Home/Posts Tagged ‘crisis’
Posts Tagged ‘crisis’
Animal Rights, Videos & Documentaries, Mar 30th, 2012,
Back in 2010 I posted about how bad economic times in Ireland were resulting in a large amount of neglected and abandoned horses in the country. Now Spain, in the throws of economic crisis, is experiencing a similar problem. In Spain, as in Ireland, when cash was plentiful many horse-mad citizens splashed out on having their very own equine companion (or trophy as the case may be). But now that times are tough it’s old Sugar Foot who gets the boot. Curiously, sometimes it’s not old mares that are being, quite literally, put out to pasture, but expensive pure-red Andalucians….
Tags: abandoned, crisis, economic, horses, Ireland, Spain
Politics, Videos & Documentaries, Feb 22nd, 2012,
If you’ve been following the global economic crisis and particularly the Greek crisis, you may be wondering just what the hell the Troika (IMF, EMU, European Central Bank) are playing at. The neo-liberal, anti-democratic, anti sovereignty, German-led bailout (loaded with economic and societal killing measures) doesn’t make sense to economists, political analysts or anyone except those who stand to make money from it. As the Independent reports, suicide rates have jumped 40% due to the crisis and salaries are being slashed from already non-living wage levels. The only Greeks making money are the bottom feeders. It’s nice to know that…
Tags: crisis, Greece, Greek
Climate Change, Politics, Feb 6th, 2012,
Europe’s commissioner for climate action, Connie Hedegaard, has stated that the current model for economic growth is not sustainable and could result in a global economic crisis if continued. Hedegaard equated the current Eurozone crisis with a future one of global scale. She said that economic models based solely on production and consumption are a recipe for failure and only serves to encourage overconsumption. Furthermore, the environment must be taken into account and these issues must be comprehensively addressed at the upcoming summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The summit in Rio this June takes place on the 20-year anniversary…
Tags: Climate change, crisis, economic, environmental, GDP, global, growth, Hedegaard, rio
Climate Change, Health, Politics, Wildlife & Flora, Sep 25th, 2010,
According to recent estimates, species are disappearing at 1,000 times the natural rate due to human activity and climate change. At a UN summit on Wednesday in New York, world leaders attended a meeting to discuss how to halt biodiversity and habitat loss. In a situation that mirrored the gridlock at the climate change talks last December in Copenhagen, developing countries, led by China, argued for payments from rich countries to encourage the protection of forests and other crucial habitats in poor nations which contain natural biological resources. Such a mechanism is not contained in the currently proposed Intergovernmental Science…
Tags: biodiversity, crisis, food, loss, meeting, UN
Climate Change, Green living, Politics, Jun 26th, 2010,
The Guardian recently featured an opinion piece on the commodification of water, by Nestle bigwig and former CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. The article basically questions the assumption that all water use should be considered a basic human right and argues that water use which goes ‘beyond basic sanitation, cooking and drinking’ should be charged for. The era of water at throwaway prices is coming to an end. I have long argued that we need to set a price that more accurately values our most precious commodity; the OECD and the World Bank are also moving in this direction, and have recently…
Tags: Brabeck-Letmathe, commodity, crisis, freshwater, global, Guardian, Nestle, Peter, resource, South Africa, water
Climate Change, Green living, Politics, Jun 7th, 2010,
According to the World Water Council, the use of renewable water resources increased six times during the 20th century, while the global population only tripled. As the amount of people on Earth increases into the 21st century – some 40 to 50% over the next 50 years – industrialization and urbanization will likewise grow, putting more strain on the environment and on global fresh water resources. But much of the world already lacks an adequate water supply and sanitation conditions. From the Pacific Institute: That 1.2 billion people lack access to clean water is surely one of the greatest development…
Tags: crisis, fresh, freshwater, global, global water crisis, resources, water, World
Politics, May 17th, 2010,
If there ever was an argument against the unregulated free market, it’s that it can kill people. Of course, it can also feed people. But, surely even the most hard-hearted capitalists must agree that there is a figurative line in the sand when it comes to profiting from starvation. You’d think so anyway. But it happens. Take the situation in Niger, where the current food crisis is being caused by severe drought and poor harvests, but fiddling with market forces may be compounding the problem. From an article in the Ghanaian newspaper The Statesman: Surpluses elsewhere in the region –…
Tags: crisis, food, market, Niger, prices, profit, starvation
Climate Change, Politics, Science & Technology, Apr 1st, 2010,
The world’s current water crisis is driving countries with water shortages to build more desalination plants. As fresh water sources dry up and desalination technology becomes cheaper, the process of extracting fresh water from salt water is increasing in poorer countries such as India and Ghana, but also in wealthier nations and even in densely populated London, England – which is anything but dry. From an article in the Guardian: People do desalination when they run out of opportunities, and the problem is the world overall is running out of opportunities: groundwater is overexploited to the extent it’s becoming saline…
Tags: crisis, desal, desalination, expensive, global, water
