Australian: FOR more than a century, windmills have played an important part in Australian agriculture, pumping water from underground aquifers to supply homesteads and livestock in the drier parts of the country. Their simple durability has become part an enduring icon of surviving in a wide brown land. The imagery is about to get a big upgrade. Technologies harnessing the wind’s kinetic energy have been around for centuries. It’s hardly surprising, then, that wind power is, to date, the most …

Hindu: A recent survey shows that American consumers are skeptical about the safety of the global food system and many believe that local foods are safer and better for their health than foods from afar. These are the views of a representative, nationwide sample of 500 consumers who participated in a web-based survey conducted by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in July 2007. Their responses are summarized in a new Leopold Center report, "Consumer perceptions of the …

Detroit Free Press: The reviews are coming in for U.S. Rep. John Dingell’s carbon-tax plan. The Dearborn Democrat’s request for comments on his Web site had drawn about 700 replies as of Friday evening. On Thursday, Dingell asked for reaction to his plan to set a $50-per-ton tax on carbon emissions and a 50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax, while eliminating the tax deduction for mortgage interest on homes larger than 4,200 square feet. The Union of Concerned Scientists said Dingell’s move to …

Age: SUSTAINABLE prosperity in the Melbourne of the future will be shaped by our response to one global challenge above all others: how to shape development – business, economy, production, consumption, lifestyles – to deal with climate change. For almost a decade, international agencies, industry organisations and many OECD countries have talked about a new low-carbon economy as probably the greatest industrial revolution in human history. Our prosperity will depend on how fast we …

Buffalo News: President Bush and his administration have been roundly ridiculed for their "faith-based" approach to setting policy, believing as they do in giant tax cuts for the rich even when the federal deficit is exploding, and in occupying Iraq with too few troops and nothing resembling a plan. The president’s faith also extends to the issue of global climate change, which he seems to think will just clear up all by itself if industry is allowed to go its own way. But that’s not faith. That’s …

Yomiuri Shimbun: Negotiations on an international framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol are getting into full swing. As host of next year’s summit meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations to be held at the Lake Toya resort in Hokkaido, Japan must be actively involved in the negotiations. Two international conferences in the United States last week discussed measures for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. About 160 nations participated in the first …

Associated Press: From "green carpets" at awards shows to organic fruit served to actors on sets, Hollywood is going all out to promote itself as being environmentally hip. But is it all just show? No amount of public service announcements or celebrities driving hybrid cars can mask the fact that movie and TV production is a gritty industrial operation, consuming enormous amounts of power to feed bright lights, run sophisticated cameras, and feed a cast of thousands. Studios’ backlots host …

Commodity Online: The heat is on and will take a heavy toll on your rice bowl in the coming years. The reason: Global Warming. Global warming, which will increase the temperatures up to 4.5 degree Celsius by the end of the century, will hit rice cultivation hard by reducing production by 7 to 60 per cent this century. In fact, the scientific world views the threat of increasingly high temperatures to rice - now the principal crop for the country’s food security with 44.6 million hectare area …

Guardian: Ariel Levy: If the problems of climate change are to be solved the solutions to them must involve politicians. It is only through sweeping and far-reaching change in the laws that regulate business, agriculture, transportation, and urban planning that the potential for reversing climate change can be realised. But politicians tend to respond to their voters when they are crafting legislation so we certainly can’t sit back and rely on them to handle this crisis. The groundswell of …

Reuters: U.S. President George W. Bush, hosting major polluting nations last week, sought to convince skeptics that he wants to help shape the next global deal on climate change, despite his long history of shunning such efforts. But with only 15 months left in office, his chances of becoming a major player in the debate over climate change are diminishing quickly, analysts and diplomats said. They added that his resistance to the kind of mandatory emissions limits sought by many allies …