Two reports this week by the US National Research Council look at whether humans could artificially steer Earth's climate by reflecting sunlight back into space, or by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The twin reports– Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration and Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool the Earth argue that carbon dioxide removal might have a place in a broader response plan, but sunlight-reflecting technologies are too risky.

A set of papers from the First International Conference on Global Food Security is now available online. The conference attracted 600 participants from 65 countries. All of the papers in the special issue are open access for the first year and available here.

An article from Science Daily reports on how scientists, advisors and communications specialists have come together to examine whether beef production can help restore ecosystems. They have started to examine the adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing management technique: this involves using small-sized fields to provide short periods of grazing for livestock and long recovery periods for fields.

This study focuses on UK diets.  It finds that if in average diets conformed to WHO recommendations, associated GHG emissions would be reduced by 17%.  Further reductions of up to 40% can be achieve through dietary shifts that include a reduction in animal products and processed snacks, and more fruit and vegetables. Abstract and conclusions as follows:

This paper presented in EHP (Environmental Health Perspectives) claims to be the largest study to look at organophosphate exposure in humans.  It specifically compares pesticide exposure from eating organic food as compared with conventionally farmed food. The question of whether organic foods are better relate both to a food’s nutrient values and to its pesticide exposure; this paper examines whether the belief that organic produce contains less pesticide holds true.

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change has published a report based on their newly developed Global Calculator tool.

The online magazine The Local in Denmark reports that The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries in Denmark has launched a new strategy to double organic farming and serve more organic food in national public institutions. The government has set a goal of doubling the amount of organic farming by 2020 compared to 2007. The nation’s public institutions serve some 800,000 meals every single day.

Green Monday is a global sustainability initiative that was designed to promote green lifestyle choices.  In this video Phil Valko, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability at Washington University in St. Louis, talks about the global Green Monday initiative and how making a small change to one’s food choices can have a major impact.

The first progress report of A Better Retailing Climate initiative has been published. It describes how retailers since 2005 have improved their performance against the environmental targets set out in the initiative, and that they have: