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expected to increase to about 210,000 megawatts from today's installed total of about 59,000 megawatts, a study by the German Wind Energy Institute (DEWI) showed.
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The global wind energy industry is expected to enjoy continued strong growth in coming years with total installed capacity seen more than tripling from current levels by 2014, an industry survey showed on Tuesday.
BOSTON, March 9 (UPI) -- Alternative energy sources, including wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels, are being talked up in Congress, but clean energy isn't yet seen as a job-producing industry.
A movement is emerging, however, to present alternative energies as having the potential to create jobs in the production of major component parts of wind turbines and large-scale retrofitting projects to increase energy efficiency in residential areas.
PERKINSTON, Miss. -- David Fazio's dairy farm rises like an oasis from the wind-shattered woods. Fields of green ryegrass, shade oak trees, and pink and red magnolias bespeak order amid the twisted, gray wilderness wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
Even here, 30 miles north of Mississippi's Gulf Coast, the lives of things that grow and sprout -- and of the people who tend them -- were not spared by the hurricane.
"In summary, the risk to Monsanto's shareholders from the company's genetic engineering business are substantial. the company faces business constraints in the form of market rejection by consumers, producers, and farmers; significant legislative hurdles to commercialization; uncertainty in the face of human health and environmental impacts stemming from the company's products; and finally, significant risk exposure from potential contamination of the human food chain by unapproved genetically engineered traits." Monsanto & Genetic Engineering: Risks for Investors A report prepared by Strategic Value Advisors
In January, a biotech industry front group, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), announced, with great fanfare, that global acreage of genetically engineered (GE)crops had increased 19% in 2001. According to ISAAA, 5.5 million farmers last year planted 130 million acres (52.6 million hectares) of GE crops, a 30-fold increase since 1996. For the year 2000, ISAAA had reported a somewhat smaller 11% growth in GE acreage. Cheerleaders for Frankenfoods, including Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau, hailed ISAAA's most recent projections as "proof" that the Biotech Century was going forward, despite widespread opposition in Europe and Asia, and increased rumblings of discontent among North American consumers and farmers.
Although most of the corporate media dutifully regurgitated ISAAA's press release on the "progress" of agbiotech, a closer more critical look at the evidence reveals a somewhat different story. First of all, ISAAA estimates on crop acreage are based on interviews with "true believers," farmers who are growing GE crops. Secondly, ISAAA gets its funds from corporations such as Monsanto, Aventis, and Pioneer (Dupont). In addition, previous assertions made by the group's spokesman, Clive James have subsequently been proven false. For example, James claimed that 1998 plantings of GE soybeans resulted in a 12% yield increase, when in fact yields fell 6-12%
The worst nightmares of Monsanto and the Gene Giants are becoming reality. The four year food fight by European consumers and farmers is slowly but surely driving genetically engineered (GE) foods and crops off the EU market, the largest in the world. US corn exports to the EU have fallen from $360 million a year to near zero, while soybean exports have fallen from $2.6 billion annually to $1 billion--and are expected to fall even further as major food processors, supermarkets, and fast-food chains ban GE soy or soy derivatives in animal feeds.
Canada's canola exports to Europe similarly have fallen from $500 million a year to near zero. Meanwhile Brazilian exporters are doing a brisk business selling "GE-free" soybeans to European buyers, and organic food is booming throughout the industrialized world. On May 18 the latest in a series of GE scandals rocked Europe as a major rapeseed (canola) seller, Advanta Seeds, a division of biotech giant AstraZeneca, admitted that genetic drift from gene-altered canola fields in Canada had contaminated certified "non-GE seed" export shipments to Britain, France, Germany and Sweden.
