Environment News Podcast - the Green Alternative Environment Society of Australia

French experts said on Wednesday serious doubts remained over whether the only genetically modified (GMO) crop grown in France was safe, a move likely to prompt the extension of a current ban on GMOs.

According to Laurance, whose findings are reported this week in Science (December 14), a recent spike in Amazonian fires is being promoted by massive US subsidies that promote American corn production for ethanol. The ethanol is being blended with gasoline as an automobile fuel.
"American taxpayers are spending $11 billion a year to subsidize corn producers—and this is having some surprising global consequences," said Laurance.
The US is the world's leading producer of soy, but many American soy farmers are shifting to corn to qualify for the government subsidies. Since 2006, US corn production rose 19% while soy farming fell by 15%.
The drop-off in US soy has helped to drive a major increase in global soy prices, which have nearly doubled in the last 14 months. In Brazil, the world's second-largest soy producer, high soy prices are having a serious impact on the Amazon rainforest and tropical savannas.

Apple Computer may be cool and hip with consumers, but it is anything but a trend-setter when it comes to good environmental policies, Greenpeace says.

Parliament has approved a major overhaul of Australia's environmental laws which green groups have lamented as a backward step for the country's natural habitat.

While his peers from St Augustine's Catholic school were this month contemplating university careers or first jobs, Jason Chelsea was preoccupied with a different future: his first tour of duty in Iraq.

Global emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide have more than doubled since 1990 and the rate of increase is accelerating, according to new information gathered and analyzed by the Australian government research service.