Experts have identified something called ‘shifting baseline syndrome’. No, not a symptom of excessive alcohol intake, but rather the theory that people’s perception of the environment is based on what they can see with their own eyes today, not what things were like in the past.
Speaking to an audience at the RSA in London, Professor James Boyle said:
‘We need to build a movement to preserve the public domain. I think we need an environmental movement for the public domain of the mind.’
Biotech firms are abusing their trademark controls to stop scientists fully investigating the environmental and health impacts of GM crops, a coalition of US scientists has claimed.
Little angers environmentalists more than receiving food or products in Styrofoam packaging, and now the Californian Ocean Protection Council has called for a blanket ban on the use of the material in food containers across California.
Across, the pond, the news that one of the US's most iconic birds might be helping to spread the West Nile virus is about as welcome as suggesting Jesus was a communist
‘Britain’s astounding retreat from reason is now legitimising anarchy.’ That was the conclusion of the hotblooded screaming radical Melanie Phillips, writing for The Spectator.
During the past weeks, the world’s media have been transfixed by the convulsions of the US and global fi nancial system. At stake are billions in bail-outs and trillions in derivatives. The viability of banks and currencies is threatened, and ultimately the savings and investments of hundreds of millions of ordinary people.
During my global travels, spreading the word on the cheapest, most effective and equitable policy road for renewables, my observations and experiences have led me to several infuriating and distressing conclusions.
Rich industrialised countries have a responsibility to help others stick to their green responsibilities, argues Helena Norberg-Hodge, not collude in helping shirk them
As an excuse to do nothing itself, this Labour Government has often hidden behind US intransigence on climate change, so it’ll be interesting to see how Gordon Brown might respond to a US President more progressive than he on global warming.
It’s fair to say that we have our share of robust discussions in this office. Opinions get aired, fingers get pointed, occasionally voices get raised. It’s all in a good cause. Setting the world to rights isn’t always a civilised tea party.
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.
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.
The American Wind Energy Association has announced that 2007 US wind power generation made up 30 per cent of all new power generation in 2007 with 5,244 megawatts of new wind turbines installed in 2007 can power about 1.5 million U.S. homes.
Over 50 coal-fired power stations were cancelled or delayed in the US during 2007 according to Global Energy Decision, a consulting firm employed by the Department of Energy.
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.
The US government has given he go-ahead for a test plot of genetically modified (GM) eucalyptus trees in Alabama. For the first time, these trees will be allowed to flower and set seed, opening the door to potential widespread contamination of the American South.
478 cosmetic products on sale in the US contain doses of toxic chemicals which are unsafe, even when used as directed on the bottle, the US NGO the Environmental Working Group has revealed.
