Paleontologists have made a remarkable discovery in China -one billion-year-old micro-fossils of green seaweeds that could be related to the ancestor of the earliest land plants and trees that first developed 450 million years ago. A team of scientists from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China and…
Category: Science, Technology, Heritage & Architecture~
EcoSocialism & Marxism~
Continue Reading
Engels and Foundations of Marxism
Engels and the Second Foundation of Marxism The following article by Professor John Bellamy Foster is based on his Engels Memorial Lecture presented to the Marx Memorial Library in London, England, on November 30, 2022. The author has revised it here, including the addition of a lengthy postscript, from the earlier…
Agriculture, Food Security & Rural Revitalization~
Continue Reading
Food security: protecting China’s soils
China launches national soil survey to protect arable land Originally Posted August 7, 2022 After rapid development and intensive farming, China is to carry out a new national soil survey to help with its food security and carbon targets. China Dialogue recently published an article by three Chinese scientists. The…
Energy. Transport & Climate Change~
Continue Reading
China’s commercial Small Modular Reactor
China is building the “Linglong-1,” a small modular reactor (SMR) in the country’s southern island province of Hainan. It’s the world’s first of this type of reactor to be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and it intends to serve the region’s diverse power needs. A design sketch of a completed…
Agriculture, Food Security & Rural Revitalization~
Continue Reading
China improves soil quality with humus
Originally Posted 19 Dec 2021 A type of biological humic acid, featuring high purity and high activity, extracted from agricultural and forestry waste has been industrialized and used for soil restoration in China. A large amount of agricultural and forestry wastes are burned in the open air due to the lack…
EcoSocialism & Marxism~
Continue Reading
New Environmental History of Socialism
Review of: Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, Socialist States and the Environment: Lessons for Ecosocialist Futures (London: Pluto Press, 2021), 288 pages, $26.95, paperback. Review by associate professor Andy Bruno. Starting in the late 1970s, a narrative emerged about the extreme levels of environmental damage in the Soviet Union and, by implication, most state-socialist…
Agriculture, Food Security & Rural Revitalization~
Continue Reading
China finds gene to boost grain yield
Originally posted 24 July 2022 Chinese scientists have found a gene in crops such as rice and wheat which can improve the efficiency of photosynthesis and nitrogen utilization and significantly boost grain yield. The researchers enhanced the expression of the OsDREB1C gene in two rice varieties through genetic engineering technology….
Environment, Biodiversity & Pollution~
Continue Reading
China’s plan to clean up ‘new pollutants’
“This is a significant step forward for China’s chemical regime.” Liu Jianguo, Associate Professor, Peking University Hopes are high that a Chinese action plan will help control chemicals with ongoing harmful effects. In 2014, China declared a “war on pollution”. Since then, air quality has improved significantly, with nationwide levels of…
Energy. Transport & Climate Change~
Continue Reading
China’s new solar semi-satellite drone
In a big step toward green development, China has built its first solar-powered large unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone successfully carried out its maiden flight on Saturday. It took off from an airport in Yulin, northwest China’s Shaanxi province and landed smoothly after 26 minutes airborne with all systems operating…
Environment, Biodiversity & Pollution~
Continue Reading
China chairs Biodiversity Convention on
China currently holds the rotating Presidency of the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). This is the first time China has overseen a major UN intergovernmental negotiation on the environment. The first meeting in the current round of Conference of Parties (COP15) of the CBD was…