Politics And Economics

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.

Two NGOs have accused the Indonesian Ecolabel Institute (LEI) of greenwash by handing ‘sustainable forest management certificates’ to companies converting natural forest or peatlands into timber plantations.

Protests. A political free-for-all or a new collective activism around social and environmental problems? Sylvia Rowley and Rachel Straus find out.

Dan Box makes a detour to the G20 climate protests in London, but leaves disappointed. Later, a lecture by Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern review, lifts his spirits.

The thing is, I like urban farming. Rooftop gardens and window boxes excite me. Balconies filled with beans and tomatoes give me hope. Nonetheless, the ‘next big thing’ in urban horticulture has left me cold.

Bill Drayton is a slight, eager man who straddles worlds. He knows his stuff, having graduated from Harvard, Oxford and Yale, and has a theory of everything.

Personal Carbon Quotas need to be introduced at a ‘community scale’ new report from the RSA concludes

Next time you grumble that it's too much effort to seperate you plastic from your cans, imagine doing it as the bullets are flying over head

Campaigners give cautious welcome to Government’s decarbonisation programme

From chasing endangered parrots to hunting for the environmental holy grail with Friends of the Earth, one of Britain's pre-eminent eco campaigners wants to take his quest for a better, greener world to the halls of Westminster.
Dixe Wills meets a man on a mission

Dressing poorer countries in our designer cast-offs while we invest in shabby sweatshop chic? Invest in their infrastructure, not vetements, argues Joe Turner

'If you liked sub-prime, you'll love carbon trading!' Join the Camp for Climate Action on the 1st of April as they set up in the Square Mile to greet global leaders and remind them that climate change must remain on the agenda

Wealthy countries and agribusiness want farmland, poorer countries need capital – but what happens to the locals? By Martin Large and Neil Ravenscroft

The world has watched the vertiginous collapse of the Icelandic economy in recent months with a mixture of fascination and horror.

US President Barack Obama’s Energy and Environment Plan is perhaps the most ambitious strategy for sustainability the world has ever seen.

A charity has given millions to a biotechnology organisation in an aim to advance the use of biotechnology on crops in developing countries.

While some insurance firms have been forced to go cap-in-hand to the taxpayer, others are busy launching new, even risky products.

A Government adviser has called for the regulatory overhaul on genetically modified crops in the EU and opposes the ‘strange’ ban on pesticides.

The recent U-turn by of some of the UK's leading environmentalists - and one-time nuclear energy opponents - on the issue of nuclear energy, has caused vigourous debate in the media. Their reasoning is that we simply don't have the capacity to produce enough renewable energy to meet our needs. But as this comprehensive Ecologist report from 2007 shows the UK is really a renewable energy powerhouse.

A new Ecology Party would work for a change in values, a paradigm shift in which human beings learn to work with the grain of the natural world, instead of against it.

The millions of people in Niger who died during the recent famines, did so because the IMF pressured its government to tax food and the poor simply couldn't afford to save themselves

Over 500 people have signed the online 'Fire Sammy Wilson' petition in 24 hours. The Green Party of Northern Ireland has set up the petition calling for the resignation of Environment Minister Sammy Wilson because of his refusal to recognise man made climate change.

A hundred years ago, markets ruled: fortunes were made, workers abused, bubbles blown. The Austrian School of economists, led by Ludwig von Mises, said this was fine: despite temporary messiness, the market knows best.