鈥淚t offends me to see fingers pointed against clean energy from biofuels, fingers soiled with oil and coal.鈥�
Brazilian president Luiz In谩cio Lula da Silva speaking at the UN food crisis summit in Rome, Italy, and defending biofuels from the charge that they displace food production (The Guardian, London, 3 June)
鈥淭here are many hungry whale-meat lovers in Japan.鈥�
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Kristjan Loftsson, chief executive of Icelandic whaling company Hvalur, which is exporting whale meat to Japan despite a UN trade ban. Iceland and Norway have resumed whale meat exports for the first time since the early 1990s (Reuters, 2 June)
鈥淚t leads to a certain disdain for American intelligence.鈥�
Nobel laureate David Baltimore of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, on US officials that have questioned the science of evolution. He spoke at the first World Science Festival, where experts agreed that the US is losing stature in science partly for this reason (The Washington Post, 29 May)
鈥淭he global warming fight is not only a battle over big pollution 鈥� it鈥檚 a battle over big bucks.鈥�
Frank O鈥橠onnell of the non-profit Clean Air Watch on a bill before the US Senate this week that aims to cut emissions to 66 per cent of 2005 levels by 2050 by forcing industry to pay to release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and by expanding carbon offsetting (Los Angeles Times, 2 June)
鈥淭he cosmic haystack is about to get enormously bigger.鈥�
Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research, on the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, California, which will start scanning for signs of alien life in a few weeks. Once complete, the array will be the biggest radio telescope dedicated to this purpose (Los Angeles Times, 1 June)