Our love affair with convenience culture extends to a reliance on convenience ‘cures’ for minor complaints. In the first article of a new series, the Ecologist’s Health Editor Pat Thomas says that self-medication isn’t the same as self-help
Unnoticed by most of the media, New Labour has embarked on a roadbuilding scheme just as large as the one the Tories bragged was ‘the biggest since the Romans’. All over the UK, however, ordinary people have noticed, and everyone – from doctors and teachers, to old-style road protestors – are once again saying: enough is enough. Paul Kingsnorth reports
The world fervour for biofuels continues to grow at an alarming pace. In this comprehensive special report, the Ecologist examines the facts, fictions and fabrications behind this ballooning industry. The results are worrying...
In his final State of the Union address, George Bush announced his support for the adoption of biofuels on a massive scale. But is the plan such a good idea? By Pat Thomas
The world’s forests are natural carbon ‘sinks’ that remove and store atmospheric CO2. So why, in the name of saving the earth, asks Renton Righelato, are we cutting down these precious resources to make way for fuel crops?
Plant fuels can never meet our current and growing energy needs and, as Robin Maynard reports, adopting a ‘carbohydrate economy’ may prove disastrous for our farmers, our food supply and our future
In the middle of a meeting in Westminster Silvia Wilson stood up, in tears, pleading for a doctor that could diagnose and treat her daughter’s health problem.
The World Bank has released a report encouraging the Indonesian government to create vast timber plantations that would damage local ecosystems and livelihood, in order to encourage economic growth.
The IPCC, a UN based organisation made up of over 1200 climate experts from 40 countries and the most respected global authority on Climate Change science, has said the rise in global temperatures could be as high as 6.4°C by 2100. The report also predicts sea level rises and increases in the frequency of hurricanes.
When a group calling itself Sense About Science launched its 'Science for celebrities' pamphlet in the national media last month, it was supposed to look like the long-overdue backlash of a normally passive science community to years of misinformation from ill-informed celebrities.
Most of us have a party in our pockets – those digital devices that promised a global village. We found that village, all right, and it is peopled with idiots. Plugged into iPods, chatting into palms, we are lost in techno-torpor enveloping us 24/7 from any locale.
Think nuclear power and you probably thing of small amounts of highly radioactive material, safely encased in vast concrete bunkers, generating an endless and constant supply of clean electricity. Yes it's expensive and clearly there is a problem with nuclear waste, but if it is the answer to climate change then why not?
There is no stop button......in the race for human re-engineering. Science will soon give some of us the tools to make ourselves cleverer and stronger. What will it mean for humanity?
A simple experiment by a Russian scientist to see if eating GM soya influenced the offspring of mice, could threaten the multi-billion dollar GM industry.
Undeterred by a series of terrifying accidents, the Bush administration is pushing ahead with its potentially apocalyptic biological weapons programme.
As the world’s poorest countries sink further and further into debt, Western corporations grow fat from government-backed projects that fuel conflicts, harm the environment and have built-in kickbacks.
Costing £2.9 billion, the UK’s new police communication system Tetra has been described by one independent scientist as likely to cause ‘more civilian deaths than all the world’s terrorist organisations put together’
The mainstream farming media dismiss biodynamics as a fad affordable only by the wealthy – so why are big arable farmers sowing seeds under full moons?
An invisible electrosmog engulfs us, destroying the health of many who do not even know why they have fallen ill. Why is no one listening to the mass of evidence telling us we are frying our brains?
