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One of six planned ethanol plants in Zimbabwe has started producing biofuel out of the 5,000 tonnes of sugarcane it requires each day.

The plant generates its own electricity, and experts believe the plant and others like it reduce the country's need for fuel imports while curbing pollution and greenhouse gas.

Even so, critics are concerned the project may only benefit unscrupulous politicians to the detriment of local farmers.

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#power #biofuel #Al Jazeera #Zimbabwe #corruption

erikostrom

crashnews

erikostrom:

“Worse than worst-case” is not a headline you like to see.

#climate change #CO2 emissions #global warming

In South Africa on this very day, Dr. Malcolm Potts, Bixby Professor in the School of Public Health at UC-Berkeley has just delivered a bombshell of a speech to a packed crowd of distinguished health professionals representing more than half of the world’s population. Prior to its delivery, Dr. Potts and I spoke about some of the most salient implications and data in his talk, intimations of which he had imparted several years before in our public broadcasting feature film documentary “No Vacancy.” The timing for Dr. Potts’ speech today could not be more eerie. Just yesterday, October 31st, the United Nations officially declared that the human population had hit 7 billion. That definitely puts a new face on the Halloween mask of human nature.

#overpopulation #Malcolm Potts #Forbes

socialuprooting-deactivated2016

crashnews

zeitgeistmovement:

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations warned on Wednesday of a possible crisis of confidence in, and even a “collapse” of, the U.S. dollar if its value against other currencies continued to decline. In a mid-year review of the world economy, the U.N. economic division said such a development, stemming from the falling value of foreign U.S. dollar holdings, would imperil the global financial system.

#economics

econblues2011-deactivated201204

crashnews

econblues2011:

Scientists have long predicted that — eventually — temperatures and altered rainfall caused by global climate change will take a toll on four of the most important crops in the world: rice, wheat soy and corn.

Now, as world grain prices hover near record highs, a new study finds that the effects are already starting to be felt.

“For two crops, maize (corn) and wheat, there has actually been a decline in yields, if you account for the trend in climate — especially the warming trend that we’ve observed over the last 30 years,” says Wolfram Schlenker, who teaches environmental economics at Columbia University. He’s a co-author of the study, along with David Lobell and Justin Costa-Roberts at Stanford University.

#NPR #agriculture #climate change #food

The fact that the mid-range projections for world population rose by nearly a billion people this week should have garnered a lot more attention than it did. The UN offers biennial updates of its world population estimates, and for the last few years, the mid-range (ie, the most likely scenario) has suggested that the world will peak around 9.2 billion people near the middle of this century, and then slowly begin to decline. The 2010 estimate, however, found that the decline is no longer considered likely, and that by 2100, the world may have as many as 10.1 billion people.

This raises a whole host of issues, which I'm going to consider over the next month. Raj Patel has already usefully offered one answer (which I don't wholly agree with, but it is interesting) to the question of whether we could feed 10 billion people. But first I want to ask whether the population estimates themselves are realistic.

In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in the world price of wheat actually means that the wheat you carry home from the market to hand-grind into flour for chapatis costs twice as much. And the same is true with rice. If the world price of rice doubles, so does the price of rice in your neighborhood market in Jakarta. And so does the cost of the bowl of boiled rice on an Indonesian family's dinner table.

Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we've seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet's poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute -- and it has -- to revolutions and upheaval.

#Foreign Policy #food #economics

Workers at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant have entered one of its reactor buildings for the first time since it was hit by a powerful earthquake on 11 March, officials say. They are installing ventilation systems in the No 1 reactor to filter out radioactive material from the air.

The quake disabled reactor cooling systems, causing fuel rods to overheat.

Radiation levels inside reactor buildings must be lowered before new cooling systems can be installed.

The No 1 reactor was one of four damaged by explosions in the days immediately after the earthquake and tsunami. Water is being pumped in to cool the reactors.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said that 12 engineers would work inside the reactor building in shifts of 10 minutes.

"Groups of four will go in one by one to install the ducts. They'll be working in a narrow space," spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told reporters.

Al Jazeera: Empire

The evolution of Arab revolutions

Why are countries such as Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain facing bloody battles for change?

#Al Jazeera #Arab revolutions #Middle East #North Africa

EU governments in the passport-free Schengen zone would be able to reimpose border controls when faced with extraordinary flows of migrants, under new European Commission proposals.

The Commission stressed that such border checks should be temporary.

The move reflects concern about the arrival in Italy this year of about 25,000 illegal migrants from North Africa, most of them Tunisians.

Myth #1: Drivers will lose cheap gas

Claim: "What will the oil companies – what does any company – do when its taxes go up?" asks conservative commentator Keith Koffler, echoing the industry's Orwellian line that cutting subsidies is actually a form of raising taxes. "PASS THE COSTS ALONG TO THE CONSUMER. That is, higher gas prices."

Reality: Of course, since peak oil came in 2006, from now on there's not much anyone can do to stop gas prices from rising. A wicked brew of declining supply and increasing demand will make crude and gas prices volatile over the coming years, but the trend will only be up, up, up. Even in the short term, as they themselves have been telling us for years, ExxonMobil, Chevron and the other oil majors have little control over prices. US gas prices are driven mostly by global crude prices. And crude prices are set on the world oil market. A Joint Economic Committee report states, “the removal or modification of [one of these subsidies] is unlikely to have any effect on consumer prices for oil and gas.”

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