GoodPlanet.info Débats

Why scientists must be the new climate sceptics

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:16:03 GMT

This is a depressing time for climate scientists. They've spent over a decade battling oil industry propagandists who said that the world was not warming. By careful and persistent argument they dismissed the misinformation. Now all the old questions about the validity of climate science are being trotted out again. As one researcher put it to me: "Long-dead arguments have been dug up and are wandering around like zombies."

The case of the mysterious seafood

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:49:25 GMT

An unknown percentage of the fish we eat isn't what's it's purported to be – FAO meeting explores how forensic techniques could help address the problem

Biodiversity, it’s now or never

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:46:39 GMT

Our food comes from supermarkets, our water from the tap, and our medicine from the pharmacy. One button is normally enough to heat or cool things; one flush to start decomposing our waste; one remote control to find cultural or spiritual inspiration.

Tabloid Climate Science

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:45:45 GMT

The scientists whose research has revealed the extent of global climate change are now getting the tabloid treatment. First came the scandal of leaked (actually hacked) e-mails at the climate institute of Britain’s East Anglia University. Now comes the supposed news that the Himalayan glaciers are not, in fact, retreating, and will therefore not disappear by 2035.

The renewal of private dams in the world

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:29:00 GMT

A rebuttal of the deterministic perspective on environmental migration from small island states

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:02:25 GMT

Reports on the impacts of climate change, including those of the IPCC, usually describe small island states as ‘especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, sea-level rise, and extreme events’ (Mimura et al. 2007: 689). Over time, the threats posed by sea-level rise to the very existence of these states have been highlighted, and their inhabitants have often been described as the first potential ‘climate refugees’. Most media reports now describe small island states as ‘lost paradises’ and their citizens as ‘canaries in the coalmine’ of global warming, a view that has often been reinforced by official discourses in climate negotiations.

Overcoming the Copenhagen Failure

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:13:35 GMT

Pretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate conference, it is clear that the world’s leaders were unable to translate rhetoric about global warming into action.

The UN to the Rescue on Climate Change

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:10:53 GMT

The United Nations’ General Assembly is the world’s only body in which all countries vote, with majority rule prevailing. There is no unanimity requirement or veto in the General Assembly, which might well be why it has not been called upon in the effort to fight climate change. Yet the General Assembly is the only place where obstruction by major countries – for example, by China and the United States at December’s global climate talks in Copenhagen – can be bypassed.

Pour sauver la biodiversité, mangez-la !

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:23:24 GMT

Pour célébrer l'année de la biodiversité - bien mal en point- festoyons autour de repas bios et sains. En choisissant une alimentation qui rompe, dans la mesure du possible, avec le monde agro-industriel contemporain qui entraîne pollution, déforestation et émissions de gaz à effet de serre, chacun ainsi peut protéger le Vivant.

Ecological debt in Africa

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:09:50 GMT

' The conquest of the earth… is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.’ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

China’s unclear game

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:22:29 GMT

Copenhagen - Historic failure that will live in infamy

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:43:30 GMT

The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speaker-phone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that could challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation that put a man on the Moon can't summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantle of a religion.

Copenhagen is not the end of a noble idea

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:02:53 GMT

The result of the Copenhagen Conference is disapointing even if for some people this failure was to be expected, considering the poor level of commitments of the countries signatories of the Climate Convention. Many were hoping that on the occasion of this historical meetins in the Danish Capital, each country was going
to table improved proposals so as to unlock the negociations. Unfortunately, it’s the very opposite which occured. But neither the approach: to negotiate within the framework of the United Nations, nor the ambition, supported by the NGOs, of stabilizing the earth climate, must be called into question.

Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:33:02 GMT

The other day I received a pre-publication copy of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, by David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit. It's set to come out ten years after a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anticorporate movement.

The Nitrogen Fix: Breaking a Costly Addiction

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:49:02 GMT

Over the last century, the intensive use of chemical fertilizers has saturated the Earth’s soils and waters with nitrogen. Now scientists are warning that we must move quickly to revolutionize agricultural systems and greatly reduce the amount of nitrogen we put into the planet's ecosystems.

Africa’s Urban Farmers

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:41:26 GMT

When I met Eunice Wangari at a Nairobi coffee shop recently, I was surprised to hear her on her mobile phone, insistently asking her mother about the progress of a corn field in her home village, hours away from the big city. A nurse, Wangari counts on income from farming to raise money to buy more land – for more farming.

Green Intelligence: Toward True Ecological Transparency

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:43:45 GMT

Wal-Mart’s push to develop a sustainability index for the products it carries could prove to be a pivotal moment in the effort to make consumers aware of the environmental impacts of what they buy.

Provocative New Study Warns of Crossing Planetary Boundaries

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:15:21 GMT

The Earth has nine biophysical thresholds beyond which it cannot be pushed without disastrous consequences, the authors of a new paper in the journal Nature report. Ominously, these scientists say, we have already moved past three of these tipping points.

What Makes Europe Greener than the U.S.?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:06:30 GMT

The average American produces three times the amount of CO2 emissions as a person in France. A U.S. journalist now living in Europe explains how she learned to love her clothesline and sweating in summer.

350, a world climate initiative

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:54:49 GMT

On October 24, thousands of people will take a stand for the climate in over 150 countries to highlight the number 350.Six weeks before the beginning of the Copenhagen Summit, Jacques mirenowicz and Susana Jourdan present the campaign, which the GoodPlanet Foundation supports.