Tag: Global issues
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Wasted Opportunity: Inefficiency and Waste in our Food Systems
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Jonathan Foley, Director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, has a recent essay on meeting food needs in a world of growing human population. It is titled “Wasted Opportunity.” Here’s an excerpt (bold font added): “It never fails. Whenever we talk about meeting the world’s growing demands for food, energy and water,…
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Fair Trade: On Our Interconnected World
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Our world today is more interconnected than ever. One major expression of our interconnectedness is the global economy: the goods and services we purchase are often produced in far-off places, and the inevitable waste that is a byproduct of our current economy also has global impacts (see here for one example). The deaths of over…
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Living in the era of the geographer
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This quote comes from the Preface of the National Research Council’s 2010 report Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences. “We are living in an era of receding glaciers, accelerating loss of species habitat, unprecedented population migration, growing inequalities within and between nations, rising concerns over resource depletion, and shifting patterns of…
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Which is the bigger global health problem: malnutrition or overeating?
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According to The Global Burden of Disease report, a large study published in The Lancet in December 2012, for the first time in human history, overeating is causing more health problems globally than is malnutrition. In 1990, the leading global health problem, as estimated by shortened life span, was under-nutrition. When the study was repeated…