Fossil Fuel Subsidies & Health

South Korea’s ruling party is under fire in the wake of a massive subsidy scandal that reaches the upper echelons of government. The scandal erupted on 6 October when local newspapers reported that the Vice Minister of Health, Welfare and Family affairs, Lee Bong-Hwa, illegally applied for rice subsidies.

Norman Myers, an environmental scientist, is the author of the book Perverse Subsidies: Tax $s Undercutting our Economies and Environments Alike. He is currently completing a new book called How Institutions Block Our Road to Sustainability. He also serves as a member of the High-Level Advisory Group of the Global Subsidies Initiative. The GSI reached Mr. Myers at his home in Oxford, England.

On World Malaria Day (25 April), the United Nations Secretary General posited a vision of halting malaria deaths by ensuring that effective control measures be available to everyone by the end of 2010. The interventions are, broadly, prevention with long-lasting insecticidal bed nets; spraying interior walls of dwellings with insecticides; and treatment with effective drugs.

When the world's richest Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, recently visited Kolkata, the city of his youth, he was thrilled to see change. Mittal told the media that the biggest difference he saw was the many flyovers dotting the city skyline and "disciplined traffic". This is great progress, he told journalists, who promptly reported that the tycoon had given the city's road and traffic management a big thumbs up.

January saw the debate over biofuel policies in the European Union intensify, including over how (and if) biofuels should be supported by governments.