Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.

Life’s a bitumen nightmare as cities get hotter than hell

admin /19 February, 2010

Life’s a bitumen nightmare as cities get hotter than hell

February 15, 2010

 

Thermal image of the City of Sydney, 6 February 2009

Thermal image of the City of Sydney, February 6, 2009. Photo: City of Sydney

We cooked on Friday. In between the deluges. Walking to the office across the breezeway at Darling Harbour – except there was no breeze – I overheard a young women say to her friend, ”It’s supposed to be 29 but it feels like 40.” She was right, the forecast was wrong. It hit 38 degrees in the Sydney CBD. Even that figure is misleading. On the streets it was worse – oppressive, debilitating.

One year ago, the City of Sydney council, keenly aware we are cooking ourselves in our cities, commissioned a thermal-image map of the CBD. The mapping flight took place in the early morning of February 6 last year. The maximum temperature that day was 29 degrees and the minimum 22 degrees. The thermal map, however, showed something else.

Victoria vulnerable to another Black Saturday: Cesar Melham

admin /19 February, 2010

Victoria vulnerable to another Black Saturday: Cesar Melham

 

VICTORIA was “tragically unprepared” for another Black Saturday and continued to face devastating loss of life, the bushfires royal commission has been told.

Cesar Melham, Victorian secretary of the Australian Workers Union, said the number of full-time firefighters had fallen from more than 1500 in the mid-1980s to a present low of 237, despite the Victorian government promising to boost numbers and the Brumby government was “more interested in cost cutting than in protecting lives and property”.

“The reality of the situation is that we do not have enough fire crews and field staff for clearing, burning and all the year-round preparation needed to save lives and property during each bushfire season,” he said.

China using ‘mind blowing’amount of fertiliser

admin /18 February, 2010

China using ‘mind blowing’ amount of fertiliser Ecologist 14th February, 2009 Overuse of nitrogen fertilisers in China is leading to rapid soil acidification and is causing lasting damage to ecosystems, according to soil study Nitrogen fertilisers used to increase crop yields in China are having ‘extreme’ environmental consequences, according to a study from leading soil Continue Reading →

Chinese farms cause more pollution than factories, says official survey

admin /12 February, 2010

Chinese farms cause more pollution than factories, says official survey

Groundbreaking government survey pinpoints fertilisers and pesticides as greater source of water contamination

Pollution from toxin in Chinese farmland, Guangzhou, China

Overuse of fertilisers and pesticides has sent agricultural pollution through the roof. Photograph: Alex Hofford/EPA

Farmers’ fields are a bigger source of water contamination in China than factory effluent, the Chinese government revealed today in its first census on pollution.

Senior officials said the disclosure, after a two-year study involving 570,000 people, would require a partial realignment of environmental policy from smoke stacks to chicken coops, cow sheds and fruit orchards.

Boots, KFC, MsDonalds ignore rainforest destruction survey

admin /11 February, 2010

Boots, KFC, McDonalds ignore rainforest destruction survey Ecologist 10th February, 2010 Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury’s have been praised for disclosing their ‘forest footprint’ but experts say that consumers are still not aware of the impact of their daily diet A project has been lauched to inform consumers and investors about the link between corporate Continue Reading →

India bans planting of first GM crop food

admin /11 February, 2010

India bans planting of first GM food crop

 

 

Campaigners welcome decision to put on hold cultivation of genetically modified (GM) aubergine crop, Bt Brinjal, until ‘safety of product’ established

 

India has banned the planting of the country’s first edible GM crop, a type of aubergine modified to produce Bt toxin.

The seed, developed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company, which is part owned by US biotech giant Monsanto, was said to be more resistant to natural pests.

However, against a backdrop of protest from farmers and leaders of aubergine-growing states, the Indian Environment Minister said today that he was adopting a ‘cautious precautionary principal

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