Monday, Nov 24th
Last update07:41:10 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Brace yourself for some painful "agflation". That is the shorthand for agricultural commodity inflation, otherwise known as rising food prices.
They are being driven upwards by the climb in grain and oilseed prices as US crops weather the country's worst drought since 1936, while the farming belts of Russia and South America suffer through similar water shortages.
What we are seeing represents the third major rally in global grain and oilseed prices in just half a decade.
Only some of the Native American tribes in North Dakota are collecting on the oil rush bounty, and everyone is paying for the environmental costs.
When the black gold rush began, no one on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation expected it to take down Main Street.
A modest strip of one- and two-story buildings framed by undulating plains, Main Street doubled as the reservation’s community hub, in the tradition of small towns. Neighbors caught up at the Jack and Jill grocery, elders strolled to the library, children rode their bikes on the streets.
The new Parti Quebecois government hasn’t wasted any time hinting about a long-term ban on the shale gas industry.
Quebec’s new natural-resources minister, Martine Ouellet, says she doesn’t believe the controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale, known as “fracking,” can ever be done safely.
She made the remarks Thursday on her way into her first cabinet meeting, less than 24 hours after she was named to cabinet. “I don’t foresee a day when there will be technology that will allow safe exploitation (of shale gas),” Ouellet said in Quebec City.
France's government on Wednesday asked a health watchdog to carry out a probe, possibly leading to EU suspension of a genetically-modified corn, after a study in rats linked the grain to cancer.
Earlier, French scientists led by Gilles-Eric Seralini at the University of Caen in Normandy unveiled a study that said rats fed with NK603 corn or exposed to the weedkiller used with it developed tumours.
When a reporter arrives at his 200-year-old farmhouse on a cloudy June day, one of the first things Mayer asks is: "Do you know who Glenn Beck is? You should really listen to him. Now that man knows what he's talking about."
It gets worse by the hour. While France wisely outlawed wi-fi in its schools due to its serious effects on children, more appliances, transmitters, signals, antennas, phone masts, dishes, and electronic gadgetry is being added by the minute.
And we’re supposed to be excited about it.
here is no shortage of messaging from Big Oil trumpeting efforts to green “the Patch,” which is the euphemistic term applied to Alberta’s tar sands mine and melt sites.
They underplay the carbon impacts of what has been termed “the dirtiest oil on the planet” and trot out fancy technologies and plans that have yet to be put into action at industrial scale. And while there is a rosy picture painted for us Stateside, the business pages in Canada tend to lay bare the galling details of tar sands infrastructure pretty openly. There’s a great example of this from the Globe & Mail’s excellent reporter Nathan VanderKlippe.
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