Sometimes it’s good to take a peep at what the enemy is up to. I spent last weekend reading the New York Herald Tribune, and I’ll sometimes look at The Economist. Both these publications are excellent in their way – the Tribune is far superior in writing and information to The Times, for example – but essentially feed the greed of a business-minded readership anxious to figure out what is going on in the world, the better to profit from it.
It’s the battle of the century. In one corner, the Economy – big, bloated, greedy and growing. In the other, the planet Earth – fragile, finite and fighting back.
February 1968. From South Vietnam the explosive Teêt Offensive has dealt a final blow to shattered US troops and sparked a worldwide appetite for insurrection. Left destitute by standards of living and provoked by a three-year war on their ideological comrades, student leaders across Europe rise up with a single voice ‘We shall fight. We will win. Paris, London, Rome, Berlin.’ Within six weeks, 20,000 protesters will besiege the American embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square. It is the Spring of Discontent, and revolution is the air.
It was a bad year for the biotech barons. At a conference in January 1999, the consulting firm Arthur Andersen revealed Monsanto executives’ vision of an ideal future – a world in which natural seeds were virtually all extinct and where commercial seeds were genetically modified (GM) and patented.
Deep in rural Sussex at Wakehurst Place, in a large nature reserve of 500 acres of National Trust woodlands and lakes, stands the Kew Gardens Biological Research Centre. Sixty feet beneath is a nuclear bunker. This is the British National Doomsday vault, home to the UK’s Millennium Seed Bank (MSB). If apocalyptic disaster strikes, this bunker will hold key bio-scientists and all remaining plant life.
A ruling in the US courts at a meeting which the Environment Agency claims never took place has dashed all hopes of making Monsanto pay up for polluting Brofiscin quarry in Wales. Is the Agency guilty of obstructing the course of justice? Jon Hughes investigates
A ruling in the US courts at a meeting which the Environment Agency claims never took place has dashed all hopes of making Monsanto pay up for polluting Brofiscin quarry in Wales. Is the Agency guilty of obstructing the course of justice? Jon Hughes investigates
A leaked document revealed by the Guardian over the summer showing how the Government was preparing to dodge its EU commitments on renewable energy has been borne out in a new round of EU talks.
Environmental groups and local authorities are dismayed by Government plans to drop a key local policy to promote renewable energy, following pressure from developers.
Even the most conservative estimates of sea level rise caused by climate change will cause a redrawing of the physical map of the planet. Here Cleo Paskal, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, looks at the potential consequences.
When do Friends of the Earth and the Campaign to Protect Rural England want to build an incinerator? When they’re part of a new protest coalition called ‘Planning Disaster’ which yesterday filed a planning application to build an incinerator on the site of St Paul’s Cathedral in central London.
The Sustainable Communities Bill - the landmark legislation tabled by MP Nick Hurd which promises to be an enabling act for local communities - has passed its third reading in the House of Commons.
Former environment Minister and Labour leadership candidate Michael Meacher MP has derided the government's Climate Change Bill as 'nowhere near commensurate to the threat'.
The government is failing to meet targets for reducing energy and resource consumption in its own buildings, an embarassing report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has revealed.
Climate change has officially become a security issue today, as a debate on its implication for global conflict gets underway at the UN Security Council.
