I admit I’m a fan of Jeffrey Sachs. He runs around with Bono (whose cultivated persona always makes me laugh), does his best as an economist to solve the world’s problems, and writes in a compelling manner. But could it be that he’s a touch too hopeful? That however much poverty has contracted in the past decades, this contraction, like the U.S. (and global) economy is a soon-to-be-burst bubble blown up large by an overheated and quick-burning oil economy? Am I delusional in thinking the coming decade is going to find a large surge in the number of starving humans? Do I dare call Sach’s hopefulness naive? I don’t want to. I want to believe. I want to think Nike-like slogans, espoused by our political poppets, can save us all. Even though I know the kids in this photo can’t quite afford shoes. No, they can’t.
From the Asia Times Online:

Soaring global rice prices are hitting the stomachs of Asia’s poorest citizens. The people of East Timor, where nearly 40% live on less than 0.55 US cents a day, have just been told they may not receive their annual quota of food aid.

“We have been forced to provide less food to East Timor; provide less rice than we intended to,” Paul Risely, Asia spokesperson for the United Nations food agency, told Inter Press Service (IPS). “We have requested the people of East Timor to look for local substitutes.”

“Any chance to reduce high malnutrition rate is severely curtailed,” added Risley of a country that suffers from chronic malnutrition, where some 46% of the children are stunted and 42% of children below five years are underweight. Currently, the WFP has pledged to feed one in five people in East Timor which has a population of 1.1 million people…

…last year Vietnam placed limits on rice exports in order to meet domestic demand, triggering a spike in the price of its grain in the world market. The ban stemmed from national food security concerns in the communist-ruled country. Hanoi wanted to avoid a local food shortage due to flooding in the rice-growing central regions.

Yet, such a weather-related feature, which some are attributing to climate change, was only one reason to push global rice prices to new heights. Another trigger includes the steady rise in oil prices, making fertilizer more expensive, pushing the cost of harvesting up, and increasing the cost of transporting the grain.

Read the entire article here.

Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 2.0 Book Byte
For Immediate Release
July 24, 2007

WATER TABLES FALLING AND RIVERS RUNNING DRY

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch03_ss2.htm

Lester R. Brown

As the world’s demand for water has tripled over the last half-century and as the demand for hydroelectric power has grown even faster, dams and diversions of river water have drained many rivers dry. As water tables fall, the springs that feed rivers go dry, reducing river flows.

Scores of countries are overpumping aquifers as they struggle to satisfy their growing water needs, including each of the big three grain producers–China, India, and the United States. More than half the world’s people live in countries where water tables are falling.

There are two types of aquifers: replenishable and nonreplenishable (or fossil) aquifers. Most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable. When these are depleted, the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge.

For fossil aquifers, such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer, depletion brings pumping to an end. Farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dryland farming if rainfall permits. In more arid regions, however, such as in the southwestern United States or the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing reports that Chinese wheat farmers in some areas are now pumping from a depth of 300 meters, or nearly 1,000 feet. Pumping water from this far down raises pumping costs so high that farmers are often forced to abandon irrigation and return to less productive dryland farming. A World Bank study indicates that China is overpumping Read the rest of this entry »

The corn used to produce the ethanol needed to fill a 12-gallon Prius tank will feed a person for Sudan for six months.

Just something to think about.

[tags]ethanol, prius, sudan[/tags]

A big thanks to the Small Planet Institute for their press release informing me of this week’s momentous meeting of the World Future Council. I simply have to endorse this meeting of fifty great minds, whose goals are to, well, save us before it’s too late. Of course, Small Planet’s founder, Francis Moore Lappe, is a Council member.

From the press release:

The Aims of the World Future Council

The World Future Council is a strong new voice in the global arena,
which draws on our shared human values to champion the rights of future
generations, and working to ensure that humanity acts now to safeguard a
sustainable future.

Despite having the means to tackle many of the problems we face, the
existing global system of governance has so far seemed incapable of
addressing them, often failing to adopt available solutions.

Supported by an international staff, the WFC’s 50 Councillors will
propose ethical guidelines for national and international policies.
Detailing how they will go about implementing the proposals, Jakob von
Uexkull said the Council will help “introduce these into national
parliaments via the e-Parliament, a global online network of
democratically elected parliamentarians. Our first in a series of major
ongoing campaigns will be on tackling global climate change.”

There is much, much more information on this exciting organization at the World Future Council website. You’re already here, reading this, so you may as well take it one step farther and check out the website. Do it, okay? You just jab at the mouse button while pointing the cursor over the words “World Future Council website” in the preceding sentence. This should whisk you away to an entirely different, far more enlightening site. This world wide web is an amazing ball o’ wax.

Song o’ the Day is BACK! Indeed. But with a twist. This day, I selected the song at absolute random (is there such a thing, darlings?). Came up with “The Golden Egg” by Quasi. Sit back and relax. [audio:quasi.mp3]

The latest from my visionary hero, LESTER BROWN. This one on urban design and automobiles. Go ahead, loyal readers, check it out. We must do more than simply rethink the TYPE of cars (oh, and motorcycles of course) we drive.

DESIGNING CITIES FOR PEOPLE

by Lester R. Brown

As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center a few years ago, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement a half-century ago to a city of some 3 million today, evolved during the automobile era. It occurred to me that the ratio of parks to parking lots may be the best single indicator of the livability of a city—whether a city is designed for people or for cars.

The world’s cities are in trouble. In Mexico City, Tehran, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the quality of daily life is deteriorating. Breathing the air in some cities is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. In the United States, the number of hours commuters spend sitting in traffic going nowhere climbs higher each year.

In response to these conditions, we are seeing the emergence of a new urbanism. One of the most remarkable modern urban transformations has occurred in Bogotá, Colombia, where Enrique Peñalosa served as Mayor for three years, beginning in 1998. When he took office he did not ask how life could be improved for the 30 percent who owned cars; he wanted to know what could be done for the 70 percent—the majority—who did not own cars. Read the rest of this entry »

Hot off the presses! A taste of the world’s most important book (no, not the ‘Good Book’), ‘Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress & a Civilization in Trouble’.

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PLAN B BUDGET FOR SAVING CIVILIZATION

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch13_ss4.htm

Lester R. Brown

Mobilizing to save civilization means restructuring the economy, restoring the economy’s natural support systems, eradicating poverty, and stabilizing population. We have the technologies, economic instruments, and financial resources to do this. The United States has the resources to lead this effort. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute sums it up well: “The tragic irony of this moment is that the rich countries are so rich and the poor so poor that a few added tenths of one percent of GNP from the rich ones ramped up over the coming decades could do what was never before possible in human history: ensure that the basic needs of health and education are met for all impoverished children in this world. How many more tragedies will we suffer in this country before we wake up to our capacity to help make the world a safer and more prosperous place not only through military might, but through the gift of life itself?”

It is not possible to put a precise price tag on the changes needed to move our twenty-first century civilization off the overshoot-and-collapse path and onto a path that will sustain economic progress. What we can do, however, is provide some rough estimates of the scale of effort needed.

To fund the needed restructuring of the energy economy, we rely on shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. For meeting our social goals, the additional external funding needed to achieve universal primary education in the more than 80 developing countries that require help is conservatively estimated by the World Bank at $12 billion per year. Funding for an adult literacy program based largely on volunteers will take an estimated additional $4 billion annually. Providing for the most basic health care in developing countries is estimated at $33 billion by the World Health Organization. The additional funding needed to provide reproductive health care and family planning services to all women in developing countries is less than $7 billion a year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at the great and grand Treehugger site, Lester Brown is posting a series of articles entitled “Plan B Budget” in which he lays out how to create and manage a budget that will eradicate poverty and stabilize global populations. As you know, doing so will take a huge strain off the environment. Brown is, as many of you know, my eco-hero. When he talks, I listen. I’m hoping you will, too.

Follow this link to the Treehugger article.

This just in from the Earth Policy Institute:

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Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 2.0 Book Byte
For Immediate Release
April 3, 2007

PLAN B BUDGET FOR ERADICATING POVERTY AND STABILIZING POPULATION

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch07_intro.htm

Lester R. Brown

The twenty-first century began on an inspiring note when the countries that belong to the United Nations adopted the goal of cutting the number of people living in poverty in half by 2015. And as of 2005, the world is ahead of schedule for reaching this goal. There are two big reasons for this: China and India. China’s economic growth of 9 percent a year over the last quarter-century and India’s acceleration to close to 6 percent a year over the last decade are together lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.

In China, the number of people living in poverty dropped from 648 million in 1981 to 218 million in 2001, the greatest reduction in poverty in history. India is also making impressive progress on the economic front. Under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who took office in 2004, poverty is being attacked directly by upgrading infrastructure at the village level. Targeted investments are aimed at the poorest of the poor. If the international community actively reinforces this effort in reform-minded India, hundreds of millions more could be lifted out of poverty.
Read the rest of this entry »

Finished two great books on my recent trip to Los Angeles, both of which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone interested in the economics of a sustainable future. Yeah, I know - economics is not a sexy topic and considering the fact that I am a very sexy man, it’s a bit of a conundrum for me to even mention un-sexiness, for fear of contamination. Nevertheless, I present to you:

1. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Times - Jeffrey Sachs One hot little read. Even has a forward by Bono that essentially elevates Sachs to and far beyond that of rock star. That is, Bono implores us to consider Sachs one of the real heroes, to not waste our time idolizing icons who are devoid of real worth. In the book, Sachs details how the World Bank and various governments and organizations can immediately reduce global poverty. Doing so would, of course, mightily lessen our incredible depletion of the Earth’s natural resources. If you don’t follow this logic, don’t worry - it’s all in the book.

2. Banker to the Poor - Muhummad Yunus

Recent Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Muhummad Yunus’ story about the founding of his incredible Grameen Bank details the perseverance of a man who quickly learned that traditional poverty fighting tactics are thoroughly flawed. His account is rather inspiring in that it demonstrates the rapidity with which massive change can take place, once plotted and executed. Rather than try to give a review when others have done a much better job of this (click the book’s link), I’ll simply urge you to pick up a copy and read it.

When many think of Ethiopia, one of the poorest african nations, they likely don’t think of a nation that devotes much energy to the creation of a well-thought sustainability plan. Well, that depends on your definition of the nebulous term “sustainable”.

Take a peek at the IMF’s report: Ethiopia - Sustainability and Poverty Reduction Program, PDF file linked below. It’s not your typical view of sustainability, but it reminds us how much basic work many nations have to do (and how much we need to help them via loan cancellations and other measures) before they can even consider the luxury of devoting resources to tackling climate change.

IMF ETHIOPIA REPORT