Welcome news from DEFRA yesterday, as it published the first report into the sustainability of Britain’s food chain. The report follows up ‘Food Matters’, which came out last year and was a remarkable piece of work. (I reviewed it for Celsias here). Food security can easily be taken for granted, but as the 2008 price [...]
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The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
If you’re anything like me, you may intuitively feel that the world ought to be a fairer place, and that there shouldn’t be such a large gap between the rich and poor. And yet, when asked why equality is intrinsically a good thing, I have no real answer other than a sense of fair play. [...]
GM food – safe enough for Africans, but not for us
Is that the subtext of news today that the UK is quietly investing £100 million into GM research for Africa? It certainly sounds like it – genetically modified crops still can’t be grown in the EU, but are being aggressively promoted in Asia and Africa. As the government has admitted, if it can get them [...]
Bike Week 2009
Last week London experienced one of its perennial tube strikes, and for two days commuters were denied their usual route to work. Local cyclists rose to the challenge, and came up with a Bike the Strike campaign to aid their beleaguered non-cycling counterparts. A hasty website, biketube, was set up with an ingenious solution. Experienced [...]
Climate change affects 325 million people a year
That’s the conclusion of the first global report into the social effects of climate change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis (pdf). It was published yesterday by Kofi Annan’s thinktank, the Global Humanitarian Forum. According to their findings, 325 million people are affected by climate change, and 300,000 die every year, from weather-related disasters, [...]
Define ‘alarmism’: Swine flu and the global media
Coming and going through London this past week I’ve seen these headlines in the city’s free papers: City on swine flu red alert as emergency planners warn 94,000 could die in London alone. Swine flu is in London and set to spread through overcrowded Underground system, experts believe. Danger of London grinding to a halt [...]
Swine flu – intensive farming strikes again
Swine flu has been the big story this week, as the world considers the possibility of a pandemic. Once again, it is a global problem of our own making. The outbreak began in Mexico, in a town called La Gloria. Smithfield, the world’s largest pork processor, has an enormous industrial pig farm there, raising and [...]
What really makes us happy?
The G20 has just promised $1.1 trillion to help shore up the global economy, posing for pictures under a big banner with the sun rising on a darkened world, and the words ‘stability – growth – jobs’. Governments spend a whole lot of time encouraging and promoting ‘growth’, but we all know that life is [...]
A response from (RED)
I had a response from (RED) this week, which deserves better than to languish in the comments of my earlier post. Here it is: We read your post “Shopping is not a solution – buy less, give more” and wanted to clarify some significant inaccuracies in your piece. In the second paragraph you mention that [...]
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