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Good Electricity Grids Make Good Neighbors

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Daniel Kammen of University of California, Berkeley, Nov 20, 2013
Hell's Gate, Rift Valley, Kenya, a source of geothermal energy that will feed a new transmission line running between Kenya and Ethiopia. Photograph by Franca DelSignore, National Geographic Your Shot
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In the poem “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost asserted that “good fences make good neighbors.”  World history is replete with foreign policy built around physical walls, from Emperor Hadrian, to the Great Wall of China, to the Berlin Wall, the wall between Palestine and Israeli, to the U.S.-Mexico border.  Containment and isolation have often been the cornerstones of policy.

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Oceans face "deadly trio" of threats, study says

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Alister Doyle, Oct 3, 2013
A whale dives into the sea off the coast of Greenland's capital Nuuk, Oct. 17, 2012. REUTERS/Alistair Scrutton
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OSLO, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The world's oceans are under greater threat than previously believed from a "deadly trio" of global warming, declining oxygen levels and acidification, an international study said on Thursday.

The oceans have continued to warm, pushing many commercial fish stocks towards the poles and raising the risk of extinction for some marine species, despite a slower pace of temperature rises in the atmosphere this century, it said.

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Google Earth SHOCK: ZERO point ZERO ZERO SIX of world forests disappear each year Not to mention 'Great Reversal' density increase

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Lewis Page, Nov 15 2013
Map of World deforestation
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The technical team behind Google Earth have partnered with US government boffins to produce dramatic satellite maps showing how the area of the world covered by forests has changed across the years 2000 to 2012.

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Deforestation in Amazon jungle increases by nearly a third in one year

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The Guardian, November 14 2013
Illegally logged timber, which has been confiscated, is floated down the Guam river delta in Brazil
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Deforestation in the Amazon increased by nearly a third over the past year, according to Brazilian government figures released on Thursday.

The data confirms a feared reversal in what had been steady progress over the past decade against destruction of the world's largest rainforest.

Satellite data for the 12 months through the end of July 2013 showed that deforestation in the region climbed by 28% compared with a year earlier.

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MDG designer fears UN goals will ‘degenerate into wish list’

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Arthur Neslen Sep 18 2013
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 An architect of the UN’s Millennium development Goals (MDGs) says he fears that a lack of strong leadership at the UN could lead to its poverty eradication goals being replaced by an over-politicised and unachievable “wish list” after 2015.

Jan Vandemoortele told EurActiv that UN member states were becoming “uneasy” about discussions on a framework to replace the MDGs in 15 months time, which are due to begin in New York on 22 September

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Wasted food is world's third-biggest carbon emitter after China and US: UN

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Reuters
Around 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted every year (Credit: ABC)
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The food the world wastes accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than any country except for China and the United States, according to a United Nations report.

The food the world wastes accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than any country except for China and the United States, according to a United Nations report.

It says every year about a third of all food for human consumption, around 1.3 billion tonnes, is wasted, along with all the energy, water and chemicals needed to produce it and dispose of it.

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China's newest environmental disaster

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Carmel Lobello SEP 26 2013
In China, it's coal as far as the eye can see.
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So much for China's change of heart when it comes to taking care of the environment.

The Chinese government recently approved construction on nine of 40 large-scale plants that will convert coal into synthetic natural gas — a process that produces seven times more greenhouse gas emissions than regular natural gas production, and uses as much as 100 times the water as shale gas extraction, according to a new study by Duke University.

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Algae biofuel could cut CO2 emissions by 68% compared to petroleum

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BIOENERGY NEWS SEP 23 2013
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Algae-derived biofuel can reduce life cycle CO2 emissions by 50 to 70 per cent compared to petroleum fuels, according to a new peer-reviewed paper published in Bioresource Technology journal.

As reported in Scienceblog, the study, which is the first to analyse real-world data from an existing algae-to-energy demonstration scale farm, shows that the environmental and energy benefits of algae biofuel are at least on par, and likely bette

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