News

OXFORD January 4th 2008, - Rising production of biofuels has distorted government budgets, helped to drive up food prices and led to deforestation in south-east Asia, the chief scientist of Britain's farm ministry said.
"The way we are currently producing biofuels is not the way to go," former World Bank chief scientist Robert Watson said, citing the US ethanol programme and German support for biodiesel as among the least cost effective.
Watson told the Oxford Farming Conference that biofuels production from sugar cane in Brazil may be one of the only sustainable current methods.

Crummy headline but fascinating article, by John Vidal, at www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/05/activists.ethicalliving
 potted biographies of a host of scientists, activists, politicians, actors and others who are remarkable in their different responses to the threats of climate change and energy descent.

With crude oil prices now hitting $100 a barrel, the recent publication of the SDC’s ‘$100 a Barrel of Oil’ Report is timely. The study, which was undertaken by a consortium of researchers led by ADAS, considers the likely direct impact of high oil prices on UK agriculture and on the wider food supply chain.

Worldwatch Institute report subtitled: ‘Ideas and Opportunities for Sustainable Economies’.
Growing evidence suggests that the global economy is now destroying its own ecological base and offering little to billions of impoverished people. In response, pioneering policymakers, business leaders and concerned citizens around the globe are creating the architecture of sustainable economies, one innovation at a time.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5551
£13:49 from http://shop.earthscan.co.uk/ProductDetails/mcs/productID/819/groupID/2/

A Stanford scientist has spelled out for the first time the direct links between increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increases in human mortality, using a state-of-the-art computer model of the atmosphere that incorporates scores of physical and chemical environmental processes.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103135757.htm

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=6752&method=full

Defra has decided to undertake a review of non-fiscal instruments used to tackle climate change. The scope of the review is to look at the overlap between Defra’s three major climate change instruments – EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), Climate Change Agreements (CCAs), and the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) – with a view to eliminating avoidable overlap, simplifying existing regulations, and ensuring that the regulatory burden on the economy is kept to a minimum.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/cc-instruments/index.htm
Climate Change evidence and research

This pamphlet is about what local agencies - in particular local government - can do to engineer a transition to sustainable economic development. Greening Growth looks at the apparent conflict between between economic growth and environmental sustainability and aims to show, through theory and examples of what local authorities are already doing, that one need not cancel the other out.

Assessing the environmental risks of biofuel production and metal recycling are two of the issues likely to top the agenda of a newly formed global think tank on resource efficiency.
Launched at the World Science Forum, the new "International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management" will provide scientific assessments and expert advice on the use intensity, the security of supplies and the environmental impacts of selected products and services on a global level.

Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization? is a new report that looks out to 2027 to examine future scenarios for the world’s sustainable development, and to propose a new set of rules for business to rise to the unprecedented challenges ahead.