Island Press Field Notes

During the second presidential debate on October 9, Republican presidential nominee (now President-Elect) Donald Trump claimed that “clean coal” could meet the energy needs of the United States for the next 1,000 years. Now that Mr. Trump will be in the position of making national energy policy, it’s worth examining that assertion.

With cap-and-trade, as with all well-intentioned fixes, “the devil is in the details.”

As a regular consumer of food, you would be reasonable to assume that food laws and agencies work to combat things like food waste, foodborne illness, inhumane livestock conditions, and disappearing fish stocks. However, some regulations do just the opposite.

Earlier this year, Italy adopted measures to reduce the quantity of food that's wasted in the country. The laws encourage the use of doggy bags, which are uncommon on the continent. More importantly, they eliminate longstanding rules that have made it difficult or impossible farmers and grocers to donate food to those in need. For those readers unfamiliar with the term, food waste means "food that completes the food supply chain up to a final product, of good quality and fit for consumption, but still does not get consumed because it is discarded, whether or not after it is left to spoil."