama must grasp that food, climate, energy, economy are globally linked and must be solved together, and that atmospheric CO2 must be cut from 385 to 350 parts per million. Fossil-fuel use must cease by 2030; we must make massive investment in green energy; we need a Marshall Plan for carbon. And: Food/agriculture sector of economy produces more than one third of greenhouse gas emissions, says UN agency (click 'See also).
By Bill McKibben
The Guardian (UK) 2008-11-06 (entry)
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Umbrian vineyard, olive community reduces carbon footprint with cars, golf carts, bikes using batteries powered by center that stores solar-sourced electricity for up to three days. Farm owners also have invested in fleet of mini-tractors that use non-food biofuels and planted 10,000 trees as carbon sink.
By Duncan Kennedy
BBC News 2008-10-18 (entry)
West Coast's chinook salmon shortage leaves killer whales hungry and losing blubber; Canadian environmental groups blame government, propose strategy. U.S. expert recommends linking orca recovery to that of salmon and the removal of dams on Elwha River, Snake River in Washington state. And: Emaciated gray whales (click 'See also').
By Judith Lavoie
Times Colonist (Victoria, Ca) 2008-10-08 (entry)
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As planet faces droughts, food shortages and water shortages, with subsequent mass migrations and social unrest from climate change, U.S. influence will diminish because that of other countries will grow, 2025 intelligence analysis predicts. Intelligence agencies accept scientific view of global warming, and that it's too late to avoid consequences over the next 20 years. Barack Obama has been briefed; John McCain is next.
By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
The Washington Post 2008-09-10 (entry)
As climate expert urges less meat consumption at home to reduce global warming, animal welfare group in UK challenges food industry to reduce meat in packaged items and to replace it with more vegetables, 'other more benign materials.' Group also urges using meat from animals raised more humanely. And: It takes seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef (click 'See also').
By Jess Halliday
nutraingredients.com 2008-09-08 (entry)
Eat less meat to make personal difference in climate change, says authority on global warming. Diet change will have impact because of greenhouse gas emissions, habitat destruction linked to rearing cattle and other animals. And: Food emissions occur mostly during production (83 percent), with transportation contributing 11 percent (click 'See also').
By Juliette Jowit
The Observer (UK) 2008-09-07 (entry)
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To make progress on energy, health care and climate change, food must be addressed, says Michael Pollan, author and an organizer of four-day Slow Food Nation event. Co-organizer Alice Waters advocates persuasion via the palate. The group hopes to convince Americans to reject fast, cheap food and choose organic, local agriculture and to return to the kitchen.
By J.M. Hirsch
The Associated Press; Austin American-Statesman 2008-08-29 (entry)
Democratic senators say administration-rejected EPA report declares that greenhouse gases endanger public welfare. It forecasts worse heat waves, more strain on scarce water sources, worse flooding and erosion, more stress on damaged ecosystems. And: EPA administrator refuses to grant Dems' request to appear at hearing on climate change inaction (click 'See also).
By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post 2008-07-25 (entry)
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As ocean warms, octopus appear in Scottish seas lobster traps and might be eating the more lucrative catch; their price drops to that of cod. Squid, deep-sea John Dory fish, red blenny and Japanese skeleton shrimp among those invading - others have hitched rides on ship hulls.
By Paul Kelbie
The Observer (UK) 2008-07-20 (entry)
Climate change may bring water shortages in West and increased spread of diseases contracted through food and water, as well as heat waves, hurricanes and increased death rates in inner city, EPA says. And: Oil industry arguments helped block regulations on greenhouse gases (click 'See also').
By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post 2008-07-18 (entry)
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As water rationing takes hold in California and food price crisis deepens, government forecasts water shortages and reduced food crop yields in next 25 to 50 years. The forecast, a synthesis of 1,000-plus reports, also predicts spread of weeds and insects and decline of native species. For report click 'See also.'
The Associated Press; Los Angeles Times 2008-05-28 (entry)
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Switching from red meat and dairy to vegetables, chicken, eggs or fish one day a week reduces emissions more than buying all locally-sourced foods, researchers learn. Food emissions occur mostly during production (83 percent), with transportation contributing 11 percent, despite increased imports. Food choice is unique opportunity to lower personal climate impact, scientists say.
By Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews
Carnegie Mellon University; Environmental Science & Technology 2008-04-16 (entry)
Many scientists believe that Australia's six-year drought, which has reduced rice crop by 98 percent, is sign that warming planet is affecting food production. Some farmers are switching from thirsty rice to wheat or to more lucrative wine grapes. Experts worry that rainfall patterns and crop choice shifts threaten poor countries that import rice as a dietary staple. Global rice reserves have dropped by half since 2000.
By Keith Bradsher
The New York Times 2008-04-17 (entry)
Climate change will exacerbate hunger, poverty, disease with its unusual, unexpected climate patterns and changing rainfall patterns, World Health Organization says. Too much rain or too little will reduce food production and can cause unemployment, economic upheavals and political unrest. At highest risk: children and the elderly.
By Hrvoje Hranjski
The Associated Press; The Inquirer (PA) 2008-04-07 (entry)
The grinding work of fighting climate change is expensive and a distraction from needs of today, and children usually get stiffed (they are poorer than the elderly). But it is insurance against the chance of an unfathomable future of environmental disruption, species extinction and hunger.
By Eduardo Porter
The New York Times 2008-03-14 (entry)
Biofuels, already blamed for high food prices and water supply problems, create more greenhouse gases than conventional fuels when land-use change is added, scientists say. Converting a forest to agriculture releases a large, quick burst of carbon as plant life dies and soil is tilled. Even if biofuels are grown on cropland previously used to grow food, farmers tend to then clear other virgin land for food crops.
By Gautam Naik
The Wall Street Journal 2008-02-08 (entry)
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Fish supplies relied upon by a billion people could be endangered by global warming. A new study found that deep-sea crustacean populations, an important part of the ocean ecosystem, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, having collapsed during previous warming and cooling episodes.
By Brandon Keim
Wired 2008-01-30 (entry)
Like oil, production of meat, which involves 30 percent of all ice-free land, contributes to global warming, deforestation, water pollution and possibly antibiotic resistance, as well as hunger in poor regions. With U.S. protein consumption well above dietary guidelines, switching to mostly plants would benefit the Earth, our waistlines and animals involved.
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2008-01-27 (entry)
Farmers, who know their turnips and tend their olives or harvest their wheat, can read the warming trend in harvests, or lack of them. Many are somewhere between disbelief and denial, but beyond the hard numbers, there's the UN panel on climate change, consistently sounding the alarm.
By Mort Rosenblum
The New York Times 2007-12-23 (entry)
If peace requires food, water and land, then climate change is changing that, particularly for poor countries, say Al Gore and a panel of climate-change scientists as they accept Nobel. Worst effects can be averted, they say, if U.S. and China, the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, end their stalemate and find the moral courage to reduce pollution.
By Sarah Lyall
The New York Times 2007-12-11 (entry)
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In Brazil, an experiment with shade-grown cultivated cacao trees could pay off in trees' ability to store carbon, thus keeping it out of the air as carbon dioxide. Mars, a chocolate manufacturer, is researching how carbon storage can be measured, then translated into carbon credits as incentive for farmers.
By Joanne Silberner
National Public Radio 2007-11-19 (entry)
Sugar maples in Vermont are like canaries in a coal mine - as climate change takes hold, sap yield is in question and syrup makers turn to vacuum pumps to achieve the yields they did in perfect sugaring seasons past.
by Ketzel Levine
National Public Radio 2007-10-29 (entry)
Since the '80s, Cynthia Rosenzweig, NASA scientist, has been studying food supply and the warming planet. Though the subject is complicated, it's the human factor that makes her optimistic: People are learning how to consume less energy, send less heat-trapping gas into the air and, possibly, how to create a world where people everywhere can get enough to eat.
By Dan Charles
National Public Radio 2007-10-30 (entry)
To determine your environmental footprint of those restaurant dinners and other lifestyle choices, play this game from American Public Media.
By Christopher Kennedy, Michael Skoler and others
American Public Media and Realtime Associates, Inc. 2007-09-19 (entry)
From Alps to Vermont, climate changes, from unprecedented heat to new plants, force cheesemakers into adaptations that may change the taste, texture and quality of their products.
By Ketzel Levine
National Public Radio 2007-08-30 (entry)
As farmers eagerly switch from food crops to those for biofuels, ecological and social factors led by high food prices, meat-rich diets, dropping water supplies, climate change and the growing population threaten vast numbers of people with food and water shortages.
By John Vidal
The Guardian (UK) 2007-08-29 (entry)
Judging from plastic bottles clogging the landfills and SUVs clogging the highways, the news that we're killing ourselves and our world hasn't kicked in, so that makes "The 11th Hour," an unnerving, surprisingly affecting documentary, essential viewing.
By Manohla Dargis
The New York Times 2007-08-17 (entry)
Emaciated grey whales seen off the coast of Baja California may show a crucial break in ocean's food chain; algae mats, home to shrimp-like creatures that whales, walrus and sea ducks feed on, have disappeared as ice melts.
By Leonard Doyle
The Independent (UK) (entry)
Ethanol craze blamed for high prices across the supermarket, but other factors include surge in global food demand, high oil prices, uncooperative weather, and the slide of the dollar against other world currencies.
By Barrett Sheridan
Newsweek magazine (entry)
Local food advocates trumpet food miles, but the Life Cycle Assessment, with comprehensive accounting of all resources that go into food network, from fertilizer to electricity, offers clearer picture; meanwhile, air shipping is the most fuel-intensive, and the fastest growing sector of food transport.
By Drake Bennett
The Boston Globe (entry)
With ethanol craze and escalating corn prices taking all the attention, worldwide drought has gone almost unnoticed, but it is driving wheat prices up; breadmakers are paying more for flour and weak dollar makes U.S. wheat attractive.
By Jeff Cox
CNNMoney.com (entry)
New interactive map allows users to tract proliferation of factory farms by state and county - even number of animals - and it raises questions of whether we pursue the logic of industrialism to its limits, and how badly will it harm the landscape, the people who live in it and democracy itself?
The editors
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
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In northeastern Brazil, farmers use simple technologies and great persistence to harvest, pick, raise and slaughter, despite high temperatures, little rain and unfertile soil; they begin with a mud-patch, to hold rainwater to create oases of production.
By Isaura Daniel; translated by Mark Ament
Brazil-Arab News Agency (entry)
Starbucks, learning early on that carbon emissions would affect rainfall and temperatures, thus affecting price, quantity and quality of coffee beans (and its bottom line), calculated its carbon footprint and is working to lower the number; other companies are coy.
Sonia Narang
Forbes magazine (entry)
It's a $70 billion annual bill, and before, only agribusiness cared, but a tsunami of activists now believes that its subsidies for corn and soy encourage diet-related disease and climate change; instead, they advocate money for sustainable and organic food production, agricultural conservation and for a priority on fresh, local fruits and vegetables.
By Carol Ness
San Francisco Chronicle (entry)
