After suffering through months of intense battles between Islamist militants and the army, the impoverished northwestern region of Pakistan must now endure the severe ramifications of a fierce wave of flooding in September that has so far claimed close to 2,000 lives, wiped out whole villages, and left innocent families clinging to the tops of their submerged homes hoping to be rescued.
Fears of an aging planet and becoming outnumbered by immigrants have helped to make overpopulation a political third rail in the West.
They had to eat spam and Pop-Tarts. They had to shower in the dark with cold water. The toilets overflowed. When the Carnival Cruise ship finally docked in San Diego last week after three days on the high seas without electricity, CNN interviewed two of the youngest passengers in an attempt to play up the drama of the ordeal. Frankly, the kids didn’t look particularly discomfited by the 72-hour experience. They got bored playing board games. They didn’t like the smelly toilets. The cheese sandwiches really sucked. Still, if given another opportunity, they would go on a cruise again.
Under the guise of developing ‘climate-ready’ crops, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are pressuring governments to allow what could become the broadest and most dangerous patent claims in intellectual property history. A new report by ETC Group[1] reveals a dramatic upsurge in the number of patent claims on ‘climate-ready’ genes, plants and technologies that will supposedly allow biotech crops to tolerate drought and other environmental stresses (i.e. abiotic stresses) associated with climate change.
Following the failure of world leaders to arrive at any binding agreements during the last climate talks at Copenhagen, there appears to be little hope for meaningful action at the November/December climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico. In place of climate change skepticism, debunked by overwhelming scientific evidence, leaders are now relying on market-based mechanisms and technological fixes to further drag their feet and avoid confronting the economic model responsible for the crisis.
The debate over climate change generally transpires within the cloistered confines of expensive hotels, executive boardrooms, and diplomatic halls. As seen in the failure to arrive at binding agreements in Copenhagen, the talks are generally as sterile as the surroundings.
The gap between federal spending on military as opposed to climate security has narrowed since 2008. Compared to China, though, our progress is meager.
Though its military spending is not wholly transparent, it is estimated that China spends one-sixth as much as the United States does on military security, and twice as much on climate security.
The Great Recession may be officially over but the United States is stuck in a prolonged economic crisis, with joblessness hovering around 10 percent. Millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans are fed up. They want jobs. But many lawmakers are reluctant to invest more revenue in job creation because of concerns over the national debt.
Creating jobs is not easy work. The federal government, challenged at every turn by Republican opposition in Congress, has been unable to push through a second stimulus package focused specifically on jobs. The private sector, which the Tea Partiers see as the motor of the economy, has been sitting on an unprecedented amount of wealth — a record $837 billion in cash — that companies are saving for better investment opportunities.
The green dividend is perhaps our last shot at transforming the U.S. economy. We have been given a second chance. If we blow it this time, there will not likely be another.