Friday, September 4th, 2015
Zaid Jilani, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: This report describes a level of poverty that even though I track this trend I had not fully appreciated: "The number of Americans living on $2 a day or less has more than doubled since 1996, placing 1.5 million households and 3 million children in this desperate economic situation.”
Could you live on $2.00 a day?
The World Bank and other global institutions use a very specific measure to record global poverty rates. They gather data designed to record the number of people in a country who live on less than $2 a day, and then use the information to make a “poverty headcount ratio”— the percentage of people in a country who live under this standard. In most recent data, Sierra Leone, for example, had a staggering 82.5% of its citizens living in poverty by this count.
What is less known is that millions of Americans are living in situations of similar poverty. A new book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, explores the status of Americans who face this extreme level of poverty
“Most of us would say we would have trouble understanding how families in a country as rich as ours could live on so little,” Kathryn J. Edin, who co-wrote the book with H. Luke Shaefer, said in a conference call recorded by CBS News. “These families, contrary to what many would expect, are workers, and their […]
No Comments
Friday, September 4th, 2015
Matthew Kasper, truthout - truthout
Stephan: Tales of the oligarchs.
The Kochs use their political influence and funding for efforts to repeal laws designed to support the deployment of more renewable electricity.
Credit: Photo: Air pollution via Shutterstock
Last week, President Obama correctly singled out the Koch brothers – Charles and David – and the Koch-funded network for standing in the way of America’s clean energy future. Charles Koch responded saying he was “flabbergasted” after hearing Obama’s remark. He continued, “We are not trying to prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding.” This statement is, at best, highly misleading.
Charles Koch states that he believes government should be smaller and it should not subsidize businesses, including any form of energy business. But while he acknowledges that the fossil fuel businesses he owns benefit tremendously from government subsidies, he doesn’t refuse those benefits or do anything to stop those policy choices. Meanwhile, the Kochs use their political influence and funding for […]
1 Comment
Friday, September 4th, 2015
Lloyd Alter, - mother nature network
Stephan: The reality that no high technology nation has a sustainable birthrate -- 2.1 babies born per death -- is an issue neither people on the left nor right want to address. This is a very big deal, particularly coming as it does in the emerging age of migrations. In a country like Germany, for instance, ethnic Germans have a birth rate of only 8.2 per thousand, while their Muslim immigrants -- 800,000 are expected this year -- have a birthrate between 3.8 and 4.5 depending on where they are coming from.
It doesn't take rocket science to realize that over time Germany becomes more and more Muslim. As does France, to cite another example. There are long term geopolitical and cultural issues here that lie at the heart of the increasing Rightist political power in Europe.
Credit: www.scienceandsensibility.org
Population is the third rail issue for environmentalists. Even the founder of Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson, was concerned that it was being ignored. A guest writer on MNN wrote:
Nelson had become deeply disappointed with the wholesale retreat of the environmental establishment from advocating limits to population growth. Rather, a new generation of more pragmatic (expedient?) campaigners preferred to prattle on about safer and sexier topics.
Perhaps sexier is the wrong adjective, but population is definitely an issue we tend to avoid because it’s so intertwined with the hot-button issues of abortion, birth control and immigration.
The problem is that in many countries, the fertility rate is declining below the replacement rate. Japan has been going through this for years; the Russian population is crashing; and now Europe, according to the Guardian, needs many more babies to avert a population disaster. “The net effect is a ‘perfect demographic storm’ that will imperil economic growth across the continent.”
Spain is in crisis, with its population shrinking rapidly, as is Portugal. The problem isn’t just that […]
1 Comment
Friday, September 4th, 2015
Stephan: Read this, particularly if you are a middle aged man. It could make a lot of difference as to how long you live.
How old is your heart? Probably older than you think, according to a new CDC study that calculates the average “heart age” of American adults.
Credit: Kari Rene Hall / Los Angeles Times
You may feel young at heart, but with apologies to Frank Sinatra, that’s probably a fairy tale. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the average American man has a heart that’s 7.8 years “older” than his chronological age; for women, the comparable “heart age” is 5.4 years higher than her calendar age.
If the idea of a heart age sounds like a gimmick, that’s because it is. The concept was developed by public health experts who work on the venerable Framingham Heart Study as a way to help regular folks understand their risk of having a heart attack, stroke, chest […]
No Comments
Thursday, September 3rd, 2015
John Vibes, - Nation of Change
Stephan: It has been my view for some time that the corporations involved with GMO industrial chemical agriculture knew about the issue of mutating bugs. But they misjudged the time frame and thought they could extract maximum profit before it became an issue, and by then they would have more powerful toxins to keep the game going. The bugs, however, mutated faster than they had anticipated.
This is what happens when one thinks of the Earth as a dead collection of raw materials that can be manipulated for profit, instead of seeing the biosphere as a living matrix of life.
One of the promises of GMO crops was that they would be more resistant to bugs and pests, however, it seems that the chemicals used on these crops, and the modifications that have been made to their basic structure, have actually created an explosion in pesticide resistant bugs. It was reported this week that genetically modified crops, corn specifically, has created a pesticide resistant rootworm, that is now stronger and more numerous than ever before. To make matters even worse, due to the growing over-infestation, farmers have been forced to use even more of the harmful pesticides that have been known to contribute to cancer, and are suspected of devastating the global honeybee population.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has taken a recent interest in the rootworm problem, and they are expected to set limits on the amount of genetically modified corn that can be grown in the US.
Bill Jordan, the EPA’s deputy head of pesticide programs said that the problem is getting worse, and suggested that limits are needed to keep the […]
1 Comment
The World Bank and other global institutions use a very specific measure to record global poverty rates. They gather data designed to record the number of people in a country who live on less than $2 a day, and then use the information to make a “poverty headcount ratio”— the percentage of people in a country who live under this standard. In most recent data, Sierra Leone, for example, had a staggering 82.5% of its citizens living in poverty by this count.
