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The Return Of The Bicycle

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Lester R. Brown

The bicycle has many attractions as a form of personal transportation. It alleviates congestion, lowers air pollution, reduces obesity, increases physical fitness, does not emit climate-disrupting carbon dioxide, and is priced within the reach of the billions of people who cannot afford a car. Bicycles increase mobility while reducing congestion and the area of land paved over. Six bicycles can typically fit into the road space used by one car. For parking, the advantage is even greater, with 20 bicycles occupying the space required to park a car.

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Renewables Must Generate 50% Of Global Electricity: IEA

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Renewable energies must generate almost half of the world’s power by 2050, up from the current level of 18%, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).Global investment in green power was led by wind and solar in 2008, and reached a record level of US$112 billion and remained broadly stable in 2009 despite the economic downturn, explains IEA’s ‘Energy Technology Perspectives 2010.’ Many car companies are adding hybrid and all-electric vehicles to their fleets, and 5 million such vehicles could be on t

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Governments Face Cost Hurdle To Halve CO2 By 2050: IEA

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Country: USA/FRANCE Author: Tom Doggett and Muriel Boselli Governments will have to grapple with sharply higher upfront costs to deploy clean energy technologies and halve carbon emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday. Action to curb greenhouse gases is going in the "wrong direction," said the energy advisor to 28 industrialized nations, adding that under current trends carbon emissions would instead double by mid-century. Many renewable energy technologies cost more upfront but benefit from fuel savings.

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Rust In The Bread Basket

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Rust in the bread basketA crop-killing fungus is spreading out of Africa towards the world’s great wheat-growing areasJul 1st 2010IT IS sometimes called the “polio of agriculture”: a terrifying but almost forgotten disease. Wheat rust is not just back after a 50-year absence, but spreading in new and scary forms. In some ways it is worse than child-crippling polio, still lingering in parts of Nigeria. Wheat rust has spread silently and speedily by 5,000 miles in a decade. It is now camped at the gates of one of the world’s breadbaskets, Punjab.

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Solving The Water-Energy Crisis

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Published: June 25, 2010

Boston, Massachusetts The world is running out of water. By 2030, the UN projects that 60 percent of the global population will face water shortages, increasing social unrest and creating additional risk for companies.

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UN Says Poor Nations On Track To Cut Poverty

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By EDITH M. LEDERER (AP) – Jun 23, 2010 UNITED NATIONS — The global economic crisis has slowed the fight against poverty but the developing world is still on track to meet a key U.N. goal of halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, according to a report released Wednesday. The U.N. report cited new World Bank estimates suggesting that the crisis left an additional 50 million people in extreme poverty in 2009 and will leave some 64 million impoverished by the end of 2010, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and eastern and southeastern Asia.

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