Latin America

- Solar Panels in China: An Emerging U.S.-China Trade Dispute?
- 'Bicycle pump' to turn wave power into clean energy
- El panorama energético actual (Argentina)

- Could Ecuador Be the Most Radical and Exciting Place on Earth?
- El Mundo: Cómo bajar de marcha sin perder el tren
- Le “Peak Everything” (ou la fin des haricots)

- Salon on urban gardens: The future of food?
- Solutions Series Guides: chickens, greywater, rainwater harvesting ...
- European banks fuelling food price volatility and hunger
- The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture
- Food as a Commodity

- The Occupy movement in London: three months on
- Occupy Wall Street’s Next Phase: Avoid Cooptation in Election Season
- 2002-2012: Remembering the Social Movements that Reimagined Argentina
- Goodbye Lenin?

- The Nature of Oil: Reconsidering American Power in the Middle East
- The Expert's Report that Damns the Northern Gateway Pipeline (David Hughes)
- Plentiful Energy – the book on the Integral Fast Reactor
- Fidel Castro on fracking and climate change (cites Yergin)

- Biofuels become a victim of own success - but not for long
- Brazil, short of biofuel, can't open spigot to US
- Keystone XL pipeline: Oil chief issues threat to Obama over decision
- Oil sands pipeline battle turns ugly
- Arab News: Renewables making inroads in emerging global energy mix

- Exxon 'loses' Venezuela nationalisation case
- Western Oil Firms Remain as US Exits Iraq
- The US-Iran Economic War
- Japan to Express Concerns to U.S. Over Possible Iranian Oil Ban

-Canadian crude oil production to increase 3300% by 2100
-Burning Oil to Keep Cool: The Hidden Energy Crisis in Saudi Arabia (report)
-A perilous and crucial quest - video interview with Daniel Yergin
-Brazil, short of biofuel, can't open spigot to US

If you have followed energy issues from anywhere other than a cave on a mountain peak, you've probably heard technoutopians utter some variation on the following sentence two or three hundred times "We walked on the moon - of course we can do whatever it takes to shift from fossil fuels to some other source of energy." The moon shot is perceived as the ultimate example of "put in a quarter and get out the technological outcome you want" in our history. If we could set out to put a man on the moon and do it in less than decade, can't we do anything we want to, with just enough ingenuity?

I'd be surprised if many readers of this blog work for the fracking industry. Those charming people spend a lot on lobbying and public relations, sure - but their main aim in life is to remain obscure. But food and drink? The branding, the packaging, the communications, the stores, the promotions, the trade shows, the hotels, the restaurants? Would I be wrong to guess that 75% of us have worked for a global food enterprise, directly or indirectly, at some point? I know I have: an industry talk here, a futures workshop there, a couple of healthcare events…But two new publications this week have left me sick to the stomach. I just don't think it's defensible any more to turn a blind eye to the social and ecological crimes Big Food is committing, in other parts of the world, so that you and I can eat what we damn well feel like.

- Oil will decline shortly after 2015, says former oil expert of International Energy Agency
- World Pays Ecuador Not to Extract Oil from Rainforest
- 'Terrible' and Plenty of It: The Oil That Comes in from the Cold

- Private Water Companies Come to Texas Bringing Soaring Rates, Little Recourse for Consumers
- Portraits of the Southwest in the Shadow of Drought
- No Time Left to Adapt to Melting Glaciers

For the rural Maya, the community being considered was not merely a single group of humans denoted by geography and culture, but rather the ecological community of all life forms, and generations still to come. What sane economic system would even consider forgetting these, a Mayan might ask. An economist might call what the Mayans are acquiring social, cultural, and ecological capital. To these people, and many others in the intentionally pre-industrial world, they are just good sense.

- Millions of British Public Sector Workers Take to the Streets in Historic General Strike
- Lessons from Egypt: Occupy the Democratic Party
- Student Protests Spread Throughout Latin America

As next June’s Rio+20 summit on sustainable development approaches, discussions about how to effectively establish a green economy are surging. But as a recent conference of the United Nations Institute for Social Development emphasized, the green economy is not simply about the economy and environment. Rather, it requires a deeper restructuring of economic and social processes including people’s relationships with food and agriculture.