Numerous environmental theorists characterize human population growth as an unsustainable pandemic accountable for a variety of ecological problems. However, regional consumption patterns amplify the environmental impact of a population, making the two factors (consumption and population) difficult to evaluate separately. Many environmentalists advocate for wider distribution of family planning services, contraception, and sexual education to prevent population growth. Meanwhile, some rights advocates insist that population growth is the symptom of larger cultural injustices and that contraceptives are inappropriate tools to address these underlying inequities.

Abstract: Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are highly efficient, durable, and long lasting lighting devices. Since a fifth of electrical generation goes toward lighting, LEDs hold the potential to greatly reduce energy use. However, energy efficiency rebound effects could partly or entirely offset these savings.

Executive Summary California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) adopted by the Air Resources Board on April 23, 2009 requires a 10% reduction in the average greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of the State's transportation fuels by 2020. This regulation is expected to reduce 20–25 million metric tons GHG emissions per year by 2020. Under the performance-based and fuel-neutral standard, biofuels are expected to play a significant role at least in the short to medium term.

The biofuel project is an agro-industrial development and politically contested policy process where governments increasingly become global actors. European Union (EU) biofuels policy rests upon arguments about societal benefits of three main kinds – namely, environmental protection (especially greenhouse gas savings), energy security and rural development, especially in the global South. Each argument involves optimistic assumptions about what the putative benefits mean and how they can be fulfilled. After examining those assumptions, we compare them with experiences in three countries – Germany, Brazil and Mozambique – which have various links to each other and to the EU through biofuels. In those case studies, there are fundamental contradictions between EU policy assumptions and practices in the real world, involving frictional encounters among biofuel promoters as well as with people adversely affected. Such contradictions may intensify with the future rise of biofuels and so warrant systematic attention.