#5 This week in front of YouTube

#4 Saudi Arabian bank: Gulf states face food crisis

The oil sheiks can buy whatever they want, including food. And the land to grow the food on. Looking at their future some of them see how this will change and that it'd probably be smart to start growing their own.

"The NCBC report urged the GCC states to boost domestic food production through sustainable agriculture to head off an eventual crisis caused by a dramatic surge in the global demand for food that will push prices ever upward. It said that the Saudis at least are providing financial incentives to expand the use of new crop technologies, water management and new types of seeds that require less water. [...] As populations expand while the amount of farmland and water supply shrinks, resource wars are expected to erupt across the Middle East and Africa in the decades ahead. 'Unchecked land-grabbing carries with it the seeds of conflict, environmental disaster, political and social change, and hunger on an unprecedented scale,' Le Monde Diplomatique warned in February." 

#3 Epidemic kills 12,000 critically endangered antelopes

“At least 12,000 critically endangered saiga antelopes (Saiga tatarica) have been found dead in Kazakhstan in the past two weeks, victims of a mysterious epidemic. The deaths represent about 15 percent of the species' worldwide population.”

#2 Innovation: Student Makes Bike-Powered Water Pump for Developing Nations and Apple Patents Solar-Powered iPhone With Invisible Collection Cells

“Irrigating crop fields may literally be as easy as riding a bike. Jon Leary, a student at the University of Sheffield, created a bicibomba movil, otherwise known as a bike-powered water pump. The nifty, eco-friendly device is currently being produced in Guatemala to help local farmers irrigate fields and more easily distribute water.”

“Yes, it’s for a solar-powered iPhone, but Apple being Apple, they’ve got a better solution to solar-charging than just a bunch of ugly panels stuck to the back of the device: the energy collection cells are actually hidden underneath the display. The iPhone itself would look no different, but lay it out in the sun and it will juice itself up.”

#1 Barack Obama puts the MDGs in the US National Security Strategy

The White House released its National Security Strategy report and the UN DISPACH were happy to report the Millennium Development Goals are in it. Page 39, chapter “Promote Dignity by Meeting Basic Needs”:

“The freedom that America stands for includes freedom from want. Basic human rights cannot thrive in places where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. The United States has embraced the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals and is working with others in pursuit of the eradication of extreme poverty—efforts that are particularly critical to the future of nations and peoples of Africa.”

Topics covered by and related to the MDGs are mentioned many times in the report. Many of these mentions are quoted at Ecowar / US National Security Strategy 2010 - poverty, climate change, natural disasters, diseases, corruption. All of this is now officially the business of the US forces, intelligence, businesses and people. Enjoy!

Highly related are Group of retired US military leaders campaign for climate bill (from April) and Pentagon report on climate change and renewable energy (February).

(In the mean time elsewhere in USA Tea Partiers Bid to Keep Climate Change Out of the Classroom and people who worked all their lives fishing lost their livelihoods.)