Tag Archives: world-bank

Chart of the Day: Health Care Spending as a Percentage of GDP

Mother Jones

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This is apropos of nothing in particular. I was over at the World Bank site fiddling around with some stuff and happened to look at their chart for health care spending. There’s a good case to be made that as GDP rises, the share devoted to health care also rises. This is because richer countries have more “spare” income and health care is what they spend it on.

But Sweden and Switzerland have per-capita GDPs as high as ours, and they still spend a whole lot less. The sooner we start reining in the growth of health care spending the better.

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Chart of the Day: Health Care Spending as a Percentage of GDP

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Dumb management of fisheries costs us up to $83 billion a year.

The notoriously pricey grocery chain will close nine stores after six consecutive quarters of plummeting same-store sales. It seems $6 asparagus-infused water and bouquets of California ornamental kale just aren’t flying off the shelves.

There’s a bitter green irony here: The organic products the chain popularized are now more popular than ever, just not at Whole Foods. Americans bought three times more organic food in 2015 than in 2005. But now, superstores like Kroger, Walmart, and Target are selling organic food at reasonable prices that threaten Whole Foods’ claim to the all-natural throne.

To compete in a crowded lower-cost organic market, the company launched a new chain in April 2016: 365 by Whole Foods Market, aka Whole Foods for Broke People. The 365 stores are cheaper to build, require less staff, and offer goods at lower prices.

Whole Foods may have a squeaky clean image, but that doesn’t square with its labor practices. The company has historically quashed employees’ attempts to unionize, and it sold goat cheese produced with prison labor until last April.

Still, if you’ve a hankering for “Veganic Sprouted Ancient Maize Flakes,” we’re pretty sure that Whole Foods has that market cornered.

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Dumb management of fisheries costs us up to $83 billion a year.

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Even the World Bank Has to Worry About the Competition

Mother Jones

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The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has just published a deep look into the World Bank’s track record of ensuring that the projects it sponsors don’t end up harming local communities.

Since 2004, more than 3.4 million people have been economically or physically displaced by Bank projects, according to the report’s analysis of the lender’s data. And while the Bank has policies requiring it to reestablish and resettle such communities, the ICIJ’s investigation found that they were falling short, operating under a troubling lack of safeguards, through bank officials too willing to ignore abuses committed by local partners, and with an institutional culture that values closing big deals over following up on human rights.

After being presented with the ICIJ’s findings, the bank quickly promised reforms. But one part of the investigation contains this interesting passage, which suggests an unexpected reason the Bank may not be able to clean up its act: competition has gotten too stiff.

As it enters its eighth decade, the World Bank faces an identity crisis.

It is no longer the only lender willing to venture into struggling nations and finance huge projects. It is being challenged by new competition from other development banks that don’t have the same social standards—and are rapidly drawing support from the World Bank’s traditional backers.

China has launched a new development bank and persuaded Britain, Germany and other American allies to join, despite open U.S. opposition.

These geopolitical shifts have fueled doubts about whether the World Bank still has the clout—or the desire—to impose strong protections for people living in the way of development.

United Nations human rights officials have written World Bank President Kim to say they’re concerned that the growing ability of borrowers to access other financing has spurred the bank to join a “race to the bottom” and push its standards for protecting people even lower.

Today’s package of stories, published with the Huffington Post, is the first installment of a series reported in 14 countries by over 50 journalists. More than 20 news organizations were involved in the effort.

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Even the World Bank Has to Worry About the Competition

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Lima Climate Change Talks Best Chance for a Generation, Say Upbeat Diplomats

Hopes rise for global warming deal after US-China carbon commitments inject much-needed momentum into Peru talks. Delegates attend the opening ceremony of the Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru. Martin Mejia/AP UN climate negotiations opening in Lima on Monday have the best chance in a generation of striking a deal on global warming, diplomats say. After a 20-year standoff, diplomats and longtime observers of the talks say there is rising optimism that negotiators will be able to secure a deal that will commit all countries to take action against climate change. The two weeks of talks in Peru are intended to deliver a draft text to be adopted in Paris next year that will commit countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions without compromising the economic development of poor countries. Diplomats and observers of the UN climate negotiations said recent actions by the US and China had injected much-needed momentum. Read the rest at the Guardian. Link – Lima Climate Change Talks Best Chance for a Generation, Say Upbeat Diplomats

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Lima Climate Change Talks Best Chance for a Generation, Say Upbeat Diplomats

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Can farmed fish go vegetarian?

Can farmed fish go vegetarian?

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The worldwide aquaculture industry is growing faster than a genetically engineered salmon. By 2030, the World Bank forecasts that 62 percent of the fish eaten the world over will have come from a fish farm — up from about half today.

Aquaculture is an alternative to commercial fishing. But all those farmed fish need to eat, and most of them eat smaller fish harvested from oceans. Which kind of defeats the whole point of aquaculture.

Forage fish like anchovies and sardines are being hauled out of the seas, mixed with soy and other ingredients, turned into pellets, and used as fish feed.

To get away from this practice, which harms oceanic food webs, scientists are trying to figure out how to rear fish on vegetarian diets. QUEST/KQED reports:

To avoid using wild fish in farmed fish diets, the United States Department of Agriculture has spent the past ten years researching alternative diets that include plants, animal processing products and single-cell organisms like yeast, bacteria, and algae.

The USDA has proven that eight species of carnivorous fish — white sea bass, walleye, rainbow trout, cobia, arctic char, yellowtail, Atlantic salmon and coho salmon — can get enough nutrients from these alternative sources without eating other fish. …

[USDA fish physiologist Rick] Barrows said that fish, like people, don’t need specific foods but rather specific nutrients in order to stay healthy. In fact, all animals essentially need the same forty nutrients — a combination of amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals.

Turning carnivorous fish into vegetarians is not some far-off fantasy. David McFarland raises his trout on algae.

McFarland runs McFarland Springs Trout farm, based in Susanville, California. He was raising trout to stock rivers and lakes. The idea piqued his interest and after two years of testing the diet on a small scale and tweaking the ingredients he started feeding it to the fish.

“I thought if we’re not doing it, who will?” McFarland said. He admits there are drawbacks to using an alternative diet, namely the cost.

McFarland wanted to feed his trout a diet heavy on spirulina, a bacteria-based superfood, but he can’t afford it. Already his vegetarian feed is more expensive than the cheap and nasty fishmeal concoctions used in most aquaculture operations. More on that gunk here:

This chart from the World Bank report shows the growth of aquaculture and the decline of fishing:

World BankClick to embiggen.


Source
The Key to Sustainable Fish Farming? Vegetarian Fish, QUEST/KQED

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Can farmed fish go vegetarian?

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World Bank says no to nuclear as it lays out universal energy plan

World Bank says no to nuclear as it lays out universal energy plan

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The leaders of the United Nations and World Bank have hatched a plan to make sure everybody in the world has access to electricity by 2030. It would involve a huge ramp-up in electricity generation, including continued growth in renewables, and vast improvements in energy efficiency. It would also require hundreds of billions a year in investments.

But not all energy sources are welcome. “We don’t do nuclear energy,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in announcing a push for financing for the plan. (The World Bank doesn’t do much coal anymore either.)

The Sustainable Energy for All initiative is a joint effort by the U.N. and World Bank. From a World Bank press release:

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim [on Wednesday] announced a concerted effort by governments, international agencies, civil society and private sector to mobilize financing to deliver universal access to modern energy services such as lighting, clean cooking solutions and power for productive purposes in developing countries, as well as scaled-up energy efficiency, especially in the world’s highest-energy consuming countries.

Agence France-Presse reports on the no-nukes angle:

“The World Bank Group does not engage in providing support for nuclear power. We think that this is an extremely difficult conversation that every country is continuing to have[,” Kim said.]

“And because we are really not in that business our focus is on finding ways of working in hydro electric power, in geo-thermal, in solar, in wind,” he said.

“We are really focusing on increasing investment in those modalities and we don’t do nuclear energy.”

That decision could frustrate a handful of leading climate scientists, including James Hansen, who recently called for more investment in nuclear power to help fight global warming. But it will please many other environmentalists, who point to the risks and high costs of nuclear power.

Raising the $600 billion to $800 billion a year that Kim said would be needed to light up the developing world, however, could prove as challenging as building a perfectly safe nuclear power plant.


Source
World Bank says no money for nuclear power, Agence France-Presse
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim Outline Plans to Mobilize Financing for Sustainable Energy for All, World Bank

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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4 Climate Policies We’re Thankful For

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There isn’t much good news to report about the environment these days. But here are a few developments for which we can give thanks. Hang in there, buddy. Yvonne Pijnenburg-Schonewille/Shutterstock Unless it’s immediately proceeded by the word “no,” the phrase “good news” rarely appears these days in stories about climate change. But in a year in which we found out that our oceans may rise this century by as much as three feet and that atmospheric carbon dioxide is higher than it has been in nearly a million years, there were still some bright spots. And in preparation for Thanksgiving, we’ve compiled a list of four environmental developments for which you can give thanks. You can see even more on Twitter by searching the hashtag #ClimateThanks. 1. The US and the World Bank will avoid financing coal-fired power plants abroad. Burning coal is among the dirtiest ways to produce energy and quickest ways to accelerate climate change. So this July, when the World Bank announced that it would limit funding for new coal-burning plants to “rare circumstances” where countries have “no feasible alternatives,” green advocates were thrilled. At the same time, the global development giant also reversed its opposition to hydroelectric power, which many environmental activists had pushed as an alternative to cheap energy from coal. Last month, based on an announcement President Obama made in June, the United States Treasury Department also ceased financing any new coal projects abroad except in cases where coal was the only viable option for bringing power to poor regions. The US and World Bank decisions only affect coal projects that use public financing; around the world, many are built with private money. But a Treasury official told the New York Times that the Obama administration felt “that if public financing points the way, it will then facilitate private investment.” 2. The White House will push carbon limits for new and existing power plants. Natural gas and coal-fired power plants are responsible for 40 percent of the United States’ carbon emissions and one-third of its greenhouse gas emissions. The country can’t address climate change without regulating this sector of the economy. In his June speech at Georgetown University, President Obama announced that for the first time ever, the Environmental Protection Agency will propose rules to cap carbon emissions from existing power plants. His administration also pushed forward a rule to limit pollution from new power plants, which had stalled last year. If the EPA finalizes the rule and it’s upheld in court, it would limit new coal-fired plants to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt hour—the average coal power plant releases 1,800 pounds—and new gas power plants to 1,000 pounds. Obama said the rules were necessary for the US to meet its pledge to bring greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent—or below 2005 levels—by the year 2020. 3. The global warming “slowdown” showed us that international agreements can reduce climate change. The so-called global warming “slowdown” you heard about over the summer certainly doesn’t mean that global warming has stopped—regardless of what climate skeptics may be saying. Although climate scientists determined that over the past 15 years, the rate of the warming of the planet has slowed—”kind of like a car easing off the accelerator,” as Chris Mooney wrote—the Earth’s surface and oceans are continuing to heat up at an alarming rate. (Other recent research suggests the “slowdown” might not have really occurred at all.) But one study found an unexpected factor contributed to the “slowdown”: the partial cause appears to be a planet-wide phaseout of greenhouse-trapping gases called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which more than 40 countries agreed to by signing the Montreal Protocol in 1988. “Without the Protocol, environmental economist Francisco Estrada of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México reports, global temperatures today would be about a tenth of a degree Celsius higher than they are,” Tim McDonnell explained earlier this month. “That’s roughly an eighth of the total warming documented since 1880.” Bottom line? The global warming “slowdown” actually seems to be a strong indication that international treaties aimed at reducing climate change can work—and that we need more of them. 4. The world’s largest economies will phase down the use of a potent greenhouse gas. The phaseout of CFCs had another unexpected outcome. Manufacturers began to replace CFCs—used in air conditioners, refrigerators, and aerosol cans—with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs don’t eat away at the ozone layer like CFCs do. But scientists recently concluded that HFCs are a type of “super-pollutant”—gases that have exponentially more heat-trapping ability than carbon dioxide, although they dissipate from the atmosphere within a few years. Without intervention, HFCs were on track to make a huge contribution to global warming. If present trends hold steady, then by the year 2050, the amount of HFCs humans will have released into the atmosphere will cause as much warming as 90 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. But this year saw positive signs that world leaders are ready to curb this powerful greenhouse gas. In a deal that the White House announced in June, the US and China agreed to explore technologies and financial incentives to reduce the use of HFCs. Three months later, leaders of the Group of 20, which includes major economic powers like Russia, announced that their countries, too, would make plans to reduce the use of HFCs.

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4 Climate Policies We’re Thankful For

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4 Climate Policies We’re Thankful For

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Green Groups Stage Walk-Out at UN Climate Talks

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Codex: Space Marines (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

The Space Marines are the chosen warriors of the Emperor, and the greatest fighting force of the Imperium. Each Space Marine is a genetically enhanced super soldier, easily a match for a dozen lesser men, armed with some of the deadliest weapons in the galaxy and encased in formidable power armour. This codex explores the formations and Chapters of the Space […]

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Codex: Inquisition – Games Workshop

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Warhammer 40,000: The Rules – Games Workshop

There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR. In the nightmare future of the 41st Millennium, Mankind teeters upon the brink of destruction. The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man is beset on all sides by ravening aliens and threatened from within by Warp-spawned entities and heretical plots. Only the strength of the immortal […]

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Clan Raukaan – A Codex: Space Marines Supplement – Games Workshop

Famed for harnessing the power of bionics over flesh, the Iron Hands are the most calculating and merciless of all the Space Marine Chapters. Clan Raukaan is the most aggressive of the Iron Hands’ ten great clans of Medusa. Under the leadership of the Iron Council, Clan Raukaan has spearheaded countless victories in the name of the Iron Hands, securing […]

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The Knitting Answer Book – Margaret Radcliffe

Every avid knitter has faced this dilemma: deep into a project at midnight, just trying to finish one more row, and, then . . . oh no, a dropped stitch three rows back! Help! If only there was a 24-hour hotline to answer every question a knitter might encounter. Well, now there is, with The Knitting Answer Book . The expert authors, Margaret Radcliffe and Ed […]

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Codex: Inquisition (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

The Inquisition is the most powerful organisation within the Imperium. Bound by no Imperial law or authority, its agents – Inquisitors – operate in a highly secretive manner and answer only to themselves. Inquisitors use whatever means are necessary in order to safeguard the Imperium from heretics, mutants and aliens. It is not without good reason that Inqui […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

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Green Groups Stage Walk-Out at UN Climate Talks

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Natural Disasters Cost $3.8 Trillion Since 1980, World Bank Says

Mother Jones

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Aid agencies are still digging through rubble in the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, which was just one of many record-smashing oceanic storms to spring up in the last decade. Insurance adjusters have already pegged Haiyan’s price tag alone—counting damage to homes, businesses, and farms—at $14.5 billion. Today, as politicians and policy wonks dive into a second week of UN climate talks in Warsaw, the Philippines’ lead delegate has called for developed nations whose industrial emissions drive climate change to foot the bill for disasters like this. It could be one hell of a bill: Natural disasters altogether have cost the world $3.8 trillion since 1980, according to a new report from the World Bank.

Using data from Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance (insurance for insurers) agency, World Bank analysts found that 74 percent of that cost arose from weather-related disasters like hurricanes and droughts. They also found, as the chart below shows, that annual costs are on the rise, from around $50 billion a year in the 1980s to $200 billion a year today, thanks to a rising number of disasters and growing economic development:

World Bank

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Natural Disasters Cost $3.8 Trillion Since 1980, World Bank Says

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