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January 23, 2015
New Report Calls for Significant Roll-Back on Global Bioenergy Policies
On January 29, the World Resources Institute (WRI), an environmental research organization with a global focus released a working paper, “Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land.” The authors, Dr. Searchinger, a Senior Fellow at WRI and scholar at Princeton University, and WRI consultant Ralph Heimlich posit that by 2050, there will be a world-wide ‘calorie gap,’ where existing food production is unable to meet projected demand. This calorie gap will be caused by a growing population, increased demand for natural resources and increased consumption of resource intensive meat and milk products. Therefore, according to the authors, any use of land to grow bioenergy crops that takes land away from the uses of food, feed or carbon storage, is not acceptable. The authors write, “bioenergy that entails the dedicated use of land to grow the energy feedstock will undercut efforts to combat climate change and to achieve a sustainable food future.”
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Report Warns Midwest Businesses Will Suffer Outsized Effects of Rising Temperatures
On January 23, the Risky Business Project, a group founded by Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson and Tom Steyer, to discuss the business costs of climate inaction released a new report, “Heat in the Heartland.” Following the 2014 report on the business costs of climate to the United States, this report focuses specifically on the risks climate change poses to ten cities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri. It finds that climate change will impact wide-ranging sectors of the Midwest economy; its winter sports and tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing as well as worker welfare and productivity.
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