In rich countries, the rising price of fuel may encourage our populace to shed pounds so we are not collectively so fat. This also would reduce the amount of energy required to cart us around. (That is not a joke; ask the airlines.) The refined versions of these heavily subsidized commodities based foodstuffs are a significant cause for rising rates of obesity and diabetes in developed nations. The highest and best use for fossil fuels is transportation of goods and people. The world relies too much on monoculture crops, heavily dependent on fossil fuel-based fertilizers and insecticides. ...

Bio Fuels are one thing but the legitimate alternative energy sources that can be produced, are being stifled by governments and oil companies. I see everyone complaining about the high prices of oil and being concerned about the impact Bio Fuels will have on the costs of food, but is anyone doing anything about the alternatives? Is there a source where alternative energy devices can be introduced to the public and inventors can get the support needed to bring these technologies to the market and help in the long term solution rather than being focused on the short term problem? The cost of...

On one hand the demand for energy and the global population are increasing at alarming rates. On the other hand the cultivable land area globally is shrinking very rapidly due to soil erosion, population explosion, industrial pollution and things like that. Under these circumstances using even one acre of cultivable land for biofuels production is totally meaningless and unpardanable and must attract heaviest penalties imaginable. However waste lands that are completely and absolutely unfit for food production may be allowed for rising energy crops like jatropha to produce bio diesel.

R P...

As the effective measures of action plan on climate change, the global approach must encompass a broad and extensive range of measures that should focus on eight priority missions as the key components of strategy for sustainable development, namely solar energy, enhanced energy effiency, sustainable habitat, conserving water, sustaining polar and frozen ecosystems, Green Globe through afforestation as the nature's carbon sink, sustainable agriculture and finally establishing a strategic knowledge platform for climate change. To overcome the critical issues of global food prices and energy...

Answer to Will Bio-Fuels starve the World.......

In this case it’s not science but speculative trends. JPN is worried about whether or not bio-fuels will starve the world? With his PHD and energy foundation to back him he must know a couple things:

1. We have not even came close to reaching peak oil! There are just too many places where exploration isn’t even allowed let alone drilling tolerated!
2. The idea of fuel coming from a grown source that is harvested for that purpose is excellent in theory!
3. Ethanol, from any source is simply the wrong product in it’s current form as a...

Our casual approach and attitude on focussing the current day crisis, rather developing a sustainability mindset, are at the centre of energy shortage, environmental damages, climate changes, and present day surge in crude and food prices at large. Global warming is the most serious issue for the survival of life on the planet, that needs to be averted in the near term on the top most priority. We have to learn to live in perfect harmony with the nature. Take an example of cooking food, nature never intended to generate that extent of emissions by cooking the nature gifted food stuff alone, however the human being and the human race alone destroyed forests & woods and emitted huge emissions to make the climate warm and change; likewise other industrial activities are doing the same harm to the environment and climate. And above that in lack of proper guidance, directions and policy approaches, transition from carbon fuel to bio - fuel and bio - energy is posing new threat and challenges. All these isues must be addressed in the global policy framework.

Author: Dr. Jagdish P. N. Giri,
Founder and Executive Director: Aaditya Energy foundation, Chennai, India

Flaying the developed countries for promoting bio-fuels at any cost is widely recognized as fuelling price rises and speculation. Some of the international agencies are recommending an end to current bio-fuels mandates in rich countries. In some the published reports, it has been shown that despite the foreseeing benefits of bio-fuels in saving fossil fuel energy, bio-fuels targets may render an estimated 600 million people hungry by 2050. World leaders at a United Nations' meeting in Switzerland must go beyond immediate aid to address the root causes of the global food price crisis. The world...

I have not been here for a while and in my absence------- nothing has changed, advanced, or moved. The discussions are the same, the questions are the same, and the answers are as obscure as ever.
I ask the host what are the latest events that move the energy crisis into new directions. What is the status of hydrogen in the overall scheme of total energy independence?

we need to get away from monocultures and get back to mixed farming, with synergetic interactions between tillage, livestock and horticulture, in a managed system with as much added value as possible on products transported to market. This could be done by a co-operative arrangement between a cluster of farms.

Such a system could include energy production, by managing the development of the hedgerows surrounding the fields, extending them with parallel strips of coppice, to be harvested for wood-chips for the energy market, on a short rotation cycle. Strip forestry surrounding fields would...