Dennis Avery

Greens now betray the wild fish

Churchville VA—The Food and Drug Administration just approved genetically modified salmon, which grow larger and faster than wild salmon. That’s excellent. There are only so many wild fish in the seas, and biotech salmon could help save wild salmon fisheries from crashing.

Back from the brink of extinction

The last woods bison in the United States was apparently shot by a hunter in West Virginia around 1835. For many decades, the woods bison was presumed extinct – until an airplane spotted an isolated herd in the muskeg swamps north of Alberta, Canada.

New Study: Ethanol costs one million jobs

CHURCHVILLE, VA—IF President Obama still cares about more U.S. jobs and high food costs he can now immediately gain on both.. An economist in Indianapolis just calculated that the U.S. is losing a million jobs this year—along with $30 billion in economic growth—because we shifted too much of our corn into ethanol.

Can Romney Create Those 12 million Jobs?

Churchville, VA—Mitt Romney says he could create 12 million jobs in a four year term. Could he really do it? The odds are he could.

Tropical rainbelts still shifting global crops

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Michel Nasibu, of business consultants KPMG/East Africa, warns that global warming has begun to devastate his continent. He writes in AfricaEagle that: “The mother of all troubles has already started rooting her tentacles all over the continent: Global Warming. . . . . Africa is slowly becoming a desert.”

German Media’s Veer from Green Energy

CHURCHVILE, VA—German media, writing in one of the “greenest” European countries, are now veering away from green energy as fast as lagging public opinion will allow. A few years ago, Germany was “fully committed” to the EU’s goal of ending fossil fuel use. It was building lots of wind turbines, and even some solar farms despite its often-cloudy skies. After the tsunami, Prime Minister Angela Merckel announced Germany would phase out its nuclear plants quickly, implying more power from renewables.

No Farm Bill: just Food and Tax Inflation

“Congress has failed put in place a farm bill for the first time in more than 60 years,” says a reporter for station WBNG in New York State. U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack debates this, however: “President Obama has a strong record of supporting America’s farmers, ranchers, and rural America. Today, agriculture is thriving. . . . Today there is a record amount of biofuel production. The administration recently announced new renewable fuel standard targets that will increase biodiesel production. . . . And he has increased the amount of ethanol that can be blended into gasoline.”

Where’s the Case for Organic Foods?

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Stanford University has just published a new study on organic foods—reporting that its physicians and nutritionists found no evidence that organic foods are more nutritious. There was great surprise some quarters and statements such as “a $25 billion a year industry and no one told us it made no difference?”

Ethanol makes the top ten list

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Recently I watched John Stosell’s program on “Politician’s Top Ten Promises Gone Wrong.” Ethanol’s promise gone wrong was surpassed only by the housing subsidy bubble and the promise that more and bigger Europe-style government was the answer to the future.

What Really Triggers a Resource Crisis?

Churchville, VA—During a symposium held recently at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yale historian, Tim Snyder told the attendees: “Climate change acts as a “multiplier of other resource crises leading to “the ecological panic that I’m afraid will lead to mass killings in the decades come.”

Corn Ethanol and a Non-Warming Earth

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The earth has failed to warm at all for 15 years now, and American farmers are afraid of losing the “renewable fuel” mandate for corn ethanol—which has given them record crop prices and incomes since 2007. So, they’re proposing a new entitlement designed to ensure that they’ll never lose money again. Their proposed new federal farm bill would guarantee that farmers’ incomes don’t decline—and if future farm prices rise even more, the Feds’ guarantee would ratchet up too.

My Second-Most-Remarkable Moment

Churchville, VA—I had my second-most-remarkable moment while at the Heartland climate skeptics’ conference in Chicago last week. The conference was terrific, for climate scientists, geologists, economists, NASA engineers, and interested attendees. The highlight for me, though, was Sebastian Lunning, who co-authored Germany’s best-selling new book The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Catastrophe Won’t Happen.

BIG CITY LIB

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The Heartland Institute, a Chicago libertarian think-tank, put up a billboard outside Chicago on May 3rd that showed a photo of a raddled-looking Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The cut line said, “I believe in man-made global warming. Do you?”

Locovore’s Dilemma: A Different View on Buying Locally

CHURCHVILLE, VA—A Canadian couple of my acquaintance has just published a book provocatively titled The Locovore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000 Mile Diet. A new review in Publisher’s Weekly calls it a “daring, bare-knuckled, frequently sarcastic defense of the status quo in Western industrial agribusiness. From the point of view of the well-off, well-fed North American who does not have to toil much of the day for his subsistence, what’s not to praise in the West’s ability to provide the world with cheap, fast, uniform, reliable, bug-resistant, vitamin-enhanced food?”

Bjorn Lomborg adopts high-yield farming

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Bjorn Lomborg and his Copenhagen Consensus have just joined one of the smallest clubs in today’s world: people who believe that high-yield farming is the path to a sustainable future for people and wildlife despite, and even because of, its pesticides, chemical fertilizers, irrigation dams, and blast-freezers.

Is it Oil Speculators?

Churchville, VA—President Obama stood in the Rose Garden and pledged to prosecute “oil speculators.” Bill O’Reilly goes on TV night after night and blames “speculators” for gas pump prices, while guest after guest tell him he’s wrong. My wife asks” “What’s an oil speculator?”

Pesticide Adventures at TriangleLake

Churchville, VA—My brother lives in TriangleLake, a small community in Oregon’s CoastalRange foothills, surrounded by pastures and forests. Recently, a wealthy couple from Chicago bought a local property and is kindling what they call the “Pitchfork Rebellion” against pesticides. They allege environmental damage and health hazards to local residents from tree, crop and roadside spraying.

Darwin vs. Free Markets

CHURCHVILLE, VA—President Obama says the Republicans want to throw everyone under the wheels of a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” machine. He says the dog-eat-dog of the free market will be bad for blacks, Latinos, women, and the handicapped.

UN Climate Panel and “Extreme Weather”

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted last week it had no evidence to support the various claims that the planet’s weather is becoming “more extreme.” The new IPCC report on weather extremes reads: “While there is evidence that increases in greenhouse gases have likely caused changes in some types of extremes, there is no simple answer to question of whether the climate, in general, has become more or less extreme.”

Pesticide Residue Risks Recalculated

For the past 15 years, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has been trying to scare U.S. consumers about pesticide residues on the fruits and vegetables in supermarkets. The EWG annually selects a “dirty dozen” produce items that they say pose the most pesticide residue danger to consumers and their kids.