Philobiblon

The focus internationally tends to be on wheat prices, but to the world’s poor rice is more important, and the price has doubled in three months – that’s when you can lay hands on it at all.

Vietnam’s government announced here on Friday that it would cut rice exports by nearly a quarter this year. The government hoped that keeping more rice inside the country would hold down prices.
The same day, India effectively banned the export of all but the most expensive grades of rice. Egypt announced on Thursday that it would impose a six-month ban on rice exports, starting April 1, and on Wednesday, Cambodia banned all rice exports except by government agencies.

Another example of the long-term, and often ill-understood, impact of human actions: metal-eating bacteria are poisoning the British Peak District. They are mopping up pollution from sources that stopped spewing it out 50 years ago.

But on the mildly good news front: four states, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica are in a race to become the first carbon-neutral state. Of course one thing that unites them is that they are, on a world scale, very small states. Still, it is a start.