'If We Leave the Euro, Everything Will Be Worse'

Greece is on the verge of economic collapse and yet the country's left wants to jettison austerity measures. Would this leave any alternative other than exiting the euro? SPIEGEL ONLINE invited the leader of Greece's pro-business Drasi party and an anti-austerity Syriza parliamentarian to debate the issues

Spiegel Online International | 05/16/2012

A Greek euro coin. Are the country's days as a member of the euro zone numbered? (dapd)

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Pure-play carbon credit companies in crisis

The crash in carbon credit prices globally has served a crushing blow to companies operating in this space in India. Firms, whose business models were based purely on profit from sale of carbon credits, have either closed down or substantially downsized their operations

Namrata Singh | The Times of India | Apr 16, 201

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Growing Food Demand Strains Energy, Water Supplies

The northern region of Gujarat State in western India (map) is semi-arid and prone to droughts, receiving almost all of its rain during the monsoon season between June and September. But for the past three decades, many crop and dairy farms have remained green—even during the dry season

Jeff Smith | National Geographic News | April 6, 2012

A man irrigates his field with an electric water pump east of Gauhati, in northern India. Excessive water pumping has strained both water and energy supplies in India, China and other hot spots around the world. Photograph by Anupam Nath, Associated Press

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'Greed is the Beginning of Everything'

In a SPIEGEL interview, Czech economist Tomas Sedlacek discusses morality in the current crisis and why he believes an economic policy that only pursues growth will always lead to debt. Those who don't know how to handle it, he argues, end up in a medieval debtor's prison, as the Greeks are experiencing today

SPIEGEL Online | March 23, 2012

Czech economist Tomas Sedlacek: "The demands of people are the curse of the gods." Gunter Gluecklich / DER SPIEGEL

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The oil price is the new eurozone crisis

No sooner has the pressure on markets from the eurozone crisis begun to ease than investors have found something else to worry about – the oil price

By Tom Stevenson | The Telegraph | 17 Mar 2012

An oil price spike is never welcome but it would be particularly damaging with the global economy in such a weak state Photo: AP

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Drought spreads to Brazil, crop yields hit

Drought has spread from Argentina and Paraguay to Brazil and is hitting soy yields at a time of growing concerns that regional growth may suffer as pressures mount on commodity prices

United Press International | March. 20, 2012

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World water supply threatened

Increasing demand and climate change are threatening global water supplies

By Irinia Bokova | United Nations in Disaster News Network | March 12, 2012

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Breathing difficulties: A market in need of a miracle

The European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), the world’s biggest carbon market, has two main aims. One is to restrict the carbon-dioxide emissions of the 11,000 companies trading on it to an agreed cap. The other is to give these firms an incentive to invest in clean technology

The Economist | Mar 3rd 2012

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Mumbo Jumble: The underwhelming response of the American economics profession to the crisis

Neoclassical economists, having worked hard to convince the world that everything was hunky-dory circa 2005, and concurrently having invented the rationales and the theories behind the financial time bombs that went off across the landscape, don’t seem to have suffered one whit for the subsequent sequence of events, a slow-motion train wreck that one might reasonably have expected would have rubbished the credibility of lesser mortals

by Philip Mirowski | Feb 28 2012 by OpenDemocracy in Energy Bulletin | Mar 1 2012

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German Apprenticeship vs US/UK Uni-Jobless System

It is no big secret that youth unemployment is especially high in Anglo-Saxon economies at the present time

Emanuel | International Political Economy Zone | March 1, 2012

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Somali famine 'will kill tens of thousands'

The UN in Somalia says tens of thousands of people will have died of starvation by the time the famine in the Horn of Africa ends

BBC News | 15 January 2012

Many Somalis have fled across the border into Ethiopia to seek aid

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Going with the flow

To fix the country’s long-term problems, action needs to start now

The Economist | Feb 11th 2012

Arid debates

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Without women there is no food sovereignty

Systems of food production and consumption have always been socially organized, but their organization has varied historically. In the last few decades, under the impact of neoliberal politics, the logic of capitalism has been imposed upon the ways in which food is produced and consumed (Bello, 2009)

by Esther Vivas | Feb 8 2012 by International Viewpoint in Energy Bulletin | Feb 8 2012

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Water leak shuts CA nuclear plant

A water leak led to the shutdown a California nuclear power plant, and officials said an "extremely small" amount of radiation may have been released

UPI in Disaster News Network | February 2, 2012

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Turning Point: What future for forest peoples and resources in the emerging world order?

Reports about REDD tend to focus on the forests. It’s unusual for a report about REDD to start with an analysis of the economic crisis in Europe and the way in which the world is changing. Yesterday, the Rights and Resources Initiative released a new report that does precisely that

By Chris Lang | REDD-Monitor | 2nd February 2012

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Eurozone Fears Permeate Davos

The ongoing eurozone sovereign debt crisis has dominated the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with many private sector business leaders urging Germany to do more to alleviate Europe's fiscal woes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel formally opened the summit on Wednesday, calling on Europe to become "more European" (DeutscheWelle) and implement the fiscal compact agreed upon late last year by EU leaders

Christopher Alessi | Council on Foreign Relations | January 27, 2012

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The future of food

By 2050 there will be another 2.5 billion people on the planet. How to feed them? Science's answer: a diet of algae, insects and meat grown in a lab

John Vidal | The Observer | 22 January 2012

Seaweed harvesting in Bali. From seaweed to slime, algae is the future of food, says Professor Mark Edwards Photograph: Ed Wray/AP

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From Davos to Dystopia

Not long ago the World Economic Forum (WEF) found itself in the sights of the global economic justice movement. At the turn of the last century, before anyone was “occupying” public spaces in protest at the growing inequalities between the top strata of society and the rest, a broad global coalition of environment, development, and peace activists were targeting the public meetings of major institutions such as the WTO, the IMF, and the G8

By Ben Zala | Foreign Policy in Focus | January 19, 2012

World Economic Forum in Davos

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Greedy Lying Bastards: US filmmaker attacks oil industry

Craig Rosebraugh's new documentary highlights the 'influence, deceit and corruption' of fossil fuel industry

by Leo Hickman | guardian.co.uk | 20 January 2012

Provocative, frank and impossible to ignore. And that's just the title

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The Law Of Putin’s Jungle

The Russian leader may be in for a surprise: he misjudges his adversaries

The Daily Beast in Newsweek Magazine | Jan 16, 2012

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