>U.N. conference finds little progress on reaching global development goals
> - Simply providing people in developing countries with clean water and
>basic sanitation will yield enormous economic benefits and help lift them
>out of poverty, but the world community is making little progress toward
>those goals, international experts said Wednesday.
>http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-29/s_23291.asp
Farming is biggest global environmental threat, says new book
- Inefficient farming practices are helping to drive deforestation,
pollution, ocean degradation, and species loss and constitute the most
serious environmental threat in the world today, according to a new book.
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-29/s_22824.asp
I would like to issue a hearfelt call for thought & action on the
dismaying & puzzling persistent failure of appropriate technology to
deploy. This latest report from Natl Geographic is only a dismal reminder
of what has been painfully obvious.
Solar water-heating is on a pathetic scale compared with the
widespread deployment justified by its benefits. Windpower, mechanical &
electrical, languishes unaccountably. Village-scale biogas generation, a
true solution-multiplier, began nicely in India but I gather most of their
50,000 examples have gone defunct. How are the Chinese doing with that
technology - the best in the world, but how widely deployed? Aerobic
waterless toilets fail to yield methane fuel gas, but are nevertheless the
original killer solution-multiplier; something more than their arcane
generic title 'clivus multrum' is needed to explain why so few specimens
exist of this superb, mature appropriate technology. Even the humble
hydraulic ram made from standard plumbing parts (a S. African design) is
not widely known. The ITDG has always looked v sensible to me; yet how
much influence has it attained?
A "NZ Energy Conference" last year failed to address these
questions, even tho' "sustainability" advocates were among the organisers.
If Marxism is the answer, how well has Cuba done? Did anyone
report on approp. tech in Albania? Has the urban expansion so frightening
in e.g Shanghai any rural counterpart in accelerated improvements of rural
water treatment, waste processing, etc?
R
|