Last year my family rented a house for a week near the small Welsh town of Cardigan. It’s a small town of 4,000 people, on the coast and kind of in the middle of nowhere. In the past it was a significant port, but that was a long time ago. More recently, it had a [...]
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The network that runs the world
If you could map the connections between the world’s most powerful corporations, you could work out which ones were the most important, and which ones were critical to the functioning of the whole – the infamous ‘too big to fail’ companies. That’s what three systems analysts from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have done, [...]
Video: Food speculation explained
Second in today’s double-bill of short videos on commodity speculation, this animation is from German NGO World Economy, Ecology and Development. (Here’s the first video if you missed it)
Video: speculation and the price of tortillas
It’s always worth watching the short video investigations from The Ecologist, and Tom Levitt’s report from Mexico is no exception. The price of corn has tripled in the last couple of years, due in part to speculation in the commodities markets. The first video of two about food speculation I’, posting today – here’s the [...]
Globalism and Regionalism, by Johnathan Porritt
When dealing with two seemingly unreconcilable parties, the people who manage to annoy both sides are sometimes the ones presenting the best solutions. So it is with Johnathan Porritt, who is a meddling environmentalist to business, and a corporate sell-out to the greens. His 2005 book Capitalism as if the World Matters is very useful, [...]
Total vs Per Capita emissions
A rather striking graphic from the Washington Post a while back. Click the link to see the rest of the top ten.
Carbon laundering: how to hide rising CO2 emissions
Britain has, on paper, reduced its carbon emissions. The latest reductions, with a little help from the recession, have been rather pronounced: That’s great, except that the chart only accounts for emissions within the UK. If something is made overseas and consumed here, those production emissions go on somebody else’s tab. The emissions for transporting [...]
When a Billion Chinese Jump, by Johnathan Watts
Why bother cutting my emissions when China is building a new power station every week? That’s a common enough objection to taking responsibility for one’s ecological footprint. China overtook the US as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon this year, and has doggedly stood by its rights to develop and industrialize, and nobody is going [...]
Millennium Consumption Goals for the developed world
A professor in Sri Lanka has suggested the as well as the Millennium Development Goals, the west ought to draw up some Millenium Consumption Goals to help us reduce our emissions and materials use.
Time to stop blaming China for climate change
Blaming China is a popular excuse when it comes to climate change. “Why should I try to reduce my carbon footprint while China is building a new coal power station every week?” is something you’ll no doubt have heard. “China’s not going to stop developing, so what’s the point of Britain trying to do anything?” [...]
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