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________________________________________________________ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. Do you do what youre told to do... just like that? Whats fair? Group discussion: She doesnt work They dance alone Two stories on justice A protest song way ahead of its time Knots (nudos) One world is enough (not Three) Wind energy: a clean and cheap alternative for the future Do you want war? New York: garbage capital of the world Deflating the bubble economy before it bursts Detoxifying terrorism Global temperature near record for 2002 Coal: US promotes while Canada and Europe move beyond Eco-economy offers alternative to Middle East oil Troubling new flows of environmental refugees World food prices rising World food security deteriorating Sterilization is worlds most popular contraceptive method Glaciers and sea ice endangered by rising temperatures Ecological deficits taking economic toll Human actions worsen natural disasters Rising sea level forcing evacuation of island country Illegal logging threatens ecological and economic stability Learning from China Ethanols potential Eco-economy offers alternative to Middle East oil p. 2 p. 4 p. 6 p. 8 p. 10 p. 12 p. 14 p. 16 p. 17 p. 18 p. 20 p. 23 p. 27 p. 29 p. 32 p. 34 p. 38 p. 41 p. 44 p. 47 p. 50 p. 53 p. 57 p. 60 p. 63 p. 66 p. 69 p. 72
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1. Do you do what youre told to do... just like that ???

We do what were told (Milgrams 37) we do what were told we do what were told we do what were told told to do we do what were told we do what were told we do what were told told to do one doubt one voice one war one truth one dream 1980, Peter Gabriel Ltd, Peter Gabriel, SO. The torturers The people who are doing these awful things cant be like you and me; they must get their kicks out of hurting other people. This is not what Stanley Milgram, a Northamerican scientist, thinks, and he created an experiment which shows that things are not just as you would expect. The aim of the experiment, in which one person was ordered to hurt another person more and more, was to find out at what point that person would refuse to obey the experimenter and say: No, I wont do this any more, its wrong. Volunteers were told that the aim of the experiment was to test whether punishment improves the ability to learn. They were the teachers. The learner was strapped in a chair behind a screen and had electrodes placed on his wrist. The volunteer teachers were not told that the learner in fact was an actor and that his screams were tape recordings. The teachers were to punish him with an electric shock every time he made a mistake in his lesson. The shock generator was an impressive looking instrument with a range of switches from 15 volts to 450 volts and a set of labels going from slight shock to moderate shock, strong shock, very strong shock, intensive shock and finally XXX danger severe shock.
How far do you think the volunteers would go before turning on the experimenter and refusing to go any further ? If you believe they would refuse to go on to the end, you are in good company; this is what they also believed. It is what you would expect. In fact, the learner was given shocks up to 450 volts by 65 per cent of the volunteers. Obedience dropped to 40 per cent when the teacher was placed in the same room as the learner. In another version of the experiment, the learner had to place his hand on a metal plate to receive the shock. When he refused, the volunteer teacher was asked to force his hand down. Thirty per cent did this. What do we learn from this experiment ? First, many people continuously objected to the experimenter, but went on obeying him. They said one thing, but did another. This is not because they were sadists, taking pleasure in pain, for in another version of the experiment in which the experimenter left the lab, the volunteer teacher usually gave lower levels of shock. People gave the shocks because they had made a commitment to the experimenter to do so, and were unwilling to show disobedience. Second, the volunteer teachers were led to be obedient little by little. They were told to increase the shock level only by 15 volts a time and so did not feel there was a strong reason for disobeying once they had begun. Milgrams experiment shows that it does not take an evil person to serve an evil system. You dont have to be a sadist to be a torturer, you just have to be odedient. The question is, who gives the orders ?
Fuente Limpens, Frans, Mensenrechten Nu. Lessenpakket voor leerlingen uit de hoogste jaren van het secundair onderwijs. (Derechos Humanos, ya! Paquete didctico para alumn@s de los ltimos grados de la educacin secundaria) Leuven, Infodok, 1988, s.p. (anexo: textos de canciones)
2. Whats fair?
Handicap and equality All men are born equal at the moment they arrive ... Check the limbs and senses we require to survive. But some come deaf and dumb and blinded, some have damage to their brains: parents constantly reminded that theyll never play the normal childrens games. They may no be normal But theyre people just the same. If Christ had been born defective to fulfil the Fathers plan would he be as easily accepted as God made man or does the human value alter in the crippled human frame? Though the tongue and fingers falter must we shut them out and shut them up and shut the case and whisper such a shame Thats how we shut them away. Most of us are lucky, free from accidents of birth but their victims share our rights to the inheritance of earth. For all their grunts, their stumps, their humours, their eternal wheelchairs were the freaks, were the inhumans if we close our eyes and turn aside, pretend that if we do theyll not be there Theyve got to face it, so weve got to face it. Still theyve got to live with it in a world we supposedly share. Peter Hammil, PH7, Charisma Records Ltd.,1979 Its not fair Why not? Fairness is something we each think we can judge well. We recognise at once what is fair and can usually give a quick answer to the question why not. Fair means honest and just, giving the same chances and treatment to everyone, according to the rules if there are any. A simple example is running a race: a race is only fair if the rules are the same for everyone. If we all start at the same time and run the same distance, that is fair.
But what seems fair in simple terms may not really be fair if you look at it more closely. You may think that a race is only fair if those who are younger or smaller or lame are given a start or a helping hand or do not have to run so far. Everyone would then have the same chance of arriving at the finishing line at the same time. Life would be fair if we all had an equal chance: if everyone had enough to eat, an clean water to drink, if everyone could go to a good school, if everyone were treated equally, regardless of their colour, their sex or their religion, if everyone could speak out and share their ideas, if everyone could vote freely. These are some examples of things that are fair. They are human rights and are due to every single one of us just because we are alive and human. Human rights can never be bought or sold or given away like a packet of biscuits. They should belong automatically to everyone. But life isnt fair, and many people are denied these rights: in our country children die of malnutrition, people are put in prison for trying to defend their woods from destruction and indigenous people generally are the poorest of the poor. There are many more examples of such unfairness in our country and other countries. Perhaps you can think of some yourself. 1 Vocabulary limbs crippled shut out shut up shut shut away inheritance grunt stump freak lame regardless of
Fuente Limpens, Frans, Generacin M. Manual de educacin en derechos humanos para docentes de secundaria. Quertaro, Educacin y Capacitacin en Derechos Humanos, 2003, 183 pp. (http://www.hrea.org) 1 Texto ligeramente adaptado de Amnesty International British Section, Education Project. Unit 3. Human Rights and Responsibilities, London, 1983, p. 1 5
: legs, arms or wings : disabled : exclude from view : close securely or permanently, imprison, reduce to silence : bar access to, close, get rid of : enclose, confine in a secure or quiet place : what you receive by legal descent or succession : low guttural sound characteristic of pigs : remnant of cut or fallen tree, remnant of broken branch or tooth or amputated limb (leg or arm). : drug addict, unconventional person, abnormally developed individual. : disabled by injury or defect in a limb (especially leg or foot) limping or unable to walk normally. : without consideration of.
3. Group discussion: She doesnt work

Shakin the tree SOUMA YERGON, SOU NOU YERGON, WE ARE SHAKIN THE TREE (3x) Waiting your time, dreaming of a better life Waiting your time, so much more than just a wife You dont have to do what your mother has done She has done This is your life, this new life has begun Its your day, Womans Day Its your day, Womans Day Turning the tide you are now on the incoming wave Turning the tide you know you are nobodys slave Find the brothers and sisters Who can hear all the truth in what you say They can support you when you are on your way Its your day, Womans Day Its your day, Womans Day SOUMA YERGON, SOU NOU YERGON, WE ARE SHAKIN THE TREE (3x) Changing your ways, changing those surrounding you Changing your ways, more than any man can do Open your heart, show him the anger and pain so you heal Maybe hes looking for his womanly side, let him feel You have to be so strong And you do nothing wrong Nothing wrong at all We have to shake it down Were gonna break it down All around the town SOUMA YERGON, SOU NOU YERGON, WE ARE SHAKIN THE TREE (7x)
Youssou NDour, The Lion, Virgin Records Ltd. 1989. and Peter Gabriel, Secret World Live, Geffen Records, Peter Gabriel Ltd,1994,
Listen to the Peter Gabriel song Shaking the tree and/or analyse the lyrics. Whats this song about? This is an African song written by an English white man. Dont you think thats funny? Do you think everybody agrees with Peter Gabriel (songwriter) and Youssou NDour (singer)? Do you know persons with other opinions? Do you know other songs that focus on the situation of women? Do they have the same or similar message?
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Para la clase de ingls She doesnt work Have you many children? the Doctor asked. Sixteen born, but only nine live, he answered. Does your wife work? No, she stays at home. I see. How does she spend her day? Well, she gets up at four in the morning, fetches water and wood, makes the fire and cooks breakfast. The she goes to the river and washes clothes. After that she goes to town to get corn ground and buy what we need in the market. Then she cooks the midday meal. You come home at midday? No, no. She brings the meal to me in the fields, about three kilometres from home. And after that? Well she takes care of hens and pigs. And of course she looks after the children all day. Then she prepares supper so that it is ready when I come home. Does she go to bed after supper? No, I do. She has things to do around the house until nine oclock. But you say your wife doesnt work? No, I told you. She stays at home. 2 Read the real life interview She doesnt work. Compare with the previous text. Do you note any difference? Do you know families like the one of the interview? Do you know men who share the opinion of the husband? Do you know women in a situation like that of the wife? Which of both documents reflects most your personal opinion? Do you agree in everything? Do you think the situations of both texts are real? Which situation do you think is most common? Vocabulary tide wave surrounding fetches ground
Fuente Limpens, Frans, Generacin M. Manual de educacin en derechos humanos para docentes de secundaria. Quertaro, Educacin y Capacitacin en Derechos Humanos, 2003, 183 pp. (http://www.hrea.org) 2 Amnesty International, First Steps. A manual for starting human rights education. London, 1996, p. 136. 7
: periodical rise (flood) and fall (ebb) of the sea. : long body of water curling into arched form and breaking on shore : coming or being all round, enclose, encircle : goes for and brings back : (grind) reduce to small particles or powder by crushing between millstones
4. They dance alone

Sting reminds a meeting with former political prisoners, victims of torture and imprisonment without trial in 1986 during a human rights concert tour called Conspiracy of Hope. These meetings had a strong effect on all of us. Its one thing to read about torture but to speak to a victim brings you a step closer to the reality that is so frighteningly pervasive. We were all deeply affected. Thousands of people have disappeared in Chile, victims of murder squads, security forces, the police, the army. Imprisonment without trial and torture are commonplace. The gueca is a traditional Chilean courting dance. The gueca solo or the dance alone is performed publicly by he wives, daughters and mothers of the disappeared. Often they dance with photographs of their loved ones pinned to their clothes. It is a symbolic gesture of protest and grief in a country where democracy doesnt need to be defended so much as exercised. They dance alone (GUECA SOLO) Why are these women here dancing on their own? Why is there this sadness in their eyes? Why are the soldiers here Their faces fixed like stone? I cant see what it is that they despise Theyre dancing with the missing Theyre dancing with the dead They dance with the invisible ones Their anguish is unsaid Theyre dancing with their fathers Theyre dancing with their sons Theyre dancing with their husbands They dance alone They dance alone Its the only form of protest theyre allowed Ive seen heir silent faces scream so loud If they were to speak these words Theyd go missing too Another woman on the torture table What else can they do Theyre dancing with the missing Theyre dancing with the dead They dance with the invisible ones Their anguish is unsaid Theyre dancing with their fathers
Para la clase de ingls Theyre dancing with their sons Theyre dancing with their husbands They dance alone They dance alone One day well dance on their graves One day well sing our freedom One day well laugh in our joy And well dance One day well dance on their graves One day well sing our freedom One day well laugh in our joy And well dance Ellas danzan con los desaparecidos Ellas danzan con los muertos Ellas danzan con amores invisibles Ellas danzan con silenciosa angustia Danzan con sus padres Danzan con sus hijos Danzan con sus esposos Ellas danzan solas Danzan solas Hey Mr. Pinochet Youve sown a bitter crop Its foreign money that supports you One day the moneys going to stop No wages for your torturers No budget for your guns Can you think of your own mother Dancin with her invisible son Theyre dancing with the missing Theyre dancing with the dead They dance with the invisible ones Their anguish is unsaid Theyre dancing with their fathers Theyre dancing with their sons Theyre dancing with their husbands They dance alone They dance alone
Sting, Nothing like the sun, A&M Records, Los Angeles, 1987.
Fuente Limpens, Frans, Generacin M. Manual de educacin en derechos humanos para docentes de secundaria. Quertaro, Educacin y Capacitacin en Derechos Humanos, 2003, 183 pp. (http://www.hrea.org)
5. Two stories on justice:

Read the stories carefully. What do you learn about justice? Do you agree with everything in the two stories? How would you finish both stories ? Dividing the Cheese Two cats stole a cheese. One wanted to divide it. The other did not trust him, so he said. No, let us get a monkey to divide it between us! The first went to find a monkey and asked him to be the judge. Certainly, said the monkey. He sent them for a large knife and some scales. But instead of cutting the cheese in halves, he made one piece bigger than the other. Then he put them in the scale. I didnt divide these well, he said and started to eat the heavier piece of cheese. What are you doing? cried the cats. I am going to eat some of this piece to make it even with the other. Soon the piece he was eating was smaller than the other piece. He changed over and began to eat the other. The cats saw that before he was done he would have eaten all the cheese. They said, Sir Judge, let us have the rest of the cheese, and we will divide it ourselves. Oh no, said the monkey, you might fight over it, and the king of the animals would come after me. So the monkey went on eating, first one piece, then the other. The cats saw that nothing would be left. One cat turned to the other and said, We should have divided the cheese ourselves. After the monkey had eaten all the cheese, he said, Let us all go in peace, and never again let your interest blind your understanding. 3 Thief? Every month Alexander puts a small part of his wages into his account of the local bank. Its not a lot, but its the only way he can save enough for a holiday with his children. Each month the bank sends Alexander a statement telling him how much he has in the account. This month Alexander sees that he has much more money than he thought. There must be a mistake. He writes to the bank to say it has given him $2,000 more than he should have. No, says the bank, there has been no mistake. The money is yours. Alexander writes again. we have double checked, says the bank, we have not made a mistake. Alexander still isnt happy. He writes for a third time, and the bank tells him again that the money is his. After this, Alexander doesnt think he has anything to lose. He starts to spend the money on things he and his family need. He buys some new furniture, redecorates his flat and goes away on a weeks holiday with his family. A little later, the people at the bank realise that they made a mistake. The $2,000 that Alexander has been given belongs to another customer who has the same
3 Historia de Cabo Verde, en Goodman, H. (ed), Songs, games and stories from around the world. Unicef-UK, London, 1990. 10
Para la clase de ingls name. The bank asks Alexander for the money back. He gives them what he has left, but he has spent more than $1,000. Alexander is charged with theft. After a three day trial, the jury found Alexander not guilty of theft. Juries dont have to give reasons for their verdict, but we can presume that Alexanders attempts to draw the error to the attention of the bank convinced the jury that he had not behaved with dishonest intent. Although Alexander was found not guilty of theft, there still remained the question of whether he should return the money that he had already spent. It was not within the power of the court to deal with this and the bank needed to bring a new case through a different court to reclaim the money. 4 Vocabulary: scales wages statement furniture customer charged with theft guilty : plate with some resemblance to fish-scale (small thin overlapping plate protecting the skin of many fishes). : salaries. : formal account of fact, expression in words. : movable contents of house or room (tables, chairs, ) : one who buys, account-holder on bank. : accused of. : act or instance of stealing. : criminal, culpable
Fuente Limpens, Frans, Generacin M. Manual de educacin en derechos humanos para docentes de secundaria. Quertaro, Educacin y Capacitacin en Derechos Humanos, 2003, 183 pp. (http://www.hrea.org).
4 Adaptacin de The Citizenship Foundation, Understand the law, London, 1993, p. 82 11
6. A protest song way ahead of its time

Today protest songs are very common. Rock, punk and rap were mostly born out of social protest. Probably your favorite rock group also has written some critical lyrics. Do you understand these texts and their background? Over 62 years ago Billy Holiday, a black jazz and blues singer, by then 24 years old, shook the black and white visitors of New Yorks new Caf Society with Strange fruit a very direct song against the lynching of black people in the south of the United States. The song came out in the same year as the famous movie Gone with the wind where blacks are treated without much respect. The song was first called Bitter Fruit and was written strange enough- by a white man called Abel Meeropol, a secret communist that gave part of his income to the forbidden Communist Party in the United States. For decades it has been one of the inspiring songs during marches and protest activities against racism. Until today people like Sting and Dee Dee Bridgewater keep singing it. For many years the song was banned on American radio stations and the BBC and even in 1976 the song was too strong for Lady sings the blues, a biographic film on Billie Holiday. Diana Ross interpretes Billie Holiday but some raw lines of the original Strange Fruit are censured Strange fruit 5 Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, And the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.
5 Basado en el artculo de Margolick, David, Nieuwe biografie vertelt verhaal van Billie Holidays beroemdste song. Bittere oogst. En el peridico De Standaard, 10/03/2001. 12
Para la clase de ingls Vocabulary lynching breeze poplar trees gallant bulging twisted scent pluck crop
executing executing or punishing by an illegal court, named after Captain W. Lynch of Virginia, around 1780. gentle wind, tree of genus Populus (about 35 especies of trees) of rapid growth and tremulous leaves, grand, fine, stately, finely dressed, swelling outwards, pulled out of natural shape, distorted, odour of agreeable kind, pull off, pick, snatch, produce of cultivated plants, especially cereals,
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7. Knots (nudos)
People can act very strange. At least ... I think they act very strange. And maybe other people think that I am the one whos acting very strange. Do you know the feeling? Effective communication is difficult to construct. There are some many knots in human understanding... Can you untie these ones? There must be something the matter with him because he would not be acting as he does unless there was therefore he is acting as he is because there is something the matter with him He does not think there is anything the matter with him because one of the things that is the matter with him is that he does not think that there is anything the matter with him therefore we have to help him to realize that the fact that he does not think that there is anything the matter with him is one of the thing that is the matter with him 6
There is something I dont know that I am supposed to know. I dont know what it is I dont know, and yet I am supposed to know, and I feel I look stupid if I seem both not to know it and not to know what it is I dont know. Therefore I pretend I know it. This is nerve-ranking since I dont know what I must pretend to know, Therefore I pretend to know everything. I feel you know what I am supposed to know But you cant tell me what it is Because you dont know that I dont know what it is.
6 Laing, R.D., o.c., p. 5. 14
Para la clase de ingls You may know what I dont know, but not that I dont know it, and I cant tell you. So you will have to tell me everything. 7
Absurd, isnt it? But very real as well. Im sure you have had similar experiences. What can we do to better our communications? How can we avoid to feel bad? How can we avoid that other persons feel bad?
8. One World is enough (not Three)

7 Ib., p. 56. 15
One World is enough For all of us (repeat) Its a subject we rarely mention But when we do we have this little invention By pretending theyre a different world from me I show my responsibility (chorus) The Third World breathes our air tomorrow We live on the time we borrow In our world theres no time for sorrow In their world there is no tomorrow (chorus) Lines are drawn upon the World Befote we get our flags unfurled Whichever one we pick Its just a self deluding trick (chorus) I dont want to bring a sour note Remember this befote you vote We can all sink or we all float Because were all in the same big boat It may seem a million miles away But it gets a little closer everyday (repeat) The Police, Ghost in the machine The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom - and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise. George W. Bush (September 17, 2002)8 Sting, an English rock artist, calls for global solidarity without lines or flags that divide us. Do you agree with him? Do you think Mr. Bush is saying the same thing? What is this single sustainable model he is talking about for a Third World country? Fuente Limpens, Frans, Generacin M. Manual de educacin en derechos humanos para docentes de secundaria. Quertaro, Educacin y Capacitacin en Derechos Humanos, 2003, 183 pp. (http://www.hrea.org).
9. Wind energy: a clean and cheap alternative
8 Introduccin del documento de la Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad de los Estados Unidos de Amrica, en cierto modo el anuncio de la guerra contra Irak y la guerra contra l@s empobrecid@s (no contra la pobreza). 16
for the future 9

For the first time since the oil age began, modern world has a real possibility to turn over to green power of wind turbines, solar cells, hydrogen generators, and others. The economy of the future will use wind turbines to replace coal mines and recycling industries will replace mining industries. These changes have already begun. During the last decade, the use of wind power grew by 25 percent and solar cells at 20 percent every year. The use of oil grew only 1 percent in that period and coal use lost one percent annually. Denmark now gets 15 percent of its electricity from wind. Wind power can do miracles. China can double its current electricity generation from wind alone. Three wind-rich status (North-Dakota, Kansas and Texas) could satisfy the electricity needs of the whole United States. And the story is getting better. In the early 1980s wind energy costed about 38 cents of a dollar per kilowatt hour and now its only about 4 cents in the best wind sites. Price will get even lower in the future. Argentina has a plan to develop 3.000 megawatts (1 megawatt supplies 350 homes in an industrial society) of wind power by 2010 in Patagonia. Lots of countries (France, the United Kingdom, China) have similar plans What about your city and your state? Do you know places with solar cells? Or wind turbines?
10. Do you want war?
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9 Earth Policy Institute, Brown, Lester Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth (GRATIS en http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/index.htm). 10 Retomado (con pequeos cambios y actualizaciones) de Woodhouse, Sarah, Your life, my life. An introduction to human rights and responsabilities. London, The Writers and Scholars 17
Read this text of Sarah Woodhouse. Do you agree with it? What do you think about war and peace? Do you think world peace is possible? How? One of the very worst things that can go wrong in the world is war. There have been more than 150 wars since 1945. War means that we stop -absolutely- looking at the people of another country as unique and individual human beings. Instead, we think of them and treat them only as evil and dangerous, and all alike, as only fit to be defeated or killed as quickly as possible - men, women and children. War is such a terrible nonsense that it is hard to believe that we can let misunderstanding and hatred develop so seriously that fighting is the only way of solving the problems. War can happen for all sorts of reasons. People may need to defend themselves and their way of life from attack. Sometimes the reasons for war stretch so far back that it is almost impossible to discover accurately where the trouble began. But whatever the causes of war, real understanding and concern vanish. Fear, anger and revenge take over in peoples minds. Building up great stocks of armaments, bombs, guns, tanks, fighters and submarines, is just the result of no confidence, a deep fear and lack of trust between governments and people in confronting countries. It is a fantastic waste of money and energy. In less than one month the world spends more money on arms than is needed to supply enough food, water, education, health and housing for everyone for a whole year. That money and energy could also be spent on building up trust and friendship and support between nations and improving the knowledge which leads to tolerance. The human brain is clever enough to invent the technology which enables us to reach the moon, build computers and construct the internet. Yet we do not use our brains well or wisely enough in these important areas of our lives. Ordinary people at home normally have nothing to do with the outbreak of war, but when it happens they have to suffer the agonies which follow. War makes everyone, winners or losers, poor and miserable. It leaves behind a trail of economic problems and a desert of lost treasures, destruction and death. It is not worth pretending to ourselves that war is full of adventure, splendour and romance, even if the television only shows airplanes and bombs that are technically fascinating. The results are nothing except horror. And hatred is passed
Educational Trust, 1980, p. 19-20. 18
Para la clase de ingls on to the next generation of children and youngsters like a bad disease. The world needs everyone to feel convicted of this, so that the idea of war is completely unacceptable and we can finally imagine and build world peace.
11. New York: Garbage capital of the world
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Para la clase de ingls The question of what to do with the 11,000 tons of garbage produced each day in New York City has again surfaced, this time with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's budget, which proposes to halt the recycling of metal, glass and plastic to save money. Unfortunately, this would mean more garbage to dispose of when the goal should be less. The city's garbage problem has three faces. It is an economic problem, an environmental challenge, and a potential public relations nightmare. When the Fresh Kills landfill, the local destination for New York's garbage, was permanently closed in March 2001, the city found itself hauling garbage to distant landfill sites in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia--some of the sites 300 miles away. Assuming a load of 20 tons of garbage for each of the tractor trailers used for the long-distance hauling, some 550 rigs are needed to move garbage from New York City each day. These tractor trailers form a convoy nearly nine miles long, impeding traffic, polluting the air, and raising carbon emissions. This daily convoy led Deputy Mayor Joseph J. Lhota, who supervised the Fresh Kills shutdown, to say that getting rid of the city's trash is now "like a military-style operation on a daily basis." Instead of rapidly reducing the amount of garbage generated as Fresh Kills was filling, the decision was made simply to haul it all elsewhere. Fiscally strapped local communities in other states are willing to take New York's garbage--if they are paid enough. Some see it as a bonanza. For the state governments, however, that are saddled with increased road maintenance costs, the arrangement is not so attractive. They also have to contend with the traffic congestion, noise, increased air pollution, and complaints from nearby communities. Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore wrote to Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2001 complaining about the use of Virginia as a dumping ground. "I understand the problem New York faces," he noted. "But the home state of Washington, Jefferson and Madison has no intention of becoming New York's dumping ground." The new governor of Virginia, Mark Warner, proposed in early April 2002 a tax of $5 per ton on all solid waste deposited in Virginia. This is expected to generate an annual cash flow of $76 million for the Virginia treasury, but it will not help New York with its economic woes In Pennsylvania, the General Assembly is considering legislation that would restrict garbage imports from other states. As landfills in adjacent states begin to fill up, there will be progressively fewer sites to take New York's garbage, pushing disposal costs ever higher. Landfilling garbage uses land. For every 40,000 tons of garbage added to a landfill at least one acre of land is lost to future use. A large surrounding area is also lost as the landfill with its potentially toxic wastes must be isolated from residential areas.
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Para la clase de ingls Mayor Bloomberg's office has proposed incineration as the solution to the garbage mess. But burning 11,000 tons of garbage each day will only add to air pollution, making already unhealthy city air even worse. Like hauling the garbage to distant sites, incineration treats the symptoms, not the causes of New York's mountain of garbage. The amount of garbage produced in the city is a manifestation of a more fundamental problem--the evolution of a global throwaway economy. Throwaway products, facilitated by the appeal to convenience and the artificially low cost of energy, account for much of the garbage we produce. It is easy to forget how many throwaway products there are until we actually begin making a list. We have substituted facial tissues for handkerchiefs, disposable paper towels for hand towels, disposable table napkins for cloth napkins, and throwaway beverage containers for refillable ones. In perhaps the ultimate insult, the shopping bags that are used to carry home throwaway products are themselves designed to be discarded, becoming part of the garbage flow. The question at the supermarket checkout counter, "Paper or plastic?" should be replaced with, "Do you have your canvas shopping bag with you?" The challenge we now face is to replace the throwaway economy with a reduce/reuse/recycle economy. The earth can no longer tolerate the pollution, the energy use, the disruption from mining, and the deforestation that the throwaway economy requires. For cities like New York, the challenge is not so much what to do with the garbage as it is how to avoid producing it in the first place. New York recycles only 18 percent of its municipal waste. Los Angeles recycles 44 percent and Chicago 47 percent. Seattle and Minneapolis are both near 60 percent recycling rates. But even they are not close to exploiting the full potential of garbage recycling. There are many ways of shrinking the daily mountain of garbage. One is simply to ban the use of one-way beverage containers, something that Denmark and Finland have done. Denmark, for example, banned one-way soft drink containers in 1977 and beer containers in 1981. If Mayor Bloomberg wants a closer example of this approach, he need only go to Prince Edward Island in Canada, which has adopted a similar ban on one-way containers. There are other gains from reusing beverage containers. Since refillable containers are simply back-hauled to the original soft drink or brewery bottling sites by the same trucks that deliver the beverages, they reduce not only garbage but also traffic congestion, energy use, and air pollution. We have the technologies to recycle virtually all the components of garbage. For example, Germany now gets 72 percent of its paper from recycled fiber. With glass, aluminum, and plastic, potential recycling rates are even higher.
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Para la clase de ingls The nutrients in garbage can also be recycled by composting organic materials, including yard waste, table waste, and produce waste from supermarkets. Each year, the world mines 139 million tons of phosphate rock and 20 million tons of potash to obtain the phosphorus and potassium needed to replace the nutrients that crops remove from the soil. Urban composting that would return nutrients to the land could greatly reduce this expenditure on nutrients and the disruption caused by their mining. Yet another garbage-reducing step in this fiscally stressed situation would be to impose a tax on all throwaway products, in effect a landfill tax, so that those who use throwaway products would directly bear the cost of disposing of them. This would increase revenues while reducing garbage disposal expenditures, helping to reduce the city's fiscal deficit. There are numerous win-win-win solutions that are economically attractive, environmentally desirable, and that will help avoid the unfolding public relations debacle created by the image of New York as garbage capital of the world. A response to this situation that treats the causes rather than the symptoms of garbage generation could work wonders for the city. Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 17 de abril de 2002, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update10.htm
12. Deflating the bubble economy before it bursts

"We are creating a bubble economy--an economy whose output is artificially inflated by drawing down the earth's natural capital," says Lester R. Brown in his
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Para la clase de ingls new book, PLAN B: RESCUING A PLANET UNDER STRESS AND A CIVILIZATION IN TROUBLE. (http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/index.htm or to order.) "Each year the bubble grows larger as our demands on the earth expand. The challenge for our generation is to deflate the global economic bubble before it bursts," says Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization. Throughout most of human history, we lived on the earth's sustainable yield--the interest from its natural endowment. But now we are consuming the endowment itself. Our existing economic output is based in part on cutting trees faster than they grow, overgrazing rangelands and converting them into desert, overpumping aquifers, and draining rivers dry. On much of our cropland, soil erosion exceeds new soil formation--slowly depriving the land of its inherent fertility. We are taking fish from the ocean faster than they can reproduce. "We are releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere faster than the earth can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect. Rising atmospheric CO2 levels promise a temperature rise during this century that could match that between the last Ice Age and the present," notes Brown in PLAN B, which was funded by the U.N. Population Fund. Bubble economies are not new. American investors got an up-close view of one when the bubble in high-tech stocks burst in 2000 and the NASDAQ, an indicator of the value of these stocks, declined by some 75 percent. The Japanese had a similar experience in 1989 when the real estate bubble burst, depreciating stock and real estate assets by 60 percent. As a result of the bad-debt fallout and other effects of this collapse, the once dynamic Japanese economy has been dead in the water ever since. The bursting of these two bubbles most directly affected people living in the industrial West and Japan. But if the bubble that is based on the overconsumption of the earth's natural capital bursts, it will affect the entire world. Thus far the consequences of most excessive natural capital consumption, such as aquifer depletion, collapsing fisheries, and deforestation, have been local. But in sheer number and scale these events are now reaching a point where they may soon have a global effect. Food appears to be the economic sector most vulnerable to setbacks, largely because the impressive production gains of recent decades were partly based on overpumping and overplowing. Overpumping is historically recent because powerful diesel and electrically driven pumps have become widely bailable only during the last half-century or so. Aquifers are being overpumped in scores of countries, including China, India, and the United States, which together account for nearly half of the world grain harvest. Overpumping creates a dangerous illusion of food security because it is a way of
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Para la clase de ingls expanding current food production that virtually ensures a future drop in food production when the aquifer is depleted. In the past, the effects of aquifer depletion on food production were confined to less-populated countries, like Saudi Arabia, but now they are becoming visible in China. After a remarkable expansion from 90 million tons in 1950 to its historical peak of 390 million tons in 1998, China's grain harvest dropped to 330 million tons in 2003. This drop of 60 million tons exceeds the grain harvest of Canada. Thus far China has offset the downturn by drawing on its vast stocks of grain. It can do this for perhaps another year or two, but then it will be forced to import massive quantities of grain. Turning to the world market means turning to the United States, the world's largest grain exporter, presenting a potentially delicate geopolitical situation in which 1.3 billion Chinese consumers, with a $100-billion trade surplus with the United States, will be competing with U.S. consumers for U.S. grain, driving up food prices. Water shortages, such as those in China, are becoming global, crossing national boundaries via the international grain trade. Countries facing water shortages often import water in the form of grain. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, this is the most eficiente way to import water. Grain has become the currency with which countries balance their water books. Trading in grain futures is now in a sense trading in water futures. Farmers may now also face higher temperatures than any generation since agriculture began. The 16 warmest years since recordkeeping began in 1880 have all occurred since 1980. With the three warmest years on record--1998, 2001, and 2002--coming in the last five years, crops are facing record heat stresses. Crop ecologists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have developed a rule of thumb that each 1degree-Celsius rise in temperature during the growing season reduces grain yields by 10 percent. Falling water tables and rising temperatures help explain why the world grain harvest has fallen short of consumption in each of the past tour years, dropping world grain stocks to their lowest level in a generation. If grain shortfalls continue, they will lead to price rises that could destabilize governments and impoverish more people than any event in history. "Plan A--business as usual--is not working. It is creating a bubble economy. PLAN B describes how to deflate the economic bubble before it bursts," says Brown. "This involves, for example, reducing the demand for water to the sustainable yield of aquifers by quickly raising water productivity and accelerating the shift to smaller families. With most of the nearly 3 billion people to be added by 2050 to be born in countries already facing water shortages, pressure on water supplies will mount. If population is not stabilized soon, the water situation in some countries could become unmanageable."
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Accelerating the shift to small families and population stability means providing women with reproductive health care, filling the family planning gap, and investing heavily in education to ensure that the U.N. goal of universal primary education by 2015 is reached. The more education women have, the more options they have and the fewer children they bear. We now have the wealth and knowledge to eradicate the poverty that fuels rapid population growth. "Avoiding the damaging effects of higher temperatures on crop yields means moving quickly to stabilize climate. In PLAN B," says Brown, "I suggest cutting global carbon emissions in half by 2015. This is entirely doable, as a number of recent studies have suggested. If higher temperatures shrink harvests, public pressure to replace coal and oil with natural gas, wind power, and hydrogen will intensify worldwide." A simple measure, such as replacing old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs would enable the world to close hundreds of coal-fired power plants. Replacing nonrefillable beverage containers, such as aluminum cans, with refillable bottles can cut energy use by up to 90 percent. If all U.S. motorists shifted from their current vehicles with internal combustion engines to cars with hybrid engines, like the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight, gasoline use could be cut in half. Cutting carbon emissions in half is less a matter of technology and more a matter of political leadership. "Not only do we need to stabilize population, raise water productivity, and stabilize climate, but we need to do it at wartime speed. The key to quickly shifting from a carbon-based energy economy to a hydrogen-based one is to incorporate the costs of climate change, including crop-damaging temperatures, more destructive storms, and rising sea level, in the prices of fossil fuels. We need to get the market to tell the ecological truth." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has calculated the costs to society of smoking a pack of cigarettes, including both the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses and losses in employee productivity, at $7.18 a pack. Is the cost to society of burning a gallon of gasoline more or less than that of smoking a pack of cigarettes? "Unfortunately," says Brown, "since September 11, 2001, political leaders and the media worldwide have been preoccupied with terrorism and, more recently, the invasion of Iraq. Terrorism is certainly a matter of concern, but if Osama Bin Laden and his followers succeed in diverting our atencin from the environmental trends that are undermining our future until it is too late to reverse them, they will have achieved their goal in a way they have not imagined." One of the keys to deflating the bubble is redefining security--recognizing that military threats to our future are being eclipsed by environmental threats such as falling water tables and rising temperatures. Redefining the threat means
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Para la clase de ingls redefining priorities, shifting resources from the military to population and climate stabilization. Unfortunately, the United States continues to invest heavily in an ever-stronger military as though that were somehow responsive to the new threats that are shaping our future. The $343-billion defense budget in the United States dwarfs the defense budgets of other countries--allies and others alike. U.S. allies spend $205 billion a year; Russia spends $60 billion; China, $42 billion; and Iran, Iraq, and North Korea combined spend $12 billion. As the late U.S. Admiral Eugene Carroll astutely observed, "For 45 years of the cold war, we were in an arms race with the Soviet Union; now it appears we are in an arms race with ourselves." The urgency facing the world today is at least as great as that which faced the United States as it mobilized for war during the early 1940s. Not only was the economy restructured within a year or so at that time, but the automobile industry-then the largest concentration of industrial power in the world, producing 3 million cars a year--was closed down and converted to the production of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and aircraft. Today the stakes for the entire world are even higher. We study the archeological sites of earlier civilizations that were based on the overconsumption of natural capital. "Advances in technology and the accumulation of wealth enable us to build a new world," says Brown, "one far more stable and secure than the one we now have. We can lead a richer, more satisfying life today without jeopardizing the prospects for future generations." "We can stay with business as usual and be the generation that presides over a global bubble economy that keeps expanding until it bursts," concludes Brown. "Or we can be the generation that stabilizes population, eradicates poverty, and stabilizes climate. Historians will record the choice, but it is ours to make." Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 4 de septiembre de 2003, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PlanB_PR.htm
13. Detoxifying Terrorism

Breaking News: 15 November 2001, Strasbourg, France: Despite heavy opposition from the chemicals industry, the European Parliament supported a measure to
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Para la clase de ingls overhaul EU chemicals policy, marking a significant step toward reducing unnecessary risks. The Parliament voted to replace hazardous chemicals with safer alternatives by 2020; label consumer products containing toxic chemicals; lower the safety threshold for human health to consider the effects of chemicals on young and unborn children; and subject high-volume chemicals to greater scrutiny in terms of health effects. Heightened national security concerns have renewed interest in our vulnerabilities to toxic chemicals, a health threat that has faced Americans for decades. In the U.S., around 850,000 industrial facilities routinely use hazardous and extremely hazardous chemicals , according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, creating a plethora of health and environmental problems even when the facilities are working normally. Post September 11, these facilities are potential sitting ducks for terrorists. Bombing any one of them could disrupt local and national economies, cripple public safety, and spew untold amounts of poisonous chemicals into the environment. Our exposure to potential terrorist attacks on chemical facilities is alarming. But even without any new acts of terrorism, these facilities were already systematically damaging people's health and well-being. In 1999, the latest year for which there are complete figures, the EPA reports that U.S. industrial facilities released 7.7 billion pounds of toxic chemicals during production and disposal into the air and water. And this total is far from complete: Only large manufacturers are required to report; the current list of 650 chemicals does not cover all toxic chemicals or sources; and releases during routine use are not included. Moreover, many of these compounds interfere with the normal biological functioning of species in ways we have only begun to identify, let alone fully comprehend. We have no basic health and environmental data for 71 percent of the most widely used chemicals in the United States today. In addition, every year, thousands of workers die in industrial accidents caused by toxics. Between 1987 and 1996, more than 2,500 people were killed each year in chemical accidents at industrial plants or during transport, according to the U.S. Chemical Health and Safety Investigation Board. In the aftermath of September 11, many of these chemical facilities are now under heightened security, as are the nation's transportation systems, military sites, and government properties. Better security is necessary, but in the long-term, our strategy should be to minimize our use of toxic chemicals altogether, and the sooner the better. Innovative companies, business leaders, and public authorities worldwide have proven that many toxic chemicals are simply unnecessary, and that phasing them
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Para la clase de ingls out with safer substitutes or with redesigned industrial processes saves money, is healthier for workers and the public, and reduces potential domestic targets. Companies from IBM to Motorola have significantly reduced their use of chlorinated solvents in cleaning operations, turning to water-based washes instead. Toy manufacturers have phased out PVC plastic, to protect children from absorbing harmful chemical additives known as phthalates. The American Hospital Association has pledged to eliminate all mercury-containing wastes by 2005. Burning these wastes releases potent toxins that damage the nervous system. In a more systematic approach, Massachusetts passed a law in 1989 requiring manufacturers to examine their use of toxic chemicals and prepare reports on alternatives. Although the law says nothing about adopting these alternatives, some 80 percent of companies followed their own advice and reduced toxic inputs by 24 percent, while increasing production at the same time. There is also a booming business in reducing the toxicity of manufacturing by producing goods entirely from renewable resources, rather than the current mix of toxic inputs. In the United States, million tons of industrial and consumer materialsincluding paints, plastics, and detergents-are now produced from crops, rather than chemicals. Bio-based products now account for more than 30 percent of the U.S. market in adhesives, surface cleaning agents, and additives in plastics. Last year, Dow Chemical and Cargill (an international food and agricultural company) broke ground on the world's first manufacturing facility that will make plastic from corn sugar, rather than petroleum. Since September 11, there have been many suggestions about how to make the country less vulnerable to terrorism. At the very least, funding the research and development of safer alternatives and cleaner manufacturing processes should be an integral part of any plan to reduce our vulnerability to terrorism. Fuente
Artculo de Anne Platt McGinn, investigadora del Worldwatch Institute, autora de Worldwatch Paper 153, Why Poison Ourselves? A Precautionary Approach to Hazardous Chemicals . Enviado por correo electrnico el 19 de noviembre de 2001.
14. Global temperature near record for 2002

Takes Toll in Deadly Heat Waves, Withered Harvests, and Melting Ice
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Para la clase de ingls Temperature data for the first 11 months of 2002 indicate that this year will likely be the second warmest on record, exceeded only by 1998. These data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies indicate that the temperature for the first 11 months has averaged 14.65 degrees Celsius, down slightly from the record high of 14.69 in 1998, but well above the average temperature of 14 degrees Celsius that prevailed from 1951 to 1980. Studying these annual temperature data, one gets the unmistakable feeling that temperature is rising and that the rise is gaining momentum. A year ago, we noted that the 15 warmest years since recordkeeping began in 1867 had occurred since 1980. Barring a dramatic drop in temperature for December, we can now say that the three warmest years on record have come in the last five years. In addition to the longer-term annual temperature trend, recent monthly data also indicate an accelerating rise. In contrast to local temperatures, which fluctuate widely from season to season, the global average temperature is remarkably stable throughout the year because the seasonal contrasts of the northern and southern hemispheres offset each other. The temperature for January of this year of 14.72 degrees Celsius was the highest on record for January. The 14.91 degrees for March made it the warmest March on record. And in seven of the next eight months--April through November--the temperature was either the second or the third warmest. October was the fourth warmest. Since 1980, decadal average temperatures have risen well above the 14 degrees Celsius average for the span from 1951 to 1980, which is defined as the norm. During the 1980s, the global temperature averaged 14.26 degrees. In the 1990s it was 14.38 degrees. During the first three years of this decade (2000-2002), it has been 14.52 degrees. http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update20_data.htm). Rising temperature does not come as a surprise to atmospheric scientists who analyze the climate effects of rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas. Each year since detailed recordkeeping began in 1959, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has climbed to a new high, making it one of the most predictable of all global environmental trends. The rise in atmospheric CO2 levels is the result of massive fossil fuel burning that has simply overwhelmed nature's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. The temperature rises observed over the last two decades are in line with the results of research using computerized global climate models to project the effects of rising CO2 levels on the earth's climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of more than 1,500 of the world's leading climate scientists, reports that if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise as projected, the earth's average temperature will rise by 1.4-5.8 degrees Celsius during this century. The lower end of the projected increases would lead to a 0.14 degree rise in temperature per decade during this century, roughly the same as during each of the last two decades of the last
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Para la clase de ingls century. But the higher end of the projected temperature range means an increase of nearly 0.6 degrees per decade, a rate that could be extraordinarily disruptive to both the earth's ecosystem and the economy that depends upon it. There are many manifestations of a higher temperature other than thermometer readings, including deadly heat waves, scorched crops, and ice melting. In May 2002, a record heat wave in southern India with the temperature reaching 114 degrees Fahrenheit (45.6 degrees C) claimed more than 1,000 lives in the state of Andhra Pradesh alone. In societies without air conditioning, there is no ready escape from the dangerous heat. To India's north, the temperatures in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, soared to 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees C) during June. Farmers may now be facing higher temperatures than any generation of farmers since agriculture began 11,000 years ago. Crop yields have fallen as temperatures have climbed in key food-producing countries, such as the United States and India. Many weeks of record or near-record temperatures this past summer in the northern hemisphere, combined with low rainfall, withered crops in many countries, and reduced the 2002 world grain harvest to 1,813 million tons of grain, which was well below the projected consumption of 1,895 million tons. Crop ecologists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines have recently reported that rice fertilization falls from 100 percent at 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees F) to essentially zero at 40 degrees (104 degrees F). Scientists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture are seeing a similar effect of high temperature on other grains. The scientific rule of thumb is that a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum reduces grain yields by 10 percent. One of the most sensitive indicators of higher temperature is ice melting. Scientists now report ice melting in all the world's major mountain ranges, including the Rocky Mountains, the Andes, the Alps, and the Himalayas. In Alaska, where temperatures in some regions have risen 5-10 degrees Celsius over the norm, ice is melting far faster than had earlier been reported. On Africa's snow-covered Kilimanjaro, the area covered by snow and ice has shrunk by 80 percent since 1900. Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State University glaciologist, reports that all the snow and ice there may disappear by 2020. For Americans, another landmark--Glacier National Park--may be forced to change its name. Half of its glaciers have already disappeared, and the U.S. Geological Survey projects that the remaining ones will disappear within the next 30 years. Scientists report that ice cover in the Arctic Ocean shrank to 2 million square miles this summer compared with an average of 2.4 million square miles during the preceding 23 years. The thinning of the ice is proceeding even faster. Since this ice is already in the water, its loss will not affect sea level, but when incoming sunlight strikes snow and ice, 80 percent of it bounces back into space and 20 percent is converted to heat. Conversely, when the incoming sunlight hits open water, only 20
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Para la clase de ingls percent is reflected and 80 percent is converted into heat, warming the region. Scientists are concerned with this warming because Greenland lies largely within the Arctic Sea. This past summer ice melting occurred over 265,000 square miles of the Greenland ice sheet-9 percent more than the previous maximum. If the Greenland ice sheet, which is 1.5 miles thick in some areas, were to melt entirely, sea level would rise 7 meters (23 feet). What happens to the ice in the Arctic Sea and the climate in the region is of concern to the entire world. Some industries are beginning to respond. Worried about the loss of snow in mountainous regions and frustrated by the lack of progress in stabilizing climate, the National Ski Areas Association, the U.S. trade association for the industry, plans to soon announce its "Keep Winter Cool" campaign. To do its part to reduce carbon emissions, the industry plans to purchase wind-generated electricity to run lifts and snowmaking equipment. Other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and the insurance industry, may also begin to press for a steep reduction in carbon emissions as the high costs of failing to stabilize climate become unacceptable. Changing the earth's climate is a serious matter, one that should not be taken lightly. The risk is that climate change could soon spiral out of control, leaving future generations with soaring temperatures, withered harvests, deadly heat waves, melting ice, and rising seas. If we do not act quickly to stabilize climate, our grandchildren may never forgive us. Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 11 de diciembre, 2002, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/Update20.htm
15. Coal: U.S. promotes while Canada and Europe move beyond
On Monday, November 24, the U.S. Congress abandoned all hope for this year of passing an energy bill laden with subsidies for fossil fuels, including coal. While the
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Para la clase de ingls White House strongly supports heavy subsidies to expand coal burning, other industrial countries are turning away from this climate-disruptive fuel, including our northern neighbor, Canada. In Ontario, Canada's most populous province, the three major political parties agreed early this year on the phase out of that province's five large coal-fired power plants by 2015. This bold plan accelerated with the early October election of Premier Dalton McGuinty, who has pledged to close all the coal-fired power plants by 2007, eight years ahead of the earlier deadline. The goal is to clean up the air locally and help stabilize climate globally. In terms of cutting carbon emissions, shutting down just the huge Nanticoke power station on the shore of Lake Erie would be equal to taking 4 million cars off Canadian roads. Ontario is the first Canadian province to turn its back on coal. Its political leaders simply concluded that the health and environmental costs of coal burning are too high. Jack Gibbons, Director of the Ontario Clear Air Alliance, calls coal "a nineteenth century fuel that has no place in twenty-first century Ontario." Other East Canadian provinces including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick may soon follow its lead. Several leading industrial countries are turning away from coal including the United Kingdom and Germany. The United Kingdom, which used coal to launch the Industrial Revolution more than two centuries ago, cut coal use by 40 percent between 1990 and 2001 mainly by substituting natural gas. Germany, Europe's largest industrial economy, cut coal use by a comparable 41 percent from 1990 to 2001. Reduced subsidies, gains in energy productivity, and the massive harnessing of wind energy means the use of coal may be on its way out in Germany as well. Although some major industrial countries, such as the United States and Japan, are still increasing their coal use, world use has changed little in the last 5 years. And the movement to phase out coal is gaining momentum. The Economist, a business-oriented publication, which surprised many readers in July 2002 with a cover story entitled "Coal: Environmental Enemy Number 1," is urging adoption of a carbon tax to discourage coal use. If global temperature continues to rise and the world experiences more cropwithering heat waves of the sort that shrunk the grain harvests of India and the United States last year and of Europe this year, or the life-threatening heat wave that claimed 35,000 European lives in August, the pressure to move away from coal will intensify. There are two ways of reducing coal use. One is raising energy productivity. The other is shifting to less carbon-intensive sources of energy. Just one quick example on the productivity side. If a world increasingly concernid about climate change
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Para la clase de ingls were to decide that over the next three years all of the old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs would be replaced with the new compact fluorescent bulbs, which use less than a third as much electricity, hundreds of coal-fired power plants could be closed. On the renewable side, wind power, now expanding by over 30 percent a year, is on its way to becoming one of the world's leading sources of electricity. Europe is the leader with 24,000 megawatts of generation capacity. In early October, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) updated its projections for wind electric generation, raising them by one-fourth to 75,000 megawatts by 2010 and to 180,000 megawatts by 2020. In 2020, EWEA projects that wind-generated electricity will satisfy the residencial electricity needs of 194 million Europeans, half the region's population. As though on cue, two weeks later the United Kingdom approved construccin of four massive new offshore wind farms. Western Europe, with enough offshore wind out to a depth of 40 meters (130 feet) to satisfy most of its electricity needs, is fast turning to this new source. While the North Sea is rich in both oil and wind, the oil is being depleted; the wind is not. Solar cell use worldwide also is expanding by over 30 percent a year. The cost of solar cell generated electricity is falling steadily but lags the fall in the cost of wind power by roughly a decade. Unfortunately, the United States is falling behind in both wind and solar energy development. Once a leader in wind electric-generation, it has ceded leadership to Europe. And in solar cell production it recently has been eclipsed by Japan. If Congress resuscitates the energy bill next year, it should consider the global environmental consequences of its actions, the job-creating potential of these new energy sources, and the long term costs of lagging in the development of these new energy industries. Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 3 de diciembre, 2003, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update30.htm
16. Eco-economy offers alternative to Middle East oil

"For the first time since the oil age began, the world has the technology to wean itself from petroleum coming from the politically volatile Middle East," says Lester R. Brown in his new book, "Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth." (Available for FREE downloading at http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/index.htm)
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"A combination of wind turbines, solar cells, hydrogen generators, and fuel cell engines offers not only energy independence, but an alternative to climatedisrupting fossil fuels," said Brown, President of the newly established Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research organization. In "Eco-Economy," Brown says the global economy is out of sync with the earth's ecosystem, as evidenced by collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, eroding soils, and falling water tables. This can also be seen in the earth's changing climate as rising temperatures lead to more destructive storms, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels. In the new economy, which Brown calls an eco-economy, renewable energy will replace climate-disrupting fossil fuels and a recycling economy will replace the throwaway economy. Wind turbines will replace coal mines and recycling industries will replace mining industries. The needed restructuring of the global economy has already begun, Brown reports. The shift from the fossil fuel era to the solar/hydrogen era can be seen in the contrasting growth rates of these energy sources in recent years. During the last decade, the use of wind power grew by 25 percent a year, solar cells at 20 percent a year, and geothermal energy at 4 percent annually. In stark contrast, oil expanded by only 1 percent a year and coal use declined by 1 percent annually. Natural gas, which is destined to be the transition fuel from the fossil fuel era to the hydrogen era, grew by 2 percent per year. The restructuring is gaining momentum. For example, from 1995 to 2000, world wind electric generation expanded nearly fourfold, a growth rate previously found only in the computer industry. Denmark gets 15 percent of its electricity from wind. In the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein, it is 19 percent. For Spain's state of Navarra, it is 22 percent. "Wind power has an enormous potential," said Brown. "According to a U.S. Department of Energy wind resources inventory, three of the most wind-rich statesNorth Dakota, Kansas, and Texas-have enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. China can double its current electricity generation from wind alone. Europe's offshore wind potential is sufficient to meet the continent's electricity needs." Advances in wind turbine design have reduced electricity costs from 38 per kilowatt hour in the early 1980s to less than 4 at prime wind sites in 2001. Further cuts are in prospect. In response to falling costs, wind farms have come online recently in Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, and Pennsylvania. A quarter-acre of land leased to the local utility to site a large, advanced design wind turbine can easily yield a farmer or rancher $2,000 in royalties per year while
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Para la clase de ingls providing the community with $100,000 worth of electricity. Money spent on windgenerated electricity tends to remain in the community, providing income, jobs, and tax revenue. A project in the planning stages in eastern South Dakota to develop 3,000 megawatts of wind power for transmission across Iowa to the industrial Midwest around Chicago is not only a large wind power project, it is one of the largest energy projects in the world today. As wind-generating costs continue to fall and concern about climate change escalates, more and more countries are turning to wind energy. In December 2000, France announced plans to develop 5,000 megawatts of wind power by 2010 (1 megawatt supplies 350 homes in an industrial society). Argentina followed with a plan to develop 3,000 megawatts of wind power by 2010 in Patagonia, with its world-class wind resources. In April, the United Kingdom accepted offshore bids to develop 1,500 megawatts of wind power. And in May 2001, China reported that it will develop some 2,500 megawatts of wind power by 2005. The European Wind Energy Association, which in 1996 had set a target of 40,000 megawatts for Europe by 2010, recently raised its goal to 60,000 megawatts. The United States is projected to increase its wind-generating capacity in 2001 by at least 60 percent. Cheap electricity from wind farms can be used to electrolyze water and produce hydrogen, which can be used to power gas turbines that supply electricity when the wind ebbs. Hydrogen is also the fuel of choice for the new fuel cell engines that every major automobile manufacturer is now working on. The farmers and ranchers who own most of the U.S. wind rights could one day supply not only most of the country's electricity, but also much of the fuel used in its automobiles. The use of solar cells is also expanding rapidly. In remote villages where supplying electricity traditionally depended on building a centralized power plant and constructing a grid to distribute the electricity, it is now often cheaper simply to install solar cells. In inaccessible Andean villages, investing in solar cells may be cheaper than buying candles. The same is true for those villages in India where lighting comes from kerosene lamps. At the end of 2000, nearly one million homes worldwide were getting their electricity from solar cells. With the new solar cell roofing material developed in Japan, the stage is set for dramatic gains in this new energy source as rooftops become the power plants of buildings. For many of the nearly 2 billion people without electricity, solar cells are their best hope. "The materials economy is also changing," said Brown. "The challenge is to shift from a linear flow-through economy to a comprehensive recycling economy. Progress is being made on this front, but not nearly enough. Some countries are advancing. For example, 58 percent of U.S. steel production now comes from
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Para la clase de ingls scrap. In Germany 72 percent of all paper comes from paper recycling mills. If the entire world were to achieve this rate, wood needed for pulp production would drop by nearly one third." In describing the transition to the eco-economy, Brown identifies both sunset and sunrise industries. Among the sunset industries are coal mining, oil pumping, clearcut logging, and the manufacture of internal combustion engines and throwaway products. Among the sunrise industries are wind turbine manufacturing, hydrogen generation, fuel cell manufacturing, solar cell manufacturing, light rail construction, reforestation, and fish farming. Rapidly growing professions include ecological economists, wind meteorologists, recycling engineers, geothermal geologists, and environmental architects. In an eco-economy most energy is produced locally from wind, solar cells, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal sources, thus offering a new grassroots development potential for developing countries, one that does not require spending scarce foreign exchange on imported oil. With a comprehensive recycling economy, the need for imported raw materials will also diminish, reducing vulnerability to external political and economic instability. Another key characteristic of an eco-economy is population stability. Over the last few decades, some 31 countries in Europe plus Japan have stabilized their populations. One of the keys to this is improving the status of women. The more education women have, the fewer children they have. World Bank research indicates that investing in the education of girls yields an economic return perhaps four times that of investing in electric utilities. Economic decisionmakers at all levels-corporate planners, government leaders, investment bankers, and individual consumers-all rely on market signals. But the market often does not tell the truth. For example, when we buy a gallon of gasoline, we pay the costs of producing gasoline, but not the health care costs of those who suffer from the polluted air, the acid rain damage, or the costs of climate disruption from burning the gasoline. Sometimes we learn of the market's shortcomings the hard way. For example, by 1998, China's Yangtze River basin had lost 85 percent of its original forest cover. Partly as a result, flooding of the Yangtze River basin that year displaced 120 million people and caused $30 billion worth of damage. In response, Chinese officials banned tree cutting in the upper reaches of the basin. Trees standing, they argued, were worth three times as much as trees cut. The key to restructuring the economy is to restructure the tax system, to get the market to tell the ecological truth. As ystein Dahle, former Exxon vice president for Norway and the North Sea, observes, "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth."
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Para la clase de ingls Restructuring the global economy will require ecologists and economists to work together to identify the indirect costs associated with a particular product or service. These costs can then be incorporated into market prices in the form of a tax and offset by a reduction in income taxes. "This restructuring of the tax system, which is the key to restructuring the economy, does not change the level of taxes," Brown emphasized, "only their composition." Building an eco-economy represents the greatest investment opportunity in history. The companies that have a vision of the new economy and incorporate it into their planning will be the winners. Those that cling to the past risk becoming part of it. The eco-economy is beginning to take shape. Glimpses of it can be seen in the wind farms of Denmark, the solar rooftops of Japan, the paper recycling mills of Germany, the steel recycling mills of the United States, the irrigation systems of Israel, the reforested mountains of South Korea, and the bicycle networks of the Netherlands. Almost all the components of an eco-economy can be found in at least one country. The challenge now is for each country to put all the pieces of an ecoeconomy together. "Building an eco-economy is a goal that cannot be compromised," said Brown. "If we are going to restructure the economy in the time available, all of us will need to be involved. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation. But it will affect life on earth for all generations to come." Fuente
Artculo sobre el libro ms famoso de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 6 de noviembre, 2001.
17. Troubling New Flows of Environmental Refugees

In mid-October 2003, Italian authorities discovered a boat carrying refugees from Africa bound for Italy. Adrift for more than two weeks and without fuel, food, and water, many of the passengers had died. At first the dead were tossed overboard.
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Para la clase de ingls But after a point, the remaining survivors lacked the strength to hoist the bodies over the side. The dead and the living were sharing the boat in what a rescuer described as "a scene from Dante's Inferno." The refugees were believed to be Somalis who had embarked from Libya. We do not know whether they were political, economic, or environmental refugees. Failed states like Somalia produce all three. We do know that Somalia is an ecological basket case, with overpopulation, overgrazing, and desertification destroying its pastoral economy. Although the modern world has extensive experience with people migrating for political and economic reasons, we are now seeing a swelling flow of refugees driven from their homes by environmental pressures. Modern experience with this phenomenon in the United States began when nearly 3 million "Okies" from the southern Great Plains left during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, many of them migrating to California. Today, bodies washing ashore in Italy, France, and Spain are a daily occurrence, the result of desperate acts by desperate people in Africa. And each day hundreds of Mexicans risk their lives trying to cross the U.S. border. Some 400 to 600 Mexicans leave rural areas every day, abandoning plots of land too small or too eroded to make a living. They either head for Mexican cities or try to cross illegally into the United States. Many perish in the punishing heat of the Arizona desert. Another flow of environmental refugees comes from Haiti, a widely recognized ecological disaster. In a rural economy where the land is denuded of vegetation and the soil is washing into the sea, the people are not far behind. Attempting to make the trip to Florida in small craft not designed for the high seas, many drown. The U.S. Dust Bowl refugees were early examples of environmental migration, but their numbers will pale compared with what lies ahead if we continue with business as usual. Among the new refugees are people being forced to move because of aquifer depletion and wells running dry. Thus far the evacuations have been of villages, but eventually whole cities might have to be relocated, such as Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, or Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province. The World Bank expects Sana'a, where the water table is falling by 6 meters a year, to exhaust its remaining water supply by 2010. At that point, its leaders will either have to bring water in from a distant point or abandon the city. Quetta, originally designed for 50,000 people, now has 1 million inhabitants, all of whom depend on 2,000 wells pumping water deep from underground, depleting what is believed to be a fossil or nonreplenishable aquifer. Like Sana'a, Quetta may have enough water for the rest of this decade, but then its future is in doubt. In the words of one study assessing the water prospect, Quetta will soon be a dead city."
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Para la clase de ingls With most of the nearly 3 billion people to be added to the world's population by 2050 living in countries where water tables are already falling and where population growth swells the ranks of those sinking into hydrological poverty, water refugees are likely to become commonplace. They will be most common in arid and semiarid regions where populations are outgrowing the water supply. Villages in northwestern India have been abandoned because overpumping had depleted the local aquifers and villagers could no longer reach water. Millions of villagers in northern and western China and in parts of Mexico may have to move because of a lack of water. Spreading deserts are also displacing people. In China, where the Gobi Desert is growing by 10,400 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) a year, the refugee stream is swelling. Chinese scientists report that there are now desert refugees in three provincesInner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Gansu. An Asian Development Bank preliminary assessment of desertification in Gansu province has identified 4,000 villages that face abandonment. A photograph in Desert Witness, a book on desertification by Chinese photographer Lu Tongjing, shows what looks like a perfectly normal village in the western reaches of Inner Mongoliaexcept for one thing. There are no people. Its 4,000 residents were forced to leave because the aquifer was depleted, leaving them with no water. In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts and a lack of water already number in the thousands. In the eastern provinces of Baluchistan and Sistan alone, some 124 villages have been buried by drifting sand. In the vicinity of Damavand, a small town within an hour's drive of Tehran, 88 villages have been abandoned. In Nigeria, 3,500 square kilometers (1350 square miles) of land are converted to desert each year, making desertification the country's leading environmental problem. As the desert takes over, farmers and herdsmen are forced to move, squeezed into the shrinking area of habitable land or forced into cities. Another source of refugees, potentially a huge one, is rising seas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its early 2001 study, reported that sea level could rise by nearly 1 meter during this century. But research completed since then indicates that ice is melting much faster than reported earlier, suggesting that the possible rise may be much higher. Even a 1-meter rise in sea level would inundate half of Bangladesh's riceland, forcing the relocation of easily 40 million people. In a densely populated country with 144 million people, internal relocation would not be easy. But where else can they go? How many countries would accept even 1 million of these 40 million? Other Asian countries with rice-growing river floodplains, including China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Viet Nam, could boost the mass exodus from rising seas to the hundreds of millions.
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The refugee flows from falling water tables and expanding deserts are just beginning. How large these flows and those from rising seas will become remains to be seen. But the numbers could be huge. The rising flow of environmental refugees is yet another indicator that our modern civilization is out of sync with the earth's natural support systems. Among other things, it tells us that we need a worldwide effort to fill the family planning gap and to create the social conditions that will accelerate the shift to smaller families, a global full-court press to raise water productivity, and an energy strategy that will cut carbon dioxide emissions and stabilize the earth's climate. Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 28 de enero de 2004, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org
18. World food prices rising.

Decades of Environmental Neglect Shrinking Harvests in Key Countries
When this year's grain harvest begins in May, world grain stocks will be down to 59 days of consumption--the lowest level in 30 years. The last time stocks were this low, in 1972-74, wheat and rice prices doubled. A politics of scarcity emerged with exporting countries, such as the United States, restricting exports and using food for political leverage. Hundreds of thousands of people in food-short countries, including Ethiopia and Bangladesh, died of hunger.
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Now, a generation later, a similar scenario is unfolding, but for different reasons. After nearly tripling from 1950 to 1996, growth in the world grain harvest came to a halt. In each of the last four years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a drawdown of stocks. During this period, expanding deserts, falling water tables, crop-withering temperatures, and other environmental trends have largely offset the positive contributions of advancing technology and additional investment in agriculture. Prices of basic food and feed commodities are climbing. Wheat futures for May 2004 that traded as low as $2.90 a bushel within the last year on the Chicago Board of Trade have recently topped $4 a bushel, a climb of 38 percent. A similar calculation shows the price of corn up by 36 percent, rice up 39 percent, and soybeans doubling from just over $5 per bushel to over $10 a bushel. Rises in the price of wheat and rice (the world's two basic food staples) and corn and soybeans (the principal feedstuffs) are contributing to higher food prices worldwide, including in China and the United States, the largest food producers. In China, where grain prices are 30 percent above those of a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics reports that retail food prices in March were 7.9 percent higher than in March 2003. The price of vegetable oil is up by 26 percent, meat by 15 percent, and eggs by 19 percent. All countries are affected by the rising world price of basic food commodities. The American Farm Bureau marketbasket survey, which monitors U.S. retail prices of 16 basic food products in 32 states, shows a 10.5 percent rise in food prices during the first quarter of 2004 over the like period in 2003. Price rises range from a 2 percent rise in the price of milk to a 29-percent rise for eggs. The price of vegetable oil, up 23 percent, is beginning to reflect the doubling of soybean prices. Meat prices are up across the board. A pound of ground chuck climbed from $2.10 a year ago to $2.48, up 18 percent. Whole fryers were also up 18 percent. Pork chops were up 10 percent. Bread and potatoes were up 4 and 3 percent, respectively. Still higher food prices are likely in the second quarter as soybeans have recently hit 15-year highs and wheat and corn 7-year highs. Prices of livestock products that require large amounts of grain are particularly sensitive to higher grain prices. By contrast, bread prices do not usually rise much because wheat typically accounts for less than one-tenth the cost of a loaf of bread. Even a doubling of wheat prices would not greatly increase bread prices. Food prices are rising almost everywhere. In Russia, bread shortages pushed the price of bread in February up 38 percent compared with February 2003. This so alarmed the government that it restricted wheat exports by imposing an export tax of 35 euros per ton.
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Para la clase de ingls In South Africa, corn futures prices have climbed in early 2004. The price of white maize, the principal food staple, rose by more than half between December 2003 and January 2004. Yellow maize, used mostly for livestock feed, climbed by 30 percent during the same period. Higher prices reflect sagging production in the face of soaring demand as the world continues to add more than 70 million people a year and as incomes rise, enabling more of the world's people to consume grainbased livestock and poultry products. Growth in world grain production is lagging behind the growth in demand largely because environmental trends, such as spreading deserts, falling water tables, and rising temperatures, are shrinking harvests in many countries. Consider, for example, Kazakhstan, the former Soviet Republic that was the site of the Virgin Lands Project launched in the 1950s. To expand grain production, the Soviets plowed an area of virgin grasslands that exceeded the wheat area of Australia and Canada combined. It dramatically boosted production, but by 1980 soil erosion was undermining productivity. During the 24 years since then, half the country's grainland area has been abandoned. During the late 1980s, Saudi Arabia launched an ambitious plan to become selfsufficient in wheat. By tapping a deep underground aquifer, the Saudi's raised grain output from 300,000 tons in 1980 to 5 million tons in 1994. Unfortunately the aquifer could not sustain large-scale pumping and by 2003 the wheat harvest had fallen to 2.2 million tons. Nearby Israel, faced with dwindling water supplies, is no longer irrigating its small remaining area of wheat, which means that dependence on imported grain, already over 90 percent, will climb still higher. China is the first major food producer to face reduced harvests partly because of expanding deserts and aquifer depletion. Some 24,000 Chinese villages have either been abandoned or have had their farm economies seriously impaired by invading deserts. In the arid northern half of the country where most of the wheat is grown, tens of thousands of wells go dry each year. These environmental trends, combined with weak grain prices that lower planting incentives, shrank the harvest from its peak of 123 million tons in 1997 to 86 million tons in 2003, a drop of 30 percent. Perhaps the most pervasive environmental trend that is shrinking grain harvests today is rising temperature. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its September 2003 monthly world crop estimates, it reduced the projected world grain harvest by 35 million tons from its August estimate. This drop, equal to half the U.S. wheat harvest, was due almost entirely to the intense August heat wave in Europe, where crop-withering temperatures shrank harvests from France in the west through the Ukraine in the east. In 2002 record heat and drought combined to shrink harvests in both India and the United States. Record and near-record temperatures in key food-producing countries accounted for a large share of the record world grain shortfalls of 91 million tons in 2002 and 105 million tons in 2003.
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The question now is whether farmers can expand the grain harvest this year enough to eliminate the huge deficit of last year. Unfortunately there are no efforts underway that are sufficient to reverse the expansion of deserts, the fall in water tables, or the rise in temperatures that are shrinking harvests in key countries. In the absence of such an effort, food prices are likely to continue rising. American Farm Bureau Marketbasket Survey, First Quarter 2004 Item Ground chuck (1 pound) White bread (20-ounce loaf) Cheerios (10-ounce box) Apples (1 pound) Whole fryers (1 pound) Pork chops (1 pound) Eggs (1 dozen) Cheddar cheese (1 pound) Bacon (1 pound) Mayonnaise (32-ounce jar) Russet potatoes (5-lb bag) Sirloin tip roast (1 lb) Whole milk (1 gallon) Vegetable oil (32-oz bottle) All-purpose flour (5-lb bag) Corn oil (32-oz bottle) First Quarter 2003 (US$) 2.10 1.32 2.78 1.05 1.05 3.10 1.22 3.30 2.91 3.14 1.89 3.21 2.80 2.25 1.53 2.41 First Quarter 2004 (US$) 2.48 1.36 3.00 1.22 1.24 3.42 1.59 3.46 3.00 3.27 1.96 3.52 2.87 2.76 1.62 3.09 Change (percent) + 18 +3 +8 + 16 + 18 + 10 + 29 +5 +3 +4 +4 + 10 +2 + 23 +6 + 28
Source: American Farm Bureau Federation Fuente

Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 28 de abril de 2004, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update39.htm
19. World food security deteriorating

Food Crunch in 2005 Now Likely
Closing the gap in the world grain harvest this year following four consecutive grain harvest shortfalls, each larger than the one before, will not be easy. The grain shortfall of 105 million tons in 2003 is easily the largest on record, amounting to 5 percent of annual world consumption of 1,930 million tons. The four harvest shortfalls have dropped world carryover stocks of grain to the lowest level in 30 years, amounting to only 59 days of consumption. Wheat and
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Para la clase de ingls corn prices are at 7-year highs. Rice prices are at 5-year highs. (See data http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update40_data.htm. ) Can the world's farmers close the gap this year? In addition to the usual uncertainties farmers face, they must now contend with two newer trends--falling water tables and rising temperatures. If there is another large shortfall, grain prices will continue the rise of recent months, driving up food prices worldwide. The production gain we need this year is huge. To start, we need to increase world grain output enough in 2004 to eliminate last year's shortfall of 105 million tons. In addition, we need 15 million tons to feed the 74 million people who will be added to world population this year. With the grain left in the bin as this year's harvest begins at the dangerously low level of 59 days of consumption, we also need to rebuild to the 70-day level that is considered the minimum needed for food security. If we try to do just half of that rebuilding this year, going up to 65 days of consumption, we will need another 30 million tons. There we have it. Maintaining the current precarious balance between production and consumption will require this year's grain harvest to grow by 120 million tons. But modestly boosting food security will require a total gain of 150 million tons. Unfortunately, the chances of increasing it by even 120 million tons appear to be less than one in ten. A fifth consecutive year in which the harvest falls short of consumption seems likely. The question is, how much will it fall short and how will it affect world food prices? In estimating this year's grain harvest, we know more about the prospect for the wheat crop than we do for rice or corn simply because the harvest is dominated by the northern hemisphere's winter wheat, which was planted last fall. Among major producers, the planted area compared with 2003 is down in China, the United States, Russia, and the Ukraine, but up in India and the European Union with little change in area overall. Given the expected recovery of wheat yields in Europe and India from the heat- and drought-reduced levels of last year, this year's world wheat crop could easily be up by 35 million tons. Because rice is water dependent, neither the planted area nor yields vary much from year to year. The only big increase this year is likely to come in China, where the government is making an all-out effortincluding higher government procurement prices--to reverse a four-year decline in the rice area. Early estimates indicate China's rice crop could rise from 115 million tons to 122 million tons this year. Allowing for modest gains in other rice-producing countries, an increase of 12 million tons over last year's harvest appears within reach. Estimating the world harvest of corn, used mostly for feed, starts with the United States--which accounts for 40 percent of the crop. The U.S. area planted to corn is expected to be roughly the same as last year. Since the U.S. corn harvest is largely rainfed, and thus vulnerable to both heat and drought, yield can vary widely. It is doubtful that American farmers can match last year's record corn yield, but we will
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Para la clase de ingls optimistically assume they can and that better crops elsewhere will be enough to raise the 2004 world corn crop by 10 million tons. For the minor grains--barley, rye, oats, sorghum, and milletwhere production has been falling in recent years, we will assume a 3-million-ton gain. Combining the estimated increases of 35 million tons for wheat, 12 million tons for rice, 10 million tons for corn, and 3 million tons for other grains gives an increase of 60 million tons over last year's harvest. This is an improvement, but it would still be 60 million tons short of what we need to close the gap. And if we include the goal of modestly rebuilding stocks, we will be short by 90 million tons. As noted earlier, falling water tables and rising temperatures are making it more difficult for farmers to expand grain production. Water tables are falling and wells are going dry under the North China Plain, which produces a third of China's corn and half of its wheat; in most states in India, including the Punjab, its breadbasket; and under the southern Great Plains and southwest of the United States. In addition, farmers in all three countries are losing water to cities. Beyond this, in dozens of smaller countries farmers are also losing irrigation water to aquifer depletion and to cities. Record or near-record temperatures have withered crops in key food-producing regions of the world in each of the last two years. Since 1970, the earth's average temperature has risen 0.6 degrees Celsius. Three of the four warmest years on record came during the last four yearsyears of crop shortfalls. This year's average global temperature will almost certainly be above the norm (defined as the average for 1950-80). What we do not know yet is how much above it will be and which food-producing regions will be most affected. If the estimated 2004 shortfall of 60 million tons materializes, it will take the world into uncharted territory. Either grain stocks will drop by 12 days of consumption, falling to an all-time low of 47 days, or food prices will rise and force a reduction in consumption--something that will be particularly difficult for the 3 billion people who live on less than $2 a day. In reality, the shortfall will be covered by some combination of declining stocks and rising prices. A shortfall on the scale projected almost guarantees the emergence of a politics of food scarcity in 2005 of the sort that occurred in the early 1970s, when exporting countries such as the United States restricted grain exports in order to curb the rise in domestic food prices. There are already early signs of this. In September 2002, Canada--on the heels of a heat-reduced harvest--announced it would limit wheat exports to assure that domestic needs were satisfied. Two months later, Australia, also experiencing a drought-reduced harvest, limited exports to its traditional customers only. In mid2003, the European Union stopped issuing grain export certificates for several
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Para la clase de ingls months. And in January 2004, Russia imposed an export tax on wheat to combat rising bread prices. The risk is that a year from now, lower grain stocks and soaring food prices could destabilize governments in low-income grain-importing countries on a scale that would disrupt global economic progress. If this lowers the Nikkei stock index, the Dow Jones 500, and other key indicators, we may realize that our economic future depends on a worldwide effort to stabilize population, raise water productivity, and stabilize climate--and at wartime speed. Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 5 de mayo de 2004, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update40.htm
20. Sterilization is worlds most popular contraceptive method.

One of four births still unplanned
Female sterilization is the world's most popular method of birth prevention. A global survey of reproductive health among married couples by the United Nations found that one fifth rely on female sterilization (tubal ligation) to control their fertility. In Brazil, India, and China, a third or more of all married women have been sterilized.
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Even though male sterilization (vasectomy) is safer, quicker, and less expensive, it is much less common, used by just 4 percent of married couples. In only a few countries, including New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Bhutan, do more couples choose male over female sterilization. Out of the world's 1 billion married couples, some 650 million plan their families. It is the other 350 million couples who either do not have access to family planning services or do not want to plan their families who contribute a disproportionately large share of the near 80 million people added to the world's population each year. It is also couples in this group who seek out more abortions and who are most at risk from higher maternal mortality. Among the world's married couples who do practice modern contraception, the next most popular methods after female sterilization, which is used by 36 percent, are intrauterine devices (IUDs), at 27 percent, and the pill, at 14 percent. An additional 6 percent choose other modern female methods. Just 17 percent of modern contraception is in the hands of men. In addition to the 7 percent of couples relying on male sterilization, 9 percent use condoms. But male methods are used by only 12 percent of couples in the developing world, compared with 38 percent in the industrial world. Among traditional methods, withdrawal-perhaps the oldest method of birth control--is practiced by more than 32 million married couples worldwide. It is the leading method for couples in several East European countries, including Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania. New Zealand boasts the world's highest vasectomy rate; there, nearly one in five married men has been sterilized. The method is just slightly less popular than the pill. Family planning researchers from Bangladesh, the world's eighth most populous country, are examining New Zealand's high vasectomy rates for clues on how to promote this method in their own densely populated country. More men assume responsibility for family planning in Japan than in any other country, no doubt because the pill became available only recently. In 2000, condoms accounted for almost 78 percent of modern contraceptive use there. This is down from at least 86 percent in 1994. Condom use has fallen in recent years as some couples switched to the pill, which was finally approved by the Japanese government in 1999. The condom is becoming somewhat less popular in Japan just when its use elsewhere is increasing as a means of protection against sexually transmitted infections, importantly HIV. Among all American contraceptive users, for instance, pill use dropped from 31 percent in 1988 to 27 percent in 1995, while condom use climbed from 15 to 20 percent. Similar shifts have been observed in Canada, France, and Australia. In the United States, 38 percent of married modern contraceptive users depend on
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Para la clase de ingls male methods, split between condoms and vasectomy, but female sterilization remains the single most popular method, chosen by 34 percent of couples. Twentytwo percent rely on the pill. Less than 1 percent choose IUDs--one of the world's lowest rates. In China and India, home to the world's two largest populations, female contraceptive measures predominate. In China, 44 percent of married women using modern contraceptives rely on the IUD and 40 percent on sterilization. In India, female sterilization is the overwhelming choice, accounting for a full four fifths of contraceptive use. Government encouragement, a high female literacy rate, and low infant mortality have helped raise China's modern contraceptive use among married couples to 83 percent--the world's highest. As a result, population growth has slowed to less than 1 percent annually, roughly the same as in the United States. Chinese women on average have fewer than two children. By contrast, fewer than half of India's married couples use any form of birth control. Low literacy levels, high infant mortality, and a lack of access to affordable and reliable contraceptives have kept the annual population growth rate at 1.7 percent. On average, women in India give birth to more than three children. Lowering fertility to replacement level (roughly two children per couple) sets the stage for population stabilization--the ultimate goal of most population policies. This is typically achieved when at least 70 percent of reproductive-age women practice some form of family planning. Unfortunately, more than half of the world's women live in countries where regular birth control use is much lower. Many of these women do not have any access to affordable and reliable reproductive health services, or do not have the support of their husbands, extended families, or communities to try to plan their families. Much of the family planning shortfall occurs in the developing world, although this varies widely among countries. Though contraceptive use among women in developing countries has increased dramatically--from 24 percent in 1970 to 60 percent in the late 1990s (but 49 percent if China is excluded)--it still lags behind the industrial world's rate of 68 percent. (See figure at http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/Update18_data.htm). African countries have the lowest levels of contraceptive use, suffering from a lack of reproductive health funding. In some 30 African countries, less than 20 percent of married couples use contraception. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Rwanda, Angola, and Somalia are among the dozen or so countries where less than 5 percent of couples plan their families. Making condoms available there would both prevent births and the surging spread of HIV. Partly as a result of the continuing family planning gap, at least one fourth of the 133 million babies born worldwide each year are unplanned. When family planning needs are not met, women's health is compromised. Some women turn to abortion
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Para la clase de ingls as a last option, simply because they may not have enough food for another child. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo set goals for funding a 20-year population and reproductive health program, but donor countries--mostly industrial nations--have fallen short on their funding commitments by some two thirds. Few funding shortfalls have such a high social toll. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that each $1 million shortfall in contraceptive spending translates into 360,000 additional unwanted pregnancies, 150,000 additional induced abortions, 800 maternal deaths, 11,000 infant deaths, and 14,000 additional deaths of children under the age of 5--all preventable. Now that the United States has ignored the recommendations of its own State Department and withdrawn a promised $34 million in funding for UNFPA, other donor countries and individuals are scrambling to try to make up the difference so that women will not lose access to vital services. With the world's largest generation of young people entering their reproductive years, this is not the time to cut family planning funds.
Fuente
Artculo de Janet Larsen del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 15 de octubre de 2002, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update18.htm
21. Glaciers and sea ice endangered by rising temperatures

By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro may exist only in old photographs. The glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park could disappear by 2030. And by mid-century, the Arctic Sea may be completely ice-free during summertime. As the earth's temperature has risen in recent decades, the earth's ice cover has begun to melt. And that melting is accelerating.
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In both 2002 and 2003, the Northern Hemisphere registered record-low sea ice cover. New satellite data show the Arctic region warming more during the 1990s than during the 1980s, with Arctic Sea ice now melting by up to 15 percent per decade. The long-sought Northwest Passage, a dream of early explorers, could become our nightmare. The loss of Arctic Sea ice could alter ocean circulation patterns and trigger changes in global climate patterns. On the opposite end of the globe, Southern Ocean sea ice floating near Antarctica has shrunk by some 20 percent since 1950. This unprecedented melting of sea ice corroborates records showing that the regional air temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950. Antarctic ice shelves that existed for thousands of years are crumbling. One of the world's largest icebergs, named B-15, that measured near 10,000 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) or half the size of New Jersey, calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. In May 2002, the shelf lost another section measuring 31 kilometers (19 miles) wide and 200 kilometers (124 miles) long. Elsewhere on Antarctica, the Larsen Ice Shelf has largely disintegrated within the last decade, shrinking to 40 percent of its previously stable size. Following the break-off of the Larsen A section in 1995 and the collapse of Larsen B in early 2002, melting of the nearby land-based glaciers that the ice shelves once supported has more than doubled. Unlike the melting of sea ice or the floating ice shelves along coasts, the melting of ice on land raises sea level. Recent studies showing the worldwide acceleration of glacier melting indicate that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimate for sea level rise this centuryranging from 0.1 meters to 0.9 meters will need to be revised upwards. (See table of selected examples of ice melt from around the world.) On Greenland, an ice-covered island three times the size of Texas, once-stable glaciers are now melting at a quickening rate. The Jakobshavn Glacier on the island's southwest coast, which is one of the major drainage outlets from the interior ice sheet, is now thinning four times faster than during most of the twentieth century. Each year Greenland loses some 51 cubic kilometers of ice, enough to annually raise sea level 0.13 millimeters. Were Greenland's entire ice sheet to melt, global sea level could rise by a startling 7 meters (23 feet), inundating most of the world's coastal cities. The Himalayas contain the world's third largest ice mass after Antarctica and Greenland. Most Himalayan glaciers have been thinning and retreating over the past 30 years, with losses accelerating to alarming levels in the past decade. On Mount Everest, the glacier that ended at the historic base camp of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first humans to reach the summit, has retreated 5
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Para la clase de ingls kilometers (3 miles) since their 1953 ascent. Glaciers in Bhutan are retreating at an average rate of 3040 meters a year. A similar situation is found in Nepal. As the glaciers melt they are rapidly filling glacial lakes, creating a flood risk. An international team of scientists has warned that with current melt rates, at least 44 glacial lakes in the Himalayas could burst their banks in as little as five years. Glaciers themselves store vast quantities of water. More than half of the world's population relies on water that originates in mountains, coming from rainfall runoff or ice melt. In some areas glaciers help sustain a constant water supply; in others, meltwater from glaciers is a primary water source during the dry season. In the short term, accelerated melting means that more water feeds rivers. Yet as glaciers disappear, dry season river flow declines. The Himalayan glaciers feed the seven major rivers of Asiathe Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and Huang He (Yellow)and thus contribute to the year-round water supply of a vast population. In India alone, some 500 million people, including those in New Delhi and Calcutta, depend on glacier meltwater that feeds into the Ganges River system. Glaciers in Central Asia's Tien Shan Mountains have shrunk by nearly 30 percent between 1955 and 1990. In arid western China, shrinking glaciers account for at least 10 percent of freshwater supplies. The largest aggregation of tropical glaciers is in the northern Andes. The retreat of the Qori Kalis Glacier on the west side of the Quelccaya Ice Cap that stretches across Peru has accelerated to 155 meters a year between 1998 and 2000three times faster than during the previous three-year period. The entire ice cap could vanish over the next two decades. The Antizana Glacier, which provides Quito, Ecuador, with almost half its water, has retreated more than 90 meters over the last eight years. The Chacaltaya Glacier near La Paz, Bolivia, melted to 7 percent of its 1940s volume by 1998. It could disappear entirely by the end of this decade, depriving the 1.5 million people in La Paz and the nearby city of Alto of an important source of water and power. Africa's glaciers are also disappearing. Across the continent, mountain glaciers have shrunk to one third their size over the twentieth century. On Tanzania's Kilimanjaro, ice cover has shrunk by more than 33 percent since 1989. By 2020 it could be completely gone. In Western Europe, glacial area has shrunk by up to 40 percent and glacial volume by more than half since 1850. If temperatures continue to rise at recent rates, major sections of glaciers covering the Alps and the French and Spanish Pyrenees could be gone in the next few decades. During the record-high temperature summer of 2003, some Swiss glaciers retreated by an unprecedented 150 meters. The United Nations Environment Programme is warning that for this region long
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Para la clase de ingls associated with ice and snow, warming temperatures signify the demise of a popular ski industry, not to mention a cultural identity. Boundaries around Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies cannot stop the melting of the glaciers there. Glacier National Park in Montana has lost over two thirds of its glaciers since 1850. If temperatures continue to rise, it may lose the remainder by 2030. In just the past 30 years, the average temperature in Alaska climbed more than 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit)easily four times the global increase. Glaciers in all of Alaska's 11 glaciated mountain ranges are shrinking. Since the mid-1990s, Alaskan glaciers have been thinning by 1.8 meters a year, more than three times as fast as during the preceding 40 years. The global average temperature has climbed by 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) in the past 25 years. Over this time period, melting of sea ice and mountain glaciers has increased dramatically. During this century, global temperature may rise between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius, and melting will accelerate further. Just how much will depend in part on the energy policy choices made today.
Fuente
Artculo de Janet Larsen del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 22 de enero de 2004, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update32.htm
22. Ecological deficits taking economic toll

"If we have learned anything over the past year, it is that accounting systems that do not tell the truth can be costly," said Lester Brown, senior author of the new book, The Earth Policy Reader. "Faulty accounting systems have driven some of the world's largest corporations into bankruptcy, costing millions of people their
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Para la clase de ingls lifetime savings, retirement income, and jobs," said Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research organization. In The Earth Policy Reader, coauthored with Janet Larsen and Bernie FischlowitzRoberts, Brown says the global economic accounting system is misleading us too, but with potentially more serious consequences. Economic prosperity is achieved in part by running up ecological deficits that do not show up on the books. Some of the record economic prosperity of recent decades has come from overplowing land, overfishing oceanic fisheries, overgrazing rangelands, overcutting forests, and overpumping aquifers. At some point, these expanding ecological deficits begin to reinforce each other. In China, for instance, shrinking forests, deteriorating rangelands, eroding croplands, and falling water tables are converging to expand deserts and create a dust bowl of historic dimensions. The weight of 1.3 billion people and their livestock on the land and the rapid pace of economic expansion has put China on the frontline of the deteriorating relationship between the global economy and the earth's ecosystem. "China is now at war," said Brown. "It is not invading armies that are claiming its territory, but expanding deserts. Old deserts are advancing and new ones are forming, like guerrilla forces striking unexpectedly, forcing Beijing to fight on several fronts. And China is losing the war. The deserts are claiming an ever larger piece of territory each year." The flow of refugees has already begun, as villages are overrun by sand dunes in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Ningxia Provinces. A Chinese scientist doing grassland research in Xilingol Prefecture in Inner Mongolia estimates that if recent trends of desertification continue, the region will be uninhabitable in 15 years. An Asian Development Bank assessment of desertification in Gansu Province reports that 4,000 villages risk being overrun by drifting sands. The U.S. Dust Bowl of the 1930s forced some 3 million "Okies" and other refugees to leave the land, many of them heading west from Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas to California. But the dust bowl forming in China is much larger than that one was, and China's population of 1.3 billon dwarfs the U.S. population at that time of 150 million. Whereas the U.S. migration was measured in the millions, China's may measure in the tens of millions. And as a U.S. embassy report noted, "unfortunately, China's 21st-century 'Okies' have no California to escape to, at least not in China." "China is working to halt the expansion of deserts and to reclaim the lost land, but at this point, the program is not close to being sufficient," said Brown. "Due to spreading deserts and growing water shortages as water tables fall and aquifers are depleted, China's grain harvest is falling. In each of the last three years, the country has experienced grain deficits of roughly 40 million tons. Thus far it has covered the shortfall by drawing down stocks. When it can no longer do that, China will turn to world markets on a scale never before seen. We will not need to read
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Para la clase de ingls about this in the newspapers. We will see the effect on food prices at the supermarket checkout counter." The world is also incurring a vast water deficit. It is largely invisible, historically recent, and growing fast. It is a product of the tripling of water demand over the last half-century and the rapid worldwide spread of powerful diesel and electrically driven pumps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters (100 feet). As a result, some farmers discovered in the summer of 2002 that their irrigation wells were pumping air instead of water. And water tables are falling in several states in India, including the Punjab, the country's breadbasket. Competition for water between cities and the countryside is intensifying. The world's farmers are handicapped not only by falling water tables, but also by rising temperatures. During this past summer, farmers in key food-producing regions were confronted with some of the highest temperatures on record. The U.S. harvest has suffered from a combination of record heat and drought, which dramatically lowered the 2002 grain harvest. India's harvest has also suffered from high temperatures, including a heat wave in which temperatures reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in May, killing more than 1,000 people in the state of Andhra Pradesh alone. Record temperatures are accelerating the melting of ice as well. Several new studies report that the earth's ice cover is melting faster than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in early 2001. A team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists, using satellite data to measure changes in the area covered by glaciers, described an acceleration of melting glaciers in several mountainous regions, including the South American Andes, the Swiss Alps, and the French and Spanish Pyrenees. Other studies show ice melting faster than anticipated in the Himalayas and the U.S. Rocky Mountains and Alaska. Although less than two years have passed since the completion of the IPCC report, the new data recording the acceleration of ice melting mean that the rise in sea level it projected for this century is already outdated. "The good news," said Brown, "is that the world is beginning to recognize the dimensions of the threats that our modern civilization has created for itself. The energy restructuring needed to reduce carbon emissions and stabilize climate is now under way. For example, between 1995 and 2001 world wind electric generation expanded by 32 percent a year while coal use declined slightly, falling 2 percent over the six-year span. In 2001, world wind electric generating capacity jumped by 37 percent. In the United States, it went up by 67 percent." The cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen from 38 per kilowatt-hour 15 years ago to as little as 3 on prime wind sites today. And the cost is continuing to fall. Wind is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, clean, and climate-benign--a set of
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Para la clase de ingls characteristics that no other energy source can match. Cheap electricity from wind now offers the option of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen. Fortuitously, hydrogen is the fuel of choice for the new fuel cell-powered automobiles. Honda and DaimlerChrysler plan to be on the market with fuel cellpowered cars in 2003. Ford plans to enter the market in 2004. "We have the technologies to build a new economy," said Brown, "an ecoeconomy, one that is compatible with the earth's ecosystem. The key to building this economy is to get the market to tell the ecological truth. Over the past century, the global economy has grown from an output of just over $2 trillion a year to $42 trillion, roughly a 20-fold increase. The indirect effects of the economy on the earth a century ago were minimal. This is no longer the case. Today the indirect costs of various goods and services may exceed the direct costs, the costs that determine the market price. When we buy a gallon of gasoline, for example, we pay for getting the oil out of the ground, refining it into gasoline, and delivering it to the local service station. We do not pay the costs of disrupting the earth's climate system." "We need to calculate the indirect costs of burning gasoline so we can learn the full costs of its use. A model for doing this is provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in April released a study on the cost to society of smoking a pack of cigarettes. When both the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses and the losses in employee productivity as a result of absenteeism are included, each pack of cigarettes smoked in the United States costs society $7.18. The question is not whether that price is paid. It is paid by the smoker, by the employer, or by the taxpayers who fund Medicare programs." Calculating the costs to society of burning gasoline means including the medical costs of treating those with illnesses from breathing polluted air, which number in the millions. Other costs to be tallied are the damage to forests, crops, and buildings caused by acid rain and, by far the largest of all, the costs of climate change. Higher temperatures can wither crops and reduce harvests. They also cause ice melting and rising sea level, which can lead to the loss of ocean-front property, the loss of beaches, and, most important, the loss of agricultural lands. This is particularly important in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, where a 1-meter rise in sea level would inundate half of the country's riceland with saltwater. The rice-growing river deltas and floodplains in other Asian countries would also be at risk. The inundation of half of Bangladesh's riceland would likely produce some 40 million refugees who would have to be relocated. We can only speculate as to what the cost of such a massive relocation would be. A 1-meter rise in sea level, very much in the range of possibility during this century, would also require the resettlement of the populations of numerous low-lying island
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Para la clase de ingls countries. The interesting question for us is, What is the cost to society of burning a gallon of gasoline? Is it more or less, for example, than the cost to society of smoking a pack of cigarettes? Once we calculate these costs, we can incorporate them into market prices by restructuring taxes--reducing income taxes and raising gasoline taxes. If we can get the market to tell the truth, then we can avoid being blindsided by faulty accounting systems that lead to bankruptcy. Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 8 de octubre de 2002, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org
23. Human actions worsen natural disasters

More people worldwide are now displaced by natural disasters than by conflict. In the 1990s, natural catastrophes like hurricanes, floods, and fires affected more than two billion people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide-a loss greater than during the previous four decades combined. But
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Para la clase de ingls more and more of the devastation wrought by such natural disasters is "unnatural" in origin, caused by ecologically destructive practices and an increasing number of people living in harm's way, finds a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C.-based environmental research organization. "By degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate, we are unraveling the strands of a complex ecological safety net," said Senior Researcher and author of Unnatural Disasters Janet Abramovitz. "We have altered so many natural systems so dramatically, their ability to protect us from disturbances is greatly diminished." Also contributing to the rising toll of disasters is the enormous expansion of the human population and the built environment, which put more people and more economic activities in harm's way. One in three people-some 2 billion-now live within 100 kilometers of a coastline. Thirteen of the world's 19 megacities (with over 10 million inhabitants) are in coastal zones. The projected effects of global warming, such as more extreme weather events and sea level rise, will only magnify potential losses. Although "unnatural disasters" occur everywhere, their impact falls disproportionately on poor people as they are more likely to be living in vulnerable areas and they have fewer resources to prepare for or recover from disasters. Between 1985 and 1999, 96 percent of recorded disaster fatalities were in developing countries. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that future impacts of climate extremes will affect the poor disproportionately. Viet Nam and Bangladesh, for example, are projected to lose more than 70,000 square kilometers of land, affecting some 32 million people. Rich countries will not be spared either. The entire Mediterranean coast is especially vulnerable to sea level rise, as are the U.S.'s Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Economic losses from "unnatural disasters" are greater in the developed world-the earthquake that rocked Kobe, Japan in 1995, for example, cost more than $100 billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster in history. Smaller losses often hit poor countries harder, where they represent a larger share of the national economy. The damage from 1998's Hurricane Mitch in Central America was $8.5 billion-higher than the combined gross domestic product of Honduras and Nicaragua, the two nations hardest hit. Few of the losses in poor countries are insured. In the period 1985-99, the vast majority of insured losses-some 92 percent-were in industrial nations. "Expanding the financial safety net for poor countries is essential," said Abramovitz. "So too is maintaining and restoring nature's ecological safety net in all countries. Dunes, barrier islands, mangrove forests and coastal wetlands are natural 'shock absorbers' that protect against coastal storms. Forests, floodplains,
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Para la clase de ingls and wetlands, are 'sponges' that absorb floodwaters. Nature provides these services for free, and we should take advantage of them rather than undermining them." For example, China now recognizes that forests are ten times more valuable for flood control and water supply than they are for timber, and has halted logging in the Yangtze River watershed. The loss of 85 percent of the forests in the upper Yangtze River worsened the 1998 flood that affected 223 million people. Viet Nam has restored 2,000 hectares of mangroves in a successful effort to provide a buffer from coastal storms as well as much-needed jobs in fisheries. The U.S. could prevent a repeat of the devastating 1993 Mississippi flood by restoring just half of the wetlands lost in the upper Mississippi Basin-a move that would affect no more than three percent of surrounding agricultural, forest, and urban land. To date, much of the response to disasters has focused on improving weather predictions before the events and providing humanitarian relief afterwards-both of which have saved countless lives. "Yet, too often long-term mitigation efforts are overlooked by the public and politicians alike," says Abramovitz. "Money invested in disaster mitigation yields several fold returns in recovery cost savings. Considering the social and ecological losses that are also prevented, it's clear that mitigation is a great investment." Unnatural Disasters also suggests several other specific mitigative measures: Community-based disaster preparedness is essential in preventing and responding to the full array of disasters that societies now face. Rather than subsidizing environmentally unsound settlement and development practices, governments need to direct new construction and settlement out of harm's way. Infrastructure in vulnerable locations can be built or reinforced to withstand hazards. Debt relief for developing nations can free up resources for desperately needed disaster prevention efforts. Better hazard mapping can further improve early warning and disaster preparedness schemes, keeping human and economic losses as low as possible. QUICK FACTS: Worldwatch Paper 158 Unnatural Disaster In the 20th Century, 10 million people died as a result of natural catastrophes. The UN named the 1990's the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. Instead it may go down as the Decade of Disasters: Natural disasters in the 1990s caused over US $608 billion in economic losses-five times the figure in the 1970s, and 15 times the total in the 1950s. The 1990s saw 86 great disasters (major natural catastrophes requiring outside assistance due to extensive deaths or losses). The 1950s saw 20, the 1970s 47. Between 1985 and 1999 more than 560,000 people died in natural
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Para la clase de ingls disasters. Only four percent were in industrial countries. Asia has been hardest hit by natural disasters (p.9). Asia's tally between 1985 and 1999: 90 percent of all people affected by disasters, 77 percent of deaths from disasters, 45 percent of recorded economic losses from disasters.
Cost of disasters 1985 - 1999 Global economic losses = US $918.7 billion. Regional breakdown: Region Asia North America Europe Caribbean Central America Oceania South America Africa Cost (US$) $ 409.8 bilion $ 304.4 bilion $ 112.4 bilion $ 30.0 bilion $ 22.3 bilion $ 16.5 bilion $ 16.4 bilion $ 6.8 bilion Share (%) 45 % 33 % 12 % 3% 2% 2% 2% 1%
Between 1985 and 1999, the world's wealthiest countries sustained 57.3 percent of the measured economic losses to disasters, representing 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the same years the world's poorest countries endured 24.4 percent of the economic toll of disasters, representing 13.4 percent of their GDP.
The added threat-Climate Change During the 20th century global average sea level rose by 10 - 20 centimeters. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that sea levels will rise another 9-88 centimeters by 2100. Among other impacts, some 75-200 million more people will be flooded by storm surges each year.
Fuente
Texto enviado por correo electrnico el 19 de octubre de 2001 por Dick Bell, del Worldwatch Institute, (http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/paper/158facts.html)
24. Rising sea level forcing evacuation of island country

The leaders of Tuvalu--a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean midway between
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Para la clase de ingls Hawaii and Australia--have conceded defeat in their battle with the rising sea, announcing that they will abandon their homeland. After being rebuffed by Australia, the Tuvaluans asked New Zealand to accept its 11,000 citizens, but it has not agreed to do so. During the twentieth century, sea level rose by 20-30 centimeters (8-12 inches). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects a rise of up to 1 meter during this century. Sea level is rising because of the melting of glaciers and the thermal expansion of the ocean as a result of climate change. This in turn is due to rising atmospheric levels of CO2, largely from burning fossil fuels. As sea level has risen, Tuvalu has experienced lowland flooding. Saltwater intrusion is adversely affecting its drinking water and food production. Coastal erosion is eating away at the nine islands that make up the country. The higher temperatures that are raising sea level also lead to more destructive storms. Higher surface water temperatures in the tropics and subtropics mean more energy radiating into the atmosphere to drive storm systems. Paani Laupepa, a Tuvaluan government official, reports an unusually high level of tropical cyclones during the last decade. (Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.) Laupepa is bitterly critical of the United States for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to reduce carbon emissions. He told a BBC reporter that "by refusing to ratify the Protocol, the U.S. has effectively denied future generations of Tuvaluans their fundamental freedom to live where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years." For the leaders of island countries, this is not a new issue. In October 1987, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives, noted in an impassioned address to the United Nations General Assembly that his country was threatened by rising sea level. In his words, his country of 311,000 people was "an endangered nation." With most of its 1,196 tiny islands barely 2 meters above sea level, the Maldives' survival would be in jeopardy with even a 1-meter rise in sea level in the event of a storm surge. Tuvalu is the first country where people are trying to evacuate because of rising seas, but it almost certainly will not be the last. It is seeking a home for 11,000 people, but what about the 311,000 who may be forced to leave the Maldives? Or the millions of others living in low-lying countries who may soon join the flow of climate refugees? Who will accept them? Will the United Nations be forced to develop a climate-immigrant quota system, allocating the refugees among countries according to the size of their population? Or will the allocation be according to the contribution of individual countries to the climate change that caused the displacement? Feeling threatened by the climate change over which they have little control, the
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Para la clase de ingls island countries have organized into an Alliance of Small Island States, a group formed in 1990 specifically to lobby on behalf of these countries vulnerable to climate change. In addition to island nations, low-lying coastal countries are also threatened by rising sea level. In 2000 the World Bank published a map showing that a 1-meter rise in sea level would inundate half of Bangladesh's riceland. With a rise in sea level of up to 1 meter forecast for this century, Bangladeshis would be forced to migrate not by the thousands but by the millions. In a country with 134 million people--already one of the most densely populated on the earth--this would be a traumatic experience. Where will these climate refugees go? Rice-growing river floodplains in other Asian countries would also be affected, including India, Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia, and China. With a 1-meter rise in sea level, more than a third of Shanghai would be under water. For China as a whole, 70 million people would be vulnerable to a 100-year storm surge. The most easily measured effect of rising sea level is the inundation of coastal areas. Donald F. Boesch, with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, estimates that for each millimeter rise in sea level, the shoreline retreats an average of 1.5 meters. Thus if sea level rises by 1 meter, coastline will retreat by 1,500 meters, or nearly a mile. With such a rise, the United States would lose 36,000 square kilometers (14,000 square miles) of land--with the middle Atlantic and Mississippi Gulf states losing the most. Large portions of Lower Manhattan and the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C., would be flooded with seawater during a 50-year storm surge. A team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has calculated Massachusetts's loss of land to the rising sea as warming progresses. Using the rather modest U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projections of sea level rise by 2025, they calculated that Massachusetts would lose from 7,500 to 10,000 acres (3,035 to 4,047 hectares) of land. Based on just the lower estimate and a nominal land value of $1 million per acre for ocean-front property, this would amount to a loss of at least $7.5 billion of particularly expensive property by then. Some of the 72 coastal communities included in the study would lose far more land than others. Nantucket could lose over 6 acres and Falmouth 3.8 acres a year. Coastal real estate prices are likely to be one of the first economic indicators to reflect the rise in sea level. Those with heavy investments in beachfront properties will suffer most. A half-meter rise in sea level in the United States could bring losses ranging from $20 billion to $150 billion. Beachfront properties, much like nuclear power plants, are becoming uninsurable--as many homeowners in Florida have discovered. Many developing countries already coping with population growth and intense competition for living space and cropland now face the prospect of rising sea level
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Para la clase de ingls and substantial land losses. Some of those most directly affected have contributed the least to the buildup in atmospheric CO2 that is causing this problem. While Americans are facing loss of valuable beachfront properties, low-lying island peoples are facing something far more serious: the loss of their nationhood. They feel terrorized by U.S. energy policy, viewing the United States as a rogue nation, indifferent to their plight and unwilling to cooperate with the international community to implement the Kyoto Protocol. For the first time since civilization began, sea level has begun to rise at a measurable rate. It has become an indicator to watch, a trend that could force a human migration of almost unimaginable dimensions. It also raises questions about responsibility to other nations and to future generations that humanity has never before faced. Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico en febrero de 2001, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org
25. Illegal logging threatens ecological and economic stability

Extensive floods in Indonesia during early 2002 have killed hundreds of people, destroyed thousands of homes, damaged thousands of hectares of rice paddy
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Para la clase de ingls fields, and inundated Indonesian insurance companies with flood-related claims. Rampant deforestation, much of it from illegal logging, has destroyed forests that stabilize soils and regulate river flow, causing record floods and landslides. In just 50 years, Indonesia's total forest cover fell from 162 million hectares to 98 million. Roads and development fragment over half of the remaining forests. More than 16 million people depend on fresh water from Indonesia's 15 largest watersheds, which between 1985 and 1997 lost at least 20 percent of their forest cover. Loggers have cleared almost all the biologically diverse lowland tropical forests off Sulawesi, and if current trends continue, such forests will be gone from Sumatra in 2005 and Kalimantan by 2010. Domestic wood supply in Indonesia was documented at 20 million cubic meters in 2000, while demand stood at some 60 million cubic meters. Thus legal supplies of wood fiber fall short of demand by up to 40 million cubic meters per year. Illegal logging fills the gap--accounting for almost 70 percent of wood supply. All told, illegal logging alone has destroyed 10 million hectares of Indonesia's rich forests, an area the size of Virginia in the United States. Indonesia's situation is not unique. The Philippines once held 16 million hectares of forests but is now down to less than 700,000 hectares. In this country where illegal logging runs rampant, forest loss from tree felling and conversion to agriculture is cited as the cause of flooding, acute water shortages, rapid soil erosion, river siltation, and mudslides that have taken lives, destroyed properties, and wreaked environmental damage. In 1989, Thailand banned the logging of natural forests in direct response to devastating floods and landslides that had taken 400 lives the year before. Though illegal logging is now at lower levels than before the ban, it is still widespread. More recently, massive flooding of China's Yangtze River in 1998, which was linked to the removal of 85 percent of the upper river basin's original tree cover, propelled China to issue a ban on logging in the upper reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers and to begin a reforestation campaign. China consumes nearly 280 million cubic meters of timber a year, but domestic supply currently provides only 142 million cubic meters. As production shrinks, China is turning to imports and illegal logging to make up for the shortfall. The International Tropical Timber Organization forecasts that within the next few years China will become the world's largest log importer, edging out the United States and eclipsing Japan, whose massive imports have already destroyed many of the rainforests of the Philippines and much of Borneo. Fifty-seven percent of the logs brought into China originate in Russia, where poor law enforcement, corruption, and the abandonment of local timber-processing plants have led people to illegally cut trees for companies that send raw materials to China for processing. At least one-fifth of Russia's timber harvest is taken illegally or drastically violates existing legislation. To China's south, Burma (Myanmar) holds about half of mainland Southeast Asia's
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Para la clase de ingls forests. These contain a variety of tropical hardwood species that are increasingly drawing interest from China. On paper, Burma supplies less than 10 percent of China's log imports, but industry workers say the numbers must be at least twice as high. Burmese log exports to China are growing much faster than the trees, many of which are hundreds of years old, can be replaced. In 1949, tropical forests covered 21 percent of the country's land area, but now less than 7 percent of Burma is forested. In Laos, where the volume of illegal logging is the equivalent of at least one sixth of the legal harvest, the army openly cuts forests. Now less than 40 percent of the country is forested, down from 70 percent in 1940. In Cambodia, over 70 percent of the timber export volume consists of unreported logs. And Viet Nam could lose all substantial forest cover by 2020 if the current rate of deforestation continues. As the growing Asian timber market has exhausted supplies over much of the continent, wood imports to Asia from Africa have steadily increased. From 1993 to 1999, Europe imported 40 percent of central African logs, but since 1996, rising demand from Asia has made that region the number one importer of African timber. Forest products are the second largest export for both Cameroon and Gabon, generating about 20 percent and 13 percent of respective export revenues. Between 1990 and 1995, the share of Cameroonian logs going to Asia soared from 7 percent to 50 percent. Unfortunately, only half the logging companies in Cameroon are licensed, and among these companies, violations such as felling trees smaller than the legal size and cutting outside concession boundaries are common. These examples cover only a portion of the global timber market. Uncontrolled deforestation abounds in other countries--in Brazil, with the world's highest deforestation rate, where an estimated 80 percent of logging is illegal; in Mexico, which is losing over 1 million hectares each year; and in Ethiopia, where in just 40 years forest cover has plummeted from around 40 million hectares to 2.7 million, only half of which is natural forest. Rarely, though, is deforestation purely a local issue. The world's eight largest industrial countries plus the rest of the European Union buy 280 million cubic meters of timber and timber products from abroad each year, accounting for 74 percent of the world's timber imports. Most of this wood comes from countries where illegal tree felling is the norm. In 2000, the United States alone imported over $450 million worth of timber from Indonesia, which given Indonesia's illegal logging rate could represent $330 million worth of timber from illegal sources. If importing countries insist that timber and timber products are certified under internationally recognized environmental and social standards like those of the Forest Stewardship Council, illegal logging becomes more difficult. Exporting countries would profit by protecting the integrity of forest ecosystems, and could
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Para la clase de ingls secure higher prices for certified wood on international markets. Russia, for instance, which loses $1 billion in export revenues each year because its wood is not certified, is now developing a mandatory certification system for standing forests. Certification along with existing international agreements, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, can help to prevent illegal logs from crossing international borders--if laws and standards are upheld. Recycling and reduced use of throwaway timber products can lower the demand for timber that has made illegal logging profitable. As the Chinese government has recognized, the services that forests provide, such as flood control, can be worth far more than the lumber they contain.
Fuente
Artculo de Janet Larsen del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 21 de mayo de 2002, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org
26. Learning from China

Why the western economic model will not work for the world
Could the American dream in China become a nightmare for the world? For China's 1.3 billion people, the American dream is fast becoming the Chinese dream. Already millions of Chinese are living like Americans--eating more meat, driving cars, traveling abroad, and otherwise spending their fast-rising incomes
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Para la clase de ingls much as Americans do. Although these U.S.-style consumers are only a small fraction of the population, China's claims on the earth's resources are already becoming highly visible. China has replaced the United States as the world's leading consumer of most basic commodities, like grain, coal, and steel. Now the question is: what if consumption per person of these resources in China one day reaches the current U.S. level? And, closely related, how long will it take for China's annual income per person of $5,300 to reach the 2004 U.S. figure of $38,000? During the 26 years since the far-reaching economic reforms of 1978, China's economy has been growing at a breakneck pace of 9.5 percent a year. If it were now to grow at 8 percent per year, doubling every nine years, income per person in 2031 for China's projected population of 1.45 billion would reach $38,000. (At a more conservative 6 percent annual growth rate, the economy would double every 12 years, overtaking the current U.S. income per person in 2040.) For this exercise we will assume an 8 percent annual economic growth rate. If the Chinese consume resources in 2031 as voraciously as Americans do now, grain consumption per person there would climb from 291 kilograms today to the 935 kilograms needed to sustain a U.S.-style diet rich in meat, milk, and eggs. In 2031 China would consume 1,352 million tons of grain, far above the 382 million tons used in 2004. This is equal to two thirds of the entire 2004 world grain harvest of just over 2 billion tons. Given the limited potential for further raising the productivity of the world's existing cropland, producing an additional 1 billion tons of grain for consumption in China would require converting a large part of Brazil's remaining rainforests to grain production. This assumes, of course, that once they are cleared these soils could sustain crop production. To reach the U.S. 2004 meat intake of 125 kilograms per person, China's meat consumption would rise from the current 64 million tons to 181 million tons in 2031, or roughly four fifths of current world meat production of 239 million tons. With energy, the numbers are even more startling. If the Chinese use oil at the same rate as Americans now do, by 2031 China would need 99 million barrels of oil a day. The world currently produces 79 million barrels per day and may never produce much more than that. Similarly with coal. If China's coal burning were to reach the current U.S. level of nearly 2 tons per person, the country would use 2.8 billion tons annually--more than the current world production of 2.5 billion tons. Apart from the unbreathable air that such coal burning would create, carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning in China alone would rival those of the entire world today. Climate change could spiral out of control, undermining food security and inundating coastal cities.
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Para la clase de ingls If steel consumption per person in China were to climb to the U.S. level, it would mean that China's aggregate steel use would jump from 258 million tons today to 511 million tons, more than the current consumption of the entire Western industrialized world. Or consider the use of paper, another hallmark of modernization. If China's meager annual consumption of 27 kilograms of paper per person were to rise in 2031 to the current U.S. level of 210 kilograms, China would need 303 million tons of paper, roughly double the current world production of 157 million tons. There go the world's forests. And what about cars? If automobile ownership in China were to reach the U.S. level of 0.77 cars per person (three cars for every four people), China would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars in 2031--well beyond the current world fleet of 795 million. The paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for such a fleet would approach the area now planted to rice in China. The competition between automobile owners and farmers for productive cropland would be intense. The point of this exercise of projections is not to blame China for consuming so much, but rather to learn what happens when a large segment of humanity moves quickly up the global economic ladder. What we learn is that the economic model that evolved in the West--the fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered, throwaway economy--will not work for China simply because there are not enough resources. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which has an economy growing at 7 percent per year and a population projected to surpass China's in 2030. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in the developing world who also want to consume like Americans. Perhaps most important, in an increasingly integrated global economy where all countries are competing for the same dwindling resources it will not continue to work for the 1.2 billion who currently live in the affluent industrial societies either. The sooner we recognize that our existing economic model cannot sustain economic progress, the better it will be for the entire world. The claims on the earth by the existing model at current consumption levels are such that we are fast depleting the energy and mineral resources on which our modern industrial economy depends. We are also consuming beyond the sustainable yield of the earth's natural systems. As we overcut, overplow, overpump, overgraze, and overfish, we are consuming not only the interest from our natural endowment, we are devouring the endowment itself. In ecology, as in economics, this leads to bankruptcy. China is teaching us that we need a new economic model, one that is based not on fossil fuels but that instead harnesses renewable sources of energy, including wind power, hydropower, geothermal energy, solar cells, solar thermal power plants, and biofuels. In the search for new energy, wind meteorologists will replace petroleum geologists. Energy architects will be centrally involved in the design of buildings.
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Para la clase de ingls In the new economy, the transport system will be designed to maximize mobility rather than automobile use. This new economy comprehensively reuses and recycles materials of all kinds. The goal in designing industrial processes and products is zero emissions and zero waste. Plan A, business as usual, is no longer a viable option. We need to turn quickly to Plan B before the geopolitics of oil, grain, and raw material scarcity lead to political conflict and disruption of the social order on which economic progress depends.
Fuente
Artculo de Lester R. Brown, director del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 9 de marzo de 2005, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update46.htm
27. Ethanols potential

Looking beyond corn At the fuel pumps in So Paulo, customers have a choice: gas or alcohol? Since the mid-1970s, Brazil has worked to replace imported gasoline with ethanol, an alcohol distilled from locally grown sugarcane. Today ethanol accounts for 40 percent of the fuel sold in Brazil.
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Para la clase de ingls Ethanol can be produced from a wide variety of plant-based feedstocks, most commonly grain or sugar crops. It is then blended with gasoline as an oxygenate or fuel extender for use in gasoline vehicles, or it can be used alone in flexible-fuel vehicles that run on any blend of ethanol and gasoline. Brazil led world ethanol production in 2004, distilling 4 billion gallons (15 billion liters). The United States is rapidly catching up, however, producing 3.5 billion gallons last year, almost exclusively from corn. China's wheat- and corn-rich provinces produced nearly 1 billion gallons of ethanol, and India turned out 500 million gallons made from sugarcane. France, the front-runner in the European Unions attempt to boost ethanol use, produced over 200 million gallons from sugar beets and wheat. In all, the world produced enough ethanol to displace roughly two percent of total gasoline consumption. Efforts to substitute alternative fuels for petroleum are gaining attention in a world threatened by climate change, rural economic decline, and instability in major oilproducing countries. Biofuel crops take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while they are growing, offsetting the greenhouse gases released when the fuel is subsequently burned. Replacing petroleum with biofuel can reduce air pollution, including emissions of fine particulates and carbon monoxide. Biofuel production also can improve rural economies by creating new jobs and raising farm incomes. As a locally produced, renewable fuel, ethanol has the potential to diversify energy portfolios, lower dependence on foreign oil, and improve trade balances in oilimporting nations. Although ethanols popularity is growing, todays inefficient production methods and conversion technologies mean that this fuel will only produce modest environmental and economic benefits and could impinge on international food security. The largest obstacle to biofuel production is land availability. Expanding cropland for energy production will likely worsen the already intense competition for land between agriculture, forests, and urban sprawl. With temperatures rising and water tables falling worldwide, global food supply and demand are precariously balanced. World grain reserves are near all-time lows, and there is little idle cropland to be brought back into cultivation. Shifting food crops to fuel production could further tighten food supplies and raise prices, pitting affluent automobile owners against low-income food consumers. Placing greater emphasis on land efficiencythat is, maximizing energy yield per acrewill be essential to making the best use of ethanol. Though corn has broad political support as a feedstock in the United States, it is one of the least efficient sources of ethanol. For example, ethanol yields per acre for French sugar beets and Brazilian sugarcane are roughly double those for American corn. Also important is the amount of energy used to produce ethanol. Growing, transporting, and distilling corn to make a gallon of ethanol uses almost as much energy as is contained in the ethanol itself. Sugar beets are a better source, producing nearly two units of energy for every unit used in production. Sugarcane,
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Para la clase de ingls though, is by far the most efficient of the current feedstocksyielding eight times as much energy as is needed to produce the ethanol. Given their positive energy balances and higher yields, it makes more sense to produce ethanol from sugar crops than from grains. Ethanol could quickly take off in sugarcane-producing tropical countries, which have the advantage of year-round growing seasons, large labor supplies, and low production costs. As fuel demand rises in these developing nations, biofuel production could check oil imports while bolstering rural economies. Brazil, for example, could produce enough ethanol to meet total domestic fuel demand by increasing the area used to grow sugarcane for alcohol from 6.6 million acres to 13.8 million acres (5.6 million hectares) or by shifting all current sugarcane acreage to ethanol production. Unfortunately, new fields may cut further into already shrinking rainforests, making them a serious environmental liability. If ethanol is to become a major part of the world fuel supply without competing with food and forests, its primary source will not be grains or even sugar crops; it will be more-abundant and land-efficient cellulosic feedstocks, such as agricultural and forest residues, grasses, and fastgrowing trees. Promising new technologies are being developed that use enzymes to break down cellulose and release the plants sugars for fermentation into ethanol. A demonstration plant using this technology opened in Canada last year, and large-scale production is expected to be commercially viable by 2015. Agricultural residues, such as corn stalks, wheat straw, and rice stalks, are normally left on the field, plowed under, or burned. Collecting just a third of these for biofuel production would allow farmers to reap a sort of second harvest, increasing farm income while leaving enough organic matter to maintain soil health and prevent erosion. The agricultural residues that could be harvested sustainably in the United States today, for example, could yield 14.5 billion gallons of ethanol four times the current outputwith no additional land demands. Energy crops, such as hardy grasses and fast-growing trees, have higher ethanol yields and better energy balances than conventional starch crops. One likely candidate is switchgrass, a tall perennial grass used by farmers to protect land from erosion. It requires minimal irrigation, fertilizer, or herbicides but yields 2-3 times more ethanol per acre than corn does. Such crops could potentially be harvested on marginal land, avoiding the conversion of healthy cropland or forests to energy-crop production. Still, with world energy demands rising, biofuels will meet only a fraction of fuel needs unless there are substantial improvements in vehicle fuel economy. Fortunately, the technologies required are available and affordable. Shifting vehicle production to gas-electric hybrids, like those on the market today, and reducing weight and drag would decrease fuel use several fold. Adding an extra battery and plug-in capability to hybrid vehicles would allow short trips to be made using only electric power preferably produced from wind decreasing fuel demand to levels
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Para la clase de ingls that could be met with ethanol alone. Increasing the role of ethanol in meeting fuel demand will require ongoing research and development to improve biomass-ethanol conversion technologies, along with consistent legislative support for biofuel production and greater fuel efficiency in the automotive industry. Shifting government energy subsidies, such as from oil exploration to biofuel development, is a clear choice as new oil fields prove increasingly elusive. With improved vehicle fuel economy and the use of moreefficient cellulosic feedstocks, biofuel has the potential to supply a substantial share of the worlds automotive fuel. Fuente
Artculo de Danielle Murray, del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 29 de junio de 2006, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update49.htm
28. Eco-economy offers alternative to Middle East oil

"For the first time since the oil age began, the world has the technology to wean itself from petroleum coming from the politically volatile Middle East," says Lester R. Brown in his new book, "Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth." "A combination of wind turbines, solar cells, hydrogen generators, and fuel cell
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Para la clase de ingls engines offers not only energy independence, but an alternative to climatedisrupting fossil fuels," said Brown, President of the newly established Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research organization. In "Eco-Economy," Brown says the global economy is out of sync with the earth's ecosystem, as evidenced by collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, eroding soils, and falling water tables. This can also be seen in the earth's changing climate as rising temperatures lead to more destructive storms, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels. In the new economy, which Brown calls an eco-economy, renewable energy will replace climate-disrupting fossil fuels and a recycling economy will replace the throwaway economy. Wind turbines will replace coal mines and recycling industries will replace mining industries. The needed restructuring of the global economy has already begun, Brown reports. The shift from the fossil fuel era to the solar/hydrogen era can be seen in the contrasting growth rates of these energy sources in recent years. During the last decade, the use of wind power grew by 25 percent a year, solar cells at 20 percent a year, and geothermal energy at 4 percent annually. In stark contrast, oil expanded by only 1 percent a year and coal use declined by 1 percent annually. Natural gas, which is destined to be the transition fuel from the fossil fuel era to the hydrogen era, grew by 2 percent per year. The restructuring is gaining momentum. For example, from 1995 to 2000, world wind electric generation expanded nearly fourfold, a growth rate previously found only in the computer industry. Denmark gets 15 percent of its electricity from wind. In the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein, it is 19 percent. For Spain's state of Navarra, it is 22 percent. "Wind power has an enormous potential," said Brown. "According to a U.S. Department of Energy wind resources inventory, three of the most wind-rich statesNorth Dakota, Kansas, and Texas-have enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. China can double its current electricity generation from wind alone. Europe's offshore wind potential is sufficient to meet the continent's electricity needs." Advances in wind turbine design have reduced electricity costs from 38 per kilowatt hour in the early 1980s to less than 4 at prime wind sites in 2001. Further cuts are in prospect. In response to falling costs, wind farms have come online recently in Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, and Pennsylvania. A quarter-acre of land leased to the local utility to site a large, advanced design wind turbine can easily yield a farmer or rancher $2,000 in royalties per year while providing the community with $100,000 worth of electricity. Money spent on windgenerated electricity tends to remain in the community, providing income, jobs, and tax revenue.
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A project in the planning stages in eastern South Dakota to develop 3,000 megawatts of wind power for transmission across Iowa to the industrial Midwest around Chicago is not only a large wind power project, it is one of the largest energy projects in the world today. As wind-generating costs continue to fall and concern about climate change escalates, more and more countries are turning to wind energy. In December 2000, France announced plans to develop 5,000 megawatts of wind power by 2010 (1 megawatt supplies 350 homes in an industrial society). Argentina followed with a plan to develop 3,000 megawatts of wind power by 2010 in Patagonia, with its world-class wind resources. In April, the United Kingdom accepted offshore bids to develop 1,500 megawatts of wind power. And in May 2001, China reported that it will develop some 2,500 megawatts of wind power by 2005. The European Wind Energy Association, which in 1996 had set a target of 40,000 megawatts for Europe by 2010, recently raised its goal to 60,000 megawatts. The United States is projected to increase its wind-generating capacity in 2001 by at least 60 percent. Cheap electricity from wind farms can be used to electrolyze water and produce hydrogen, which can be used to power gas turbines that supply electricity when the wind ebbs. Hydrogen is also the fuel of choice for the new fuel cell engines that every major automobile manufacturer is now working on. The farmers and ranchers who own most of the U.S. wind rights could one day supply not only most of the country's electricity, but also much of the fuel used in its automobiles. The use of solar cells is also expanding rapidly. In remote villages where supplying electricity traditionally depended on building a centralized power plant and constructing a grid to distribute the electricity, it is now often cheaper simply to install solar cells. In inaccessible Andean villages, investing in solar cells may be cheaper than buying candles. The same is true for those villages in India where lighting comes from kerosene lamps. At the end of 2000, nearly one million homes worldwide were getting their electricity from solar cells. With the new solar cell roofing material developed in Japan, the stage is set for dramatic gains in this new energy source as rooftops become the power plants of buildings. For many of the nearly 2 billion people without electricity, solar cells are their best hope. "The materials economy is also changing," said Brown. "The challenge is to shift from a linear flow-through economy to a comprehensive recycling economy. Progress is being made on this front, but not nearly enough. Some countries are advancing. For example, 58 percent of U.S. steel production now comes from scrap. In Germany 72 percent of all paper comes from paper recycling mills. If the entire world were to achieve this rate, wood needed for pulp production would drop by nearly one third."
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In describing the transition to the eco-economy, Brown identifies both sunset and sunrise industries. Among the sunset industries are coal mining, oil pumping, clearcut logging, and the manufacture of internal combustion engines and throwaway products. Among the sunrise industries are wind turbine manufacturing, hydrogen generation, fuel cell manufacturing, solar cell manufacturing, light rail construction, reforestation, and fish farming. Rapidly growing professions include ecological economists, wind meteorologists, recycling engineers, geothermal geologists, and environmental architects. In an eco-economy most energy is produced locally from wind, solar cells, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal sources, thus offering a new grassroots development potential for developing countries, one that does not require spending scarce foreign exchange on imported oil. With a comprehensive recycling economy, the need for imported raw materials will also diminish, reducing vulnerability to external political and economic instability. Another key characteristic of an eco-economy is population stability. Over the last few decades, some 31 countries in Europe plus Japan have stabilized their populations. One of the keys to this is improving the status of women. The more education women have, the fewer children they have. World Bank research indicates that investing in the education of girls yields an economic return perhaps four times that of investing in electric utilities. Economic decisionmakers at all levels-corporate planners, government leaders, investment bankers, and individual consumers-all rely on market signals. But the market often does not tell the truth. For example, when we buy a gallon of gasoline, we pay the costs of producing gasoline, but not the health care costs of those who suffer from the polluted air, the acid rain damage, or the costs of climate disruption from burning the gasoline. Sometimes we learn of the market's shortcomings the hard way. For example, by 1998, China's Yangtze River basin had lost 85 percent of its original forest cover. Partly as a result, flooding of the Yangtze River basin that year displaced 120 million people and caused $30 billion worth of damage. In response, Chinese officials banned tree cutting in the upper reaches of the basin. Trees standing, they argued, were worth three times as much as trees cut. The key to restructuring the economy is to restructure the tax system, to get the market to tell the ecological truth. As ystein Dahle, former Exxon vice president for Norway and the North Sea, observes, "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth." Restructuring the global economy will require ecologists and economists to work together to identify the indirect costs associated with a particular product or service. These costs can then be incorporated into market prices in the form of a
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Para la clase de ingls tax and offset by a reduction in income taxes. "This restructuring of the tax system, which is the key to restructuring the economy, does not change the level of taxes," Brown emphasized, "only their composition." Building an eco-economy represents the greatest investment opportunity in history. The companies that have a vision of the new economy and incorporate it into their planning will be the winners. Those that cling to the past risk becoming part of it. The eco-economy is beginning to take shape. Glimpses of it can be seen in the wind farms of Denmark, the solar rooftops of Japan, the paper recycling mills of Germany, the steel recycling mills of the United States, the irrigation systems of Israel, the reforested mountains of South Korea, and the bicycle networks of the Netherlands. Almost all the components of an eco-economy can be found in at least one country. The challenge now is for each country to put all the pieces of an ecoeconomy together. "Building an eco-economy is a goal that cannot be compromised," said Brown. "If we are going to restructure the economy in the time available, all of us will need to be involved. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation. But it will affect life on earth for all generations to come." Fuente
Artculo del Earth Policy Institute, enviado por correo electrnico el 6 de noviembre de 2001, disponible en Internet en: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/index.htm
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1. Do you do what youre told to do... just like that ???

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3. Group discussion: She doesnt work

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4. They dance alone

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5. Two stories on justice:

4 Adaptacin de The Citizenship Foundation, Understand the law, London, 1993, p. 82 11

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6. A protest song way ahead of its time

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8. One World is enough (not Three)

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9. Wind energy: a clean and cheap alternative

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for the future 9

10. Do you want war?

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11. New York: Garbage capital of the world

12. Deflating the bubble economy before it bursts

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13. Detoxifying Terrorism

14. Global temperature near record for 2002

16. Eco-economy offers alternative to Middle East oil

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17. Troubling New Flows of Environmental Refugees

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18. World food prices rising.

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Source: American Farm Bureau Federation Fuente

19. World food security deteriorating

20. Sterilization is worlds most popular contraceptive method.

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21. Glaciers and sea ice endangered by rising temperatures

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22. Ecological deficits taking economic toll

23. Human actions worsen natural disasters

24. Rising sea level forcing evacuation of island country

25. Illegal logging threatens ecological and economic stability

26. Learning from China

27. Ethanols potential

28. Eco-economy offers alternative to Middle East oil

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