EcocentricUncategorized
Some time late in 2011—at least according to the people-crunchers at the U.N. Population Reference Bureau—humanity will reach a new demographic milestone with the birth of the 7th billion living person. (As a measure of just how fast global population is growing, the 6th billionth living person—Bosnian Adnan Nevic—is only 11.) …
EcocentricWeather
Yesterday afternoon, as we were closing this week’s issue of Time, I ended up in a debate with one of my editors over how the air travel system had responded to a December of terrible weather. I’d written a short piece coming out in the magazine describing the travel Armageddon the storm had created for airline passengers—not just …
EcocentricUncategorized
The AP is reporting that Zhao Lianhai, the father arrested for protesting China’s tainted milk scandal after his son fell ill with kidney stones, may have been released on medical parole.
If it’s true, however, it’s unclear what the conditions of his release are; his lawyer told the news wire that he had been unable to reach Zhao since …
EcocentricOil
Over at the New York Times, resident libertarian-contrarian John Tierney has a column about a bet he took in 2005 with the late energy analyst Matthew Simmons. Simmons—the author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy—was a prominent believer in peak oil, the theory that we’ve reached the end …
EcocentricResearch
For all the complaints about government gridlock, the 111th Congress proved to be incredibly productive, passing health care legislation, an unprecedented stimulus, major tax cuts, allowing gays in the military and vindicating a landmark arms control treaty. When President Obama addressed the press before Christmas, he celebrated those …
EcocentricOceans
As New York shovels out of the snow and LA digs out of the mud, Australians are facing their own onslaught of extreme weather. The worst floods in half a century have hit the central and southern parts of Queensland, forcing at least 1000 residents to evacuate their homes with warnings that the worst may be yet to come as rivers in the …
EcocentricUncategorized
Of all the projected impacts of climate change, the scariest one in a world is the effect warming could have on our ability to feed ourselves. Scientists have looked at the impact of major heat waves in the past, and have found that such abnormally hot weather tends to hurt agriculture, with maize productivity levels falling by more …
EcocentricOil
Last week I wrote a column asking the question: whatever happened to the Gulf oil spill? Thanks to presidential commissions and great investigative reporting, we know a great deal about why the spill happened and what impact it might have on the land and the water of the Gulf. In the news, though, the spill seems largely gone.
But …
EcocentricEcocentric
With the failure of carbon cap-and-trade legislation this year, and a passel of Republicans taking over the House who seem to doubt that global warming exists, Congress has become a dead-end for fighting greenhouse gas emissions. But the Supreme Court has given the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to regulate …
EcocentricFood
The troubled but important food safety bill finally passed Congress yesterday, and should be signed by President Obama today. I have a post over at Healthland explaining why the bill may not be worth much without more funding.
