Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod and the Sojourner Truth show at KPFK Pacifica in Los Angeles for weekly Earth Segments and weekly Earth Minutes. This week’s Earth Segment features Marty Cobenais of Indigenous Environmental Network giving IEN’s perspective on Obama’s Keystone pipeline reversal, and Jim Thomas of ETC Group on the threat to communities of synthetic […]

One of our favorite bloggers, Berkeley journalist Richard Brenneman, has a bone to pick with Secretary of Energy (and former Berkeley resident and head of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) Steve Chu. On his blog Eats Shoots ‘n Leaves, Brenneman had this missive to share today.  – Synbiowatch 2012 March 20 – Having its Nobel laureate head of Lawrence […]

The Huffington Post published an article today by Andrew Hessel calling for “Another Human Genome Project” to promote “countless new biotech applications.” “To me,” Hessel writes, “it seems a no-brainer when it comes to big ideas in the genetic space.” In our ongoing coverage leading up to the March 29 conference Unmasking The Bay Area Bio-lab and Synthetic […]

From News from Berkeley Lab, March 14, 2012 Representative Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego County) was welcomed to the Joint BioEnergy Institute on Friday by Lab Deputy Director Horst Simon (far right), JBEI CEO and Associate Laboratory Director Jay Keasling (center left) and Don Medley (far left), Head of Federal Government Relations. Rep. Bilbray serves on the […]

In the Washington Post’s coverage of the new declaration from Friends of the Earth, ETC Group, and ICTA, [previous post] the Executive Vice President of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, calls the declaration “kind of silly.” But, wouldn’t it be even, kind of, sillier, if jet-fuel-producing-algae were to escape into San Francisco Bay? Or if, say, college students […]

by Elizabeth Pennisi on 13 March 2012, 2:57 PM | Cross-posted from Science Insider Synthetic biology needs more oversight, and the government needs to put in place regulations specific for this field. That is the bottom line for 111 environmental, watchdog, and other organizations that released a report today with specific recommendations for managing new biological techniques for building and remaking organisms for […]

By Jeff Conant, for Climate Connections Today a broad coalition of 111 organizations from around the world released The Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology, the first global civil society declaration to outline principles that must be adopted to protect public health and the environment from the risks posed by synthetic biology, and to address the field’s […]

Yes, it sounds severe. But an article published yesterday in The Atlantic, suggests that synthetic biology, along with nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence, may be the greatest risk factors in the possibility of human extinction. Nick Bostrom, the subject of the article, is no Luddite (though we’d like him just fine if he were); he is a professor […]

  by richardbrenneman, from Eats Shoots ‘n Leaves Amyris, the UC-Berkeley-spawned, Bill Gates-backed genetic engineering company that failed at its efforts to produce a cheaper antimalarial drug, then failed to produce cost-effective agrofuels, the news just doesn’t get better. Today the stock hit yet another all-time low, $5.80, down from a high of $385 just over a year […]