Environmental News Network

Training tree fellers helps cut carbon emissions
Improved management of tropical forests can substantially reduce global carbon dioxide emissions and should be given high priority in negotiations for the 2009 Copenhagen Climate change agreement, write Francis E. Putz and colleagues in PLoS Biology. >> Read the Full Article
Kenya pushes traditional crops for food security
Kenya's government began giving farmers seeds for traditional food crops on Monday, hoping to shore up stocks in the face of rising prices and shortage fears. >> Read the Full Article
Non-GMO Soybeans Show 10% Greater Yield
Pioneer Hi-Bred, a Johnston-based unit of DuPont, launched Thursday what it is calling "a new generation" of soybean varieties designed to increase soybean yields by 40 percent during the next 10 years. Pioneer president and DuPont vice president and general manager Paul Schickler said the new Y series soybeans, as Pioneer has named the 32 newseed varieties, will "deliver unprecedented productivity gains to North American soybean growers." Pioneer intends to sell enough of the new seed from the Y series to cover about 9 million acres for the 2009 growing season. >> Read the Full Article
AFGHANISTAN: 1.5 million "severely" hit by drought - minister
At least 1.5 million people in 19 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces - mostly farming communities in the north - have been severely affected by drought and are in need of urgent humanitarian relief, an Afghan minister told IRIN. >> Read the Full Article
China to urgently boost GM crop development
China has said it must urgently step up the development of genetically modified crops as it faces mounting challenges to feed its 1.3 billion people due to shrinking arable land and climate change. >> Read the Full Article
Cow burps help Argentines study climate change
Argentine scientists are taking a novel approach to studying global warming -- strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows to collect their burps. Researchers say the slow digestive system of cows makes them a producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that gets far less public attention than carbon dioxide in efforts to fight global warming. >> Read the Full Article
World Food Shortage and the Ethanol Bubble
We had the internet bubble and the real estate bubble and now, there is the ethanol bubble. Recently, I ran some numbers on ethanol and to my amazement realized that it is - too use a catch phrase from the environmental world -- not sustainable. Turning food into fuel is just plain silly; and when oil prices come down the ethanol bubble could pop big. >> Read the Full Article
EU Considers Dumping Biofuels While U.S. Continues to Bully Global South to Adopt Gene-Altered Crops
European Union energy ministers said at an informal meeting Saturday they had been labouring for 18 months under the false impression that an EU plan to fight global warming included an obligation to develop controversial biofuels. What seems to be a stunning misreading on the part of policymakers in Brussels comes at a time when the image of biofuels has shifted over a matter of a months from climate saviour to climate pariah. >> Read the Full Article
China Olympic city battles "invading" algae
In China's Olympic co-host city Qingdao, sea breezes that usually bring relief from baking summer temperatures now bring a cloying stench from a massive algae bloom that locals fear will harm the city's bucolic image during the Games. "If we don't clean this up, we're done for," said local businessman Zhang Longfei, pointing at a blanket of green weed stretching far out to sea at Qingdao's No. 3 Bathing Beach. >> Read the Full Article
Where's the global food crisis taking us?
In five years' time, we could be living in a world where millions are dying in famines with no food aid to hand, regular storms and droughts wipe out acres of crops, and skyrocketing food prices have created global political panic, food experts say. >> Read the Full Article