Mark Lynas

You may find it hard to believe, but most environmentalists are optimists. Their doom-monger image is actually the opposite of the truth: their most consistent message is not that we are doomed, but that we have the time and the technology to avoid the worst calamities, if we act now. This insistence on human agency irritates true doom-mongers, such as John Gray, who, reviewing George Monbiot's new book Heat (NS, 18 September), complained: "The assumption that we can stop [global warming] becomes less scientifically tenable by the day, and is in fact not much more than a green version of anthropocentrism." In this, Gray was echoing James Lovelock, who told the New York Times of 12 September that solar panels and wind turbines are "largely gestures", but "no answer at all to the problem" of global warming, which is already essentially out of control.

James Grubel, Reuters
A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday.

Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra.

JORGE BARRERA, Ontario Sun
Municipalities are facing a "perfect storm" once the era of cheap oil, cheap water and altered weather patterns hits with full force, says Ontario's environmental commissioner.

In a chilling speech to municipal leaders yesterday, Gord Miller said municipalities are not ready for the massive effect on communities.

"We are entering a period of consequences," said Miller. "Our present public policy is inadequate to deal with these immense problems that are upon us right now."

Lester Brown, Fortune
The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes is leading us toward a potentially dangerous global fight for food. While crop-based ethanol -the latest craze in alternative energy - promises a guilt-free way to keep our gas tanks full, the reality is that overuse of our agricultural resources could have consequences even more drastic than, say, being deprived of our SUVs. It could leave much of the world hungry.

Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald
THE Federal Government is rushing to be seen doing something as the weeks of high oil prices stretch into months and start to take their toll on its popularity. Having failed to contain public anger with the line that the oil price is not its department, the Government is now offering subsidies to help motorists convert their cars to liquid petroleum gas, or buy new LPG-powered cars. Service station owners will be helped to sell petrol blended with 10 per cent ethanol. Those are the big-ticket items in its energy package, which also covers oil exploration and some alternative energy initiatives. If the Government looks as if it was caught napping on the issue - and it does - the flurry of activity is intended to give the impression that it is now wide awake and very, very concerned. Though, like someone newly awoken from a long doze, it does not give the appearance of being entirely on top of things, we should at least be grateful that its initial, hurried response has done no harm.

Bloomberg
The world may soon pay more than ever for its most abundant food: rice.

A record crop this year in a market anticipating rising production costs will do little to slow the rally for the staple of 3 billion people. As China, the No. 1 consumer, and Vietnam, among the biggest exporters, continue to plow under their paddies, rice will double within two years to almost $20 per 100 pounds from $9.90 now, according to Stephan Wrobel, chief executive officer at Diapason Commodities Management SA in Lausanne, Switzerland, which oversees $5.5 billion...

Charles Abbott and Lisa Haarlander (Reuters), Planet Ark
US ethanol manufacturers, foodmakers and livestock feeders are consuming so much corn (maize) that stockpiles could be depleted by 2008, unless plantings expand sharply, analysts said on Friday.

In its first forecast of the fall harvest, the USDepartment of Agriculture estimated on Friday the corn crop at 10.976 billion bushels (278.8 million tonnes), the third-largest crop ever.

by Kurt Cobb

Civilization, that is, the congregation of people in large settlements we call cities, is thought to owe its origins in part to the invention of agriculture. By growing surpluses of food crops farmers enabled the creation of an urban non-farming class who engaged in all manner of cultural, governmental, and commercial activities. These activities now preoccupy the vast majority of people in advanced economies.

Growing use of corn for conversion to fuel may push up world prices of food
FinFacts (Ireland)
The US, the world's largest exporter of corn, will use as much or more of the grain for conversion to ethanol in 2007 than it will sell abroad, according to estimates by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Richard Register, Ecocity Builders
... The biggest things we build – our cities – are creating the biggest problems we have. More precisely stated, the built infrastructure of our global civilization is the literal, physical foundation for much or probably even most of the crisis of colliding crises we find ourselves in today. Why? Because cities are not planned and built on the measure of the human being, but instead on the measure of the automobile and massive amounts of cheap energy to run it. These car-based, scattered, energy profligate cities demand a greedy share of the earth's bounty and exude CO2 enough to transform the atmosphere and climate of a whole planet.