Patricia July 5th, 2008

I came across an interesting article in the New York Times on Tuesday titled a Plea for Aid to Avert Starvation

Warning that rising food and oil prices pose a crisis for the world’s poor, Robert B. Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, is calling on President Bush and other leaders convening in Japan next week in an economic summit meeting to make new aid commitments to avert starvation and instability in dozens of countries.

“What we are witnessing is not a natural disaster — a silent tsunami or a perfect storm,” Mr. Zoellick said in a letter sent Tuesday evening to the major leaders of the West. “It is a man-made catastrophe, and as such must be fixed by people.”Mr. Zoellick’s letter, obtained by The New York Times, came with a lengthy study of the impact of rising prices for food, fuel and commodities on the world’s poor. He sent the letter as Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda prepares to host Mr. Bush and six other world leaders in the Group of 8 economic summit meeting on the northern island of Hokkaido.

In recent weeks, the United States and some other countries have stepped up their pledges to get food to the poor in the 50 hardest-hit countries. But Mr. Zoellick said in his letter that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Food Program had short-term needs of $10 billion.

Bank officials said that the world faced a shortfall in aid, but that pledges of financing had not been channeled into a central place and the size of the shortfall was not clear. “This is a test of the global system to help the most vulnerable, and it cannot afford to fail,” Mr. Zoellick said.Separately, the International Monetary Fund released a report on Tuesday describing dire effects on the people and economies of developing countries if food and fuel prices stay high. The analysis shows “that some countries really are at a tipping point — if food prices rise further and oil prices stay the same, some governments will no longer be able to feed their people and at the same time maintain stability in their economies,” said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the fund.

Seven countries have already responded to high prices by borrowing at deep discounts from a special I.M.F. program for countries with very low income.

Burkina Faso reached a loan agreement in January; Mali and Niger in Africa and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia obtained loans in late May; and Benin, the Central African Republic and Haiti did so last month.

Mr. Zoellick’s letter calculates that, for the world’s 41 poorest countries, the combined impact of high food, fuel and other commodities is a “negative shock” to their economies, reducing gross domestic product by between 3 and 10 percent, causing “broken lives and stunted potential” for millions.The letter says the trust funds and aid funds set up by the world’s richest countries are on the verge of running out of grant money to finance school feeding, mother and child nutrition programs and food-for-work programs.

For me, the stark reality of the “broken lives and stunted potential” for millions around the planet is  shown by a stunning series of photographs from a blog posting called The Truth: An Interesting Comparison that someone forwarded to me recently. This shows the food bought to feed one family in a variety of countries around the world. Take a moment to view the photographs below. Then consider, what price your next meal?

GERMANY:
The Melander family of Bargteheide - 2 adults, 2 teenagers
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07

UNITED STATES:
The Revis family of North Carolina - 2 adults, 2 teenagers
Food expenditure for one week: $341.98

JAPAN:
The Ukita family of Kodaira City - 2 adults, 2 teenagers
Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25

ITALY:
The Manzo family of Sicily - 2 adults, 3 kids
Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

MEXICO:
The Casales family of Cuernavaca - 2 adults, 3 kids
Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09

POLAND:
The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna - 4 adults, 1 teenager
Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27

EGYPT:
The Ahmed family of Cairo - 7 adults, 5 kids
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53

ECUADOR:
The Ayme family of Tingo - 4 adults, 5 teenagers
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55

BHUTAN:
The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village - 7 adults, 6 kids
Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03

CHAD:
The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp - 3 adults, 3 kids
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

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Patricia July 2nd, 2008

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Patricia June 4th, 2008

Trading Tractors for Camels

Farmers in Rajasthan, India are forsaking their gas-guzzling tractors and returning to using their trusty camels for haulage. Due to rising gas prices farmers are rediscovering the “ships of the desert”. The price of a good camel has gone up sharply as a result: two years ago they were almost the same price as goats, now they are three times the price. A good male camel will live for 60-80 years, costing $973, while the cheapest tractor is $4,000. This is good news because camel populations have been falling the past ten years. ::More email: newsletter@treehugger.com web:  http://www.treehugger.com

FEAR NO MORE ZOO Website “Fantastic Camel videos and footage of the rare baktrian camel” Here I am visiting a new baby camel “Green Smoothie” at the Fear No More Zoo in No California To view April’s photos click here:

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Patricia April 20th, 2008

A one-month-old Ferruginous Pygmy-owl, Glaucidium brasilianum

Associated Press photo

Hope from our wise baby owl… A promise of removing carbon from the atmosphere by taking it out of the air and pumping the carbon deep underground. A new fuel is being manufacturered from algae and will provide clean, cheap fuel for many purposes. This fuel can be managed in a part of New Mexico and provide enough fuel for the entire United States. Water filter machines will clean any type of polluted water from any toxins at a reasonable cost. The US has the second largest supply of geothermal energy in the world. Check out the World Water Forum in New York It is currently at The Natural History Museum in Manhatten. I saw this exhibit in in January 2008 and feel much more deeply informed about our water sources and losses. This is an amazing story about the history of water on the planet and shows our strengths as well as areas where we need to be “concerned” NOW! Together we succeed…everybody all at once.

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Patricia April 13th, 2008

Was Darwin Right???
Photograph by Emvl from Flickr

As man advances in civilization and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instinct and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871, Ch. 4, Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and Lower Animals, available at The Descent of Man about 10 paragraphs from the end).

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Patricia April 5th, 2008

Photograph by Cayusa from Flickr

SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR

English billionaire Sir Richard Branson suggests the world is awash in sugar and sales of sugar for fuel would help many third world economies as well as provide cheap, accessible fuel. Note the first automobiles ran on fuel created from sugar. Branson has committed to development of fuel from sugar.

How sweet it is!

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Patricia April 4th, 2008

Photo by zephurbunny on Flickr

Dear Animal Lovers,

I found this 7 minute video uplifting, joyful and ultimately it left me feeling the mystery. The Elephant is just getting warmed up on this painting. Watch the video link below and see her masterpiece.

I am more committed to respecting habitats, wildlife, national parks and all things living and I am humbled as a creature who needs to deepen my sensitivity and understanding that man is not the only species important in this global quest for clean food, air, water and natural spaces.

Click and enjoy! You will be amazed.
Ycihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk

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Patricia March 20th, 2008

Columbia University Event
Sponsored by The Global Cooperation Project.

I attended our first US educational event for the GCP in NY at Columbia’s prestigious SIPA buidling. My colleagues were presenting and the event had been arranged by Columbia student Glenn Sontagg.

The event took place on February 26, 2008. Focusing on a bold new paradigm for achieving enduring global peace at this critical moment for humanity, it was based on the book Not-Two Is Peace by Adi Da Samraj. (Adi Da is a graduate of Columbia University.)

The title of the presentation: Beyond Egoism.

Two guest speakers Rolf Carriere and Dr.Hugh O’Doherty shared their wealth of personal experience in international leadership and peace work. In this context, they presented an inspiring new vision of global leadership in peace restoration founded on radical transcendental insight into the fundamental nature of humanity.

About 80 people attended, including graduate students, faculty, guests from out of town and New York, and visitors from the U.N. The presentations were well received and discussions continued well into the evening.

A Columbia master’s degree graduate and retired former executive at a New York City health institution said that he felt the truth of the concept of the real changes being in the actual change of humanity’s consciousness – and that has to happen.

Joining in the discussion, a guest from Wall Street said the questions raised showed that people really wanted to understand a way to address their sense of overwhelm. At the very least people were in agreement about the fact that survival is not a given, and that the need is for right action such that right results will follow.

Comment from a Columbia graduate student: “This concept is unique; all the others seem to be dealing with the branches or extended aspects of the problems. But Adi Da cuts it all at the root in dealing with egoity.”

A New York publishing professional was encouraged by the sizable number in the room and by the positive energy exhibited by people responding to the message of “cooperation, tolerance and peace”.

Reaction from a San Francisco based student included the observation that the concept is “simple”, not like anything else that is out there, so much of which is all complicated, difficult and divisive. He felt there is a depth about what Not-Two Is Peace offers to the world.

The presentation was repeated for an invited audience in Chicago on February 29th.

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Patricia March 20th, 2008

I was considering biofuels for my next car and then read this sobering article from Avaaz.org. We have to be informed on the intricate balance of change and not create one larger problem for mankind while trying to solve another.

From Avaaz Alert-Each Day:

Most people in the developing world do not have enough food to eat. Food prices around the world are shooting up, sparking food riots from Mexico to Morocco. And the World Food Program warned last week that rapidly rising costs are endangering emergency food supplies for the world’s worst-off.

How are the wealthiest countries responding? They’re burning food.

Specifically, they’re using more and more biofuels–alcohol made from plant products, used in place of petrol to fuel cars. Biofuels are billed as a way to slow down climate change. But in reality, because so much land is being cleared to grow them, most biofuels today are causing more global warming emissions than they prevent, even as they push the price of corn, wheat, and other foods out of reach for millions of people.

EU and US demand for biofuels is pushing up world food prices and increasing climate emissions. We should feed people, not cars–so join the call for global standards to clean up the biofuels industry:

Not all biofuels are bad–but without tough global standards, the biofuels boom will further undermine food security and worsen global warming. Click here to use our simple tool to send a message to your head of state before this weekend’s global summit on climate change in Chiba, Japan, and help build a global call for biofuels regulation:

Sometimes the trade-off is stark: filling the tank of an SUV with ethanol requires enough corn to feed a person for a year. But not all biofuels are bad; making ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane is vastly more efficient than US-grown corn, for example, and green technology for making fuel from waste is improving rapidly.

The problem is that the EU and the US have set targets for increasing the use of biofuels without sorting the good from the bad. As a result, rainforests are being cleared in Indonesia to grow palm oil for European biodiesel refineries, and global grain reserves are running dangerously low. Meanwhile, rich-country politicians can look “green” without asking their citizens to conserve energy, and agribusiness giants are cashing in. And if nothing changes, the situation will only get worse.

What’s needed are strong global standards that encourage better biofuels and shut down the trade in bad ones. Such standards are under development by a number of coalitions8, but they will only become mandatory if there’s a big enough public outcry. It’s time to move: this Friday through Saturday, the twenty countries with the biggest economies, responsible for more than 75% of the world’s carbon emissions9, will meet in Chiba, Japan to begin the G8’s climate change discussions. Before the summit, let’s raise a global cry for change on biofuels. Click here to take action.

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Patricia February 22nd, 2008

photograph by Stu Worrall

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Check out these statistics and sign up to stay informed.

 Need data? Sometimes numbers can tell a story. Here are some of the
 figures from the behind-the-scenes research for the latest book from Earth
 Policy Institute, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by
 Lester R. Brown. Complete data sets and charts are now available on-line at
 www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/data.htm.

Did you know?:

The eight warmest years on record have all occurred in the last decade.

For seven of the last eight years, the world has consumed more grain
 than it produced; grain stocks are now at a historic low.

One fifth of the U.S. grain harvest is now being turned into fuel
 ethanol.

One third of reptile, amphibian, and fish species examined by the World
 Conservation Union are considered to be threatened with extinction.

Grain yields increased half as fast in the 1990s as they did in the
 1960s.

Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa today is lower than it was in the
 late 1980s.

Today’s economically recoverable reserves of lead, tin, and copper
 could be depleted within the next 25 years if their extraction expands at
 current rates.

Nearly half of the annual global military budget of $1.2 trillion is
 spent by one country — the United States.

But not all the news is bad:

South Korea leads the world in paper recycling, recovering an estimated
 77 percent of its paper products.

Conservation agriculture is practiced on more than 100 million hectares
 around the world

Four years after London introduced a fee on motor vehicles entering the
 city center, average car traffic had fallen by 36 percent while
 bicycle trips had increased by 49 percent.

The world produces 110 million bicycles a year, more than twice the
 annual production of 49 million cars.

Fish farming, largely of herbivorous species, is the fastest growing
 source of animal protein worldwide, increasing by an average of 7 percent
 each year since 1995.

World soybean production has quadrupled since 1977. 

Coal use in Germany has dropped 37 percent since 1990; in the United
 Kingdom it has fallen by 43 percent.

Solar cell production is doubling every two years, making it the
 world’s fastest growing energy source.

Electricity used for lighting around the world can be cut by 65 percent
 through efficiency improvements like switching from incandescent bulbs
 to compact fluorescents.

** Find out more in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization,
 on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm, and explore the complete
 datasets at www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/data.htm.

For information contact:
Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403
Washington, DC  20036
Web: www.earthpolicy.org

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