Benjamin A Shobert, - Asia Times (Hong Kong)
Stephan: Let's say it all together, you know the tune: Water is Destiny! China is particularly vulnerable because so much of its territory is dependent on the Himalayan hydrology, or has been severely polluted. As the glaciers of the great mountains melt 1.4 billion people, not just in China, are at risk. That, in turn, will have international consequences.
Benjamin A Shobert is the Managing Director of Rubicon Strategy Group, a consulting firm specialized in strategy analysis for companies looking to enter emerging economies. He is the author of the upcoming book Blame China and can be followed at www.CrossTheRubiconBlog.com.
Across China, the signs of the country’s distressed water supply have grown increasingly severe over the past several years. In February, Vice Minister of Water Resources Hu Simi publicly stated ‘The situation is extremely serious in many areas. With overdevelopment, water use has already surpassed what our natural resources can bear.’
Estimates are that some 400 of China’s 600 cities are already facing water crises of some sort, most related to either pollution of limited supplies, or in several cases millennia-old aquifers having been completely used up as the region has rapidly industrialized. In 2010, the Ministry of Land and Resources estimated that 57% of the country’s underground water should be classified either as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’.
The 2011 drought in southern China made this issue abundantly clear. For a country with a long history of resource-induced famines and social instability, last year’s drought was an ugly reminder of the role one of the planet’s most easily overlooked, yet increasingly precious resources, will play as the country develops. Projects like the South-to-North Water Project, the largest man-made water diversion project ever planned, are designed to address the scarcity of water in China’s barren northern provinces where most of China’s northern provinces […]
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Stephan: Anyone with enough brain power to turn on a lightbulb ought to know that an educated population is essential to a successful 21st century nation, and that job creation is also a required national priority. The austerity programs of the Right have quite different priorities, as the recent battle over rates for student loans has made all too clear.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work. A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.
Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs – waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example – and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.
While there’s strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.
Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor’s degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.
‘I don’t even know what I’m looking for,’ says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 […]
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JEREMY LAURANCE, - The Independent (UK)
Stephan: Think about your own life. Did you think of yourself as an adult when you were in your early 20s? I was working and traveling for the National Geographic Society and then was drafted. I certainly thought of myself as an adult but, looking back on my life then, I see that although I was no longer an adolescent, I can't honestly say I was an adult. This research in the prestigious Lancet supports that.
They should be the healthiest people on the planet, the ‘almost grown ups’ still in the bloom of youth and full of dreams for the future. But today’s adolescents are instead a troubled generation, marooned in a no man’s land between childhood and adulthood, prey to forces beyond their control.
Far from being the healthiest time of life, adolescence is instead a period of maximum risk and maximum vulnerability according to scientists, as still-growing bodies and undeveloped minds hurl themselves into experimentation with drink, drugs and sex. They are targeted by the mass marketing of unhealthy products and lifestyles – tobacco, alcohol, junk food – which doctors compare to an infectious disease epidemic. And evidence shows British teenagers are among those exposed to the greatest threats.
In a series of papers on adolescent health published in The Lancet today, scientists describe how new research has changed our understanding of adolescence which was thought to start with the physical changes to the body around puberty and to be completed when growth stopped in the late teens. Now researchers believe the brain goes on maturing and is not fully developed until at least the age of 24.
While puberty catapults adolescents into a period of […]
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Thursday, April 26th, 2012
CORA CURRIER, - ProPublica
Stephan: There is a level of greedy vileness that has entered American politics. One that has been made possible by the disconnection of profit making from national wellness. Virtual corporate states don't need to concern themselves with any particular nation's wellness because they have no national allegiance, only national convenience. And with Citizen's United legalizing the bribery of politicians a perfect storm of conditions has arisen that has put everyone at risk. Fracking is perhaps the most perfect manifestation of this toxic reality.
One of the key controversies about fracking is the chemical makeup of the fluid that is pumped deep into the ground to break apart rock and release natural gas. Some companies have been reluctant to disclose what’s in their fracking fluid. Scientists and environmental advocates argue that, without knowing its precise composition, they can’t thoroughly investigate complaints of contamination.
Disclosure requirements vary considerably from state to state, as ProPublica recently charted. In many cases, the rules have been limited by a ‘trade secrets’ provision under which companies can claim that a proprietary chemical doesn’t have to be disclosed to regulators or the public.
One apparent proponent of the trade secrets caveat? The American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, a nonprofit group that brings together politicians and corporations to draft and promote conservative, business-friendly legislation. ALEC has been in the spotlight recently because of its support of controversial laws like Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ provision.
This weekend, as part of a story on ALEC’s political activity, The New York Times noted that the group recently adopted ‘model legislation’ on fracking chemical disclosure, based on a bill passed in Texas last year. According to The Times, the model bill was ‘sponsored within ALEC’ […]
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Thursday, April 26th, 2012
JANN S. WENNER, Publisher - Rolling Stone
Stephan:
We arrived at the White House on Easter Monday, the South Lawn overrun by children and their parents enjoying the annual Easter Egg Roll. This was the fourth time in the past four years that we had sat down for an extensive interview with Barack Obama, but the tenor and timing were markedly different than the previous conversations. This time he was focused on the campaign, his thinking dominated by the upcoming battle for a second term.
The president was more somber than in our past interviews – and less inclined to depart from the handful of themes he had been concentrating on in recent weeks. He avoided discussing Mitt Romney, even when asked a direct question, and focused primarily on the very real constraints he operates under as president, from the intransigence of Congress to the dilemma of America’s anti-drug laws. He also seemed intent on summing up the arguments he’ll soon be taking out on the campaign trail, making clear that he plans to run on his remarkable record of accomplishments: extending health insurance to 32 million Americans, staving off a major economic collapse, rescuing the auto industry, reforming student loans, ending discrimination against gay soldiers, pulling U.S. troops […]
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