Davos Day Two: More talk, more action

Kleiner Perkins reception. KPCB are responsible for many successful VC projects, including its iFund collaboration with Apple and numerous greentech initiatives. We do a lot of search work for them. Al Gore makes an impromptu and passionate speech. Nice way to end Day Two.

Ban Water Bottles to Reduce Pollution? Come On! - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

A friend at another university tells me that his school is banning the sale of bottled water on campus, as the university administration is bothered by the pollution produced by plastic water bottles.
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University bureaucrats clearly don’t think about substitution by consumers, or about unintended consequences of quantity restrictions. Even by well-known standards of bureaucratic shortsightedness, this one is a real achievement.

New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests - NYTimes.com

Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s — and much larger swaths of farmland — are reverting back to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings.

These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest — an iconic environmental cause — may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.

“There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.

Prince Charles: Help me save the rainforests - Telegraph

In a little less than my lifetime, we have lost 50 per cent of the world's rainforests. Every year, 32 million acres - an area the size of England - is destroyed or degraded. The message is clear: our world is in grave danger of losing its life-support system.