GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:
- Global Warming is now being documented and confirmed as a theory. Causes aside, how are humans going to react to the changes that have already occurred and will occur soon?
- Would you eat meat from a laboratory, no head or brain involved? It may be the future of food. The meat could be made to be healthier for humans, it wouldn’t affect soil erosion directly, and cows would not fart methane or contaminate water supplies. The factory would have an environmental impact, but what if it was less than tending a live animal?
- China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon emissions and is finding much of its future in coal and water power. Reuters provides an analysis of China’s energy future.
- China is pursuing liquefied coal as an alternative fuel for cars. The energy decisions that China makes today will affect us all in the near future.
- The global use of natural gas is increasing and being framed as a green fuel.
- Large oil companies are buying out other types of energy companies. This could pump a lot of money into the alternative energy industry, but it could also be a way for oil companies to control the growth of alternative energies.
- A microbe has been found in the Gulf Oil Spill that eats oil, this will supposedly decrease the long term effect of the oil spill. Could this also happen for plastic, there are millions of tons of plastic in our oceans?
- With the egg recall in the US, The Week asks; are free range eggs more safe to eat than factory eggs? As with the last spinach recall, the omega of this case is a large factory-food operation.
- Friends of the Earth (FoE), an environmental non-profit, is advocating for the EU to end its demand for increased production of biofuels. FoE is claiming that Europe’s demand for biofuels will negatively affect Africa by increasing deforestation and decreasing production of food crops. Decide for yourself though.
- The New York Times reports that the US birthrate has dropped since the beginning of the recession. Urbanized populations will have a negative incentive to have more kids in hardship, while rural populations are often incentivized to have more children. This dip in the birth rate in the developed world will shape the globe in the next 50 years, creating an anti-boomers generation experience, probably increasing our reliance on cheap immigrant and foreign labor.
