A few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review.  Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.

Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline:…

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The UK Royal Society’s long-awaited study on improving agricultural productivity and increasing food security was released this morning.  Although I’ve only had a chance to skim the report, it seems to have lived up to its promise of eschewing politically correct pop-environmentalism and instead embracing the use of science and technology for producing more food on less land.  The report acknowledges that farming is an inherently un-natural and ecologically disruptive endeavor.  But, it suggests that a healthy concern for protecting the environment necessitates…

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Congratulations to Pamela Ronald, a UC Davis plant pathology professor, on winning one of this year’s Science in Society Journalism Awards, sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers.  The award is for a column Ronald wrote for the Boston Globe last year, and which was based in part on her wonderful book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetic and the Future of Food, co-authored with her husband Raoul Adamchak.

Ronald and Adamchak, who is an organic farmer, reject the dogma that only…

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Leading trade lawyer Gary Horlick testified yesterday on carbon tariffs before the Senate Finance Committee.  As the Senate prepares an energy suppression/global warming bill, it is attempting to find ways to soften the “border adjustment” provisions in the House-passed bill (H.R. 2454).

Horlick points out some of the practical problems of setting up a carbon tariff system and cautions about the potential effects of such measures on the international trading system.  As he notes, if the production method rather than the end-product…

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Over at Science Progress, a web magazine published by the Center for American Progress, former USDA biotech regulator Val Giddings and U. of Illinois microbiologist Bruce Chassy offer the Obama Administration a well-reasoned and scientifically-sound blueprint for reforming the irrational and burdensome regulation of biotech crops.  They write:

In summary, biotechnology applied to agriculture has enormous potential to enhance our ability to develop seeds for improved crops and for enhanced livestock to enable us to meet the food, feed and fiber challenges of…

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