Tag Archives: world

The World Economic Forum Delivers a Report Card on the US Economy

by DeanaRqopw Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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So how’s the ol’ US of A doing under the free-market-hating presidency of the socialist Barack Obama? Probably badly, I’ll bet. Let’s see what the World Economic Forum has to say. Their latest set of competitiveness rankings came out today, and among countries with populations over 10 million, the US was….

First. How about that? But it was probably even better before Obama took over, wasn’t it? Let’s see. In 2009 we ranked #1 among big countries with a score of 5.59. This year we’re #1 with a score of 5.61. That’s hard to fathom. But there you have it. Our competitiveness in the global free market seems to have improved a bit during Obama’s tenure. I wonder if Fox News will bother reporting this?

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The World Economic Forum Delivers a Report Card on the US Economy

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We’re Surrounded by Way More Chemicals Than We Thought, and These Doctors Say We’re Screwed

by JosephineE37 Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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A team of doctors, researchers, and clinicians from across the globe have teamed up to send a loud message to policymakers: More must be done to protect people from the toxic chemicals that endanger health—and soon.

The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), a group representing OB-GYNs from 125 countries, released a report detailing the detrimental health effects caused by even small exposure to common chemicals like the ones found in pesticides, plastics, and air pollution. The health problems are even greater for babies exposed in the womb, who face increased risks of cancer, reduced cognitive function, and even miscarriage or stillbirth.

“We are drowning our world in untested and unsafe chemicals,” said lead author Gian Carlo Di Renzo in a statement, “and the price we are paying in terms of our reproductive health is of serious concern.”

The organization cited concerns about the sharp increase over the past four decades in chemical manufacturing, which continues to grow by more than 3 percent every year. Some 30,000 pounds of chemicals were manufactured or imported for every person in the United States in 2012 alone—a whopping 9.5 trillion pounds in total. Annually, the FIGO authors write, chemical manufacturing leads to 7 million deaths and billions in health care costs.

These numbers, they argue, are likely underestimated, and the problem is getting worse—especially in poor communities that often have higher levels of toxic exposure and in developing countries that bear the brunt of the global industrial emissions.

Dr. Tracey Woodruff, an associate professor at the University of California-San Francisco, says while there are ways individuals can limit their exposure—including building better health practices overall and eating a pesticide-free, healthy diet—more needs to be done to protect everyone. “You can do some things to enhance your resiliency to disease or decrease chemical exposures,” she says, “but there are a lot of things that are not in your control.”

That’s why FIGO released the opinion in advance of its world congress, where more than 7,000 health professionals will meet to discuss women’s health issues, to encourage doctors to play a bigger role in supporting policies that curb exposure. The organization is calling on health professionals and legislators to support policies that prevent exposure and offering recommendations that could help mitigate health risks, including increasing access to healthy food and incorporating environmental health into health care.

“The good news,” Woodruff says, “is we can deal with it, we have dealt with it before, and it will be a positive health and economic benefit to do that.”

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We’re Surrounded by Way More Chemicals Than We Thought, and These Doctors Say We’re Screwed

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Want to slow climate change? Stop killing sharks

by bukaroso Posted on September 30, 2015

Want to slow climate change? Stop killing sharks

By on 30 Sep 2015commentsShare

With shark attacks on the rise in Australia, a handful of researchers gathered in Sydney on Tuesday to discuss potential shark repelling technologies. A new study published in Nature Climate Change, however, suggests that repelling sharks from vegetated coastal areas — or even more drastic options like partially culling shark populations — could be bad news for the climate. (And, it probably goes without saying, bad news for the sharks.) The Guardian reports:

With about 90% of the world’s sharks and other large predator fish wiped out through overfishing and culling, potential prey such as sea turtles, stingrays and crabs have flourished.

As a result, turtles have been free to munch their way through larger amounts of seagrass and crabs have been able to disturb a greater amount of seabed sediment. Such consequences have “far reaching consequences on carbon cycling and, by implication, our ability to ameliorate climate change impacts” the paper warns.

The research, conducted by academics from Deakin University, University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University, said vegetated coastal habitats store 50% of the carbon buried in all ocean sediments, representing about 25bn tonnes.

The links between predators and vegetated coastal areas (like salt marshes and mangroves) have been previously established, but this study is one of the first to take a deep dive into the actual mechanisms at play and connect these mechanisms to carbon sequestration and climate change.

The scientists write, “Sea turtles and dugongs preferentially forage in seagrass microhabitats that are low in predation risk. Seagrass microhabitats associated with low predation risk have lower [carbon] stocks than do microhabitats associated with high predation risk.” Basically, in the presence of animals like tiger sharks, grazers like sea turtles and manatees tend to feed elsewhere, and slow-growing, carbon-trapping seagrass is allowed to grow unadulterated.

For further evidence of sharks’ utility, just take a look at this animated diagram, as published in Nature Climate Change*:

via Giphy

Immediately, it should be obvious that the derpshark (Carcharodon derpius) and its toothy relatives are not only important keystone species, they are also significantly less frightening than one might have imagined. (The derpshark is, however, deeply terrifying in a more existential sense, much like the fact of Go-Gurt or Justin Bieber’s monkey.)

So Grist’s advice to the Australian policymakers responsible for solving the shark attack problem: Skip the “underwater gates that release electro-magnetic fields and flexible plastic nets” to repel sharks. Instead, why not simply mandate surfers to wear large shark costumes instead of wetsuits? Fighting climate change and shark bites with the same stick — that’s a policy with some teeth.

*Diagram not actually published in Nature Climate Change. Which you probably could have guessed.

Source:

Shark culling could indirectly accelerate climate change, study warns

, The Guardian.

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Want to slow climate change? Stop killing sharks

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Why Can’t So Many Cancer Patients Get the Surgery They Need?

by JeannaFergusson Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hundreds of billions of dollars have gone into the development of new procedures and treatments for cancer: We now have more than 100 different drugs for the disease, and nearly 300 surgical procedures. However, these resources are not spread equally around the world. While 95 percent of global cancer spending occurs in the developed world, a majority of cancer cases and deaths occur in the low-to-middle-income countries, like India, Brazil, and nations in Eastern Europe.

A new study released today sheds light on this disparity. The report, published by the renowned British health journal The Lancet, found that while 80 percent of cancer cases require surgery, less than a quarter of people worldwide who need it will actually get safe, affordable, and timely procedures. Less than 5 percent of cancer patients in low-income countries will get it. According to the study, 2015 will see 15.2 million new cancer cases worldwide and 8.8 million cancer deaths—65 percent of those deaths will occur in the developing world, while 35 percent will occur in the developed world. (The authors did not list specific rates of surgery access in high-income countries, though they did note that in the developed world, “data from staffing and cancer outcomes suggest that cancer surgical needs in terms of human resources are mostly being met.”)

“In too many countries, we have found that the inverse care law dominates, whereby the availability of good surgical care for cancer varies inversely with the population need for it,” the study’s authors wrote.

In low-to-middle-income countries, even for those who do have surgery, cancer can still be financially devastating. The study found that a third of people who get procedures will face “financial catastrophe” and a quarter will stop their life-saving treatment because they cannot afford it.

How can we improve access to cancer treatment around the world? The report has several suggestions, from increasing basic surgery training, to investing more in cancer care where resources and infrastructure are lacking, to improving awareness about the importance of surgery to treat cancer (in addition to non-surgical treatments like chemotherapy).

But the biggest impediment to creating more equal access to cancer treatment, the study found, is the lack of universal health care. “Equity, shared responsibility, and quality cancer surgical delivery to patients, irrespective of ability to pay, are the goals of global cancer and global cancer surgery,” the study concluded. “This is only achieved via universal health coverage.”

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Why Can’t So Many Cancer Patients Get the Surgery They Need?

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The Human Cost of Saudi Arabia’s Air War in Yemen, in Photos

by FrancisHaber Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Mohammed Al-Harazi was eating breakfast with his family one morning in late April when the first rocket struck across the street from his home in Sana’a, Yemen. The 49-year-old ushered his children and wife into the basement, went to fix a window in the children’s room, and then he heard the warplanes overhead. When he ran to close the door, the pressure from the next explosion, much larger than the first, sent him flying from the building.

Yahya Maasar and his family live in the ruins of a neighbor’s house after their own was destroyed by bombing in one of Sana’a’s most heavily bombed areas. Adam Bailes

He doesn’t recall the next moments clearly, only that there was continued bombing and a rain of shrapnel and football-sized rocks. After it was all over, he was elated to find his family alive—though his house had been reduced to rubble. His body riddled with shrapnel and his hand broken, Harazi took himself to the hospital on foot. On his way, he encountered 14 dead bodies. Inside the machine shop where his neighbors worked, he saw a man he knew shaking on the floor. Harazi recalled to photojournalist Adam Bailes, “I watched his last moment of breath before he died.”

Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and a coalition of Arab nations, has been bombing Yemen for several months in support of the Yemeni government. The Saudi-led coalition has been fighting since March, when Houthi rebels from northern Yemen ousted President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi. While Saudi Arabia claims that it is targeting Houthi fighters and military installations, human rights groups and the United Nations have found the coalition’s air campaign has mostly affected civilians. Since March, more than 2,000 civilians have died and another 4,000 have been injured, most of them killed in the air campaign, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. A new UN report states that 86 percent of casualties in the ongoing violence have been civilians.

In the Al Sufra district, fresh graves lie alongside those of Yemenis who died in previous conflicts. Adam Bailes

The Saudi coalition has repeatedly targeted schools, hospitals, and religious buildings. Civilian infrastructure, including a camp for displaced people, water supplies, and power stations, have been destroyed. Civilian hospitals—overloaded with patients injured by airstrikes yet painfully under-supplied because of coalition blockades—are nearing collapse. In late June, the UN envoy to Yemen said the country was “one step away from famine.” And in August, the UN’s World Food Programme said the blockades were contributing to pushing 6 million of the country’s inhabitants to the brink of starvation. Peter Maurer, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross observed, “Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years.”

A UN statement that described the conflict as “beyond tragic” recently noted that “indiscriminate attacks and attacks against civilians and civilian objects may constitute war crimes.” Meanwhile, 1.5 million Yemenis are internally displaced—five times what it was last December—and thousands are fleeing the country every week, leading some to wonder whether Yemen will be the next refugee crisis to hit Europe.

A bomb crater marks what used to be a three-story house inside the old city of Sa’dah, in northwest Yemen.. Adam Bailes

A young girl with third-degree burns is treated at Sana’a’s Al-Jumhori Hospital, which has the only burn ward in the country. Adam Bailes

Bailes, who had been documenting the war’s civilian toll since July, was recently forced to leave the country by Houthi officials.

Back in the Sana’a neighborhood where Harazi’s home was destroyed, 22-year-old Zakaria Abdullah, described the war in pointed terms: “The day of the explosion, the street was so full of blood that you could not walk on the main road that you see over there.” That airstrike left 85 dead and 300 injured, and forced some 2,000 people from their homes. Abdullah told Bailes, “We do not support either of the two sides fighting. We are not with the strikes or against the strikes. We are under the strikes.”

Children play in front of ruined buildings of Sa’dah’s old city, a historic site that’s been hit by multiple coalition airstrikes. Adam Bailes

Fifteen people were killed while waiting for fuel in April when an airstrike hit this gas station in Sa’dah. Adam Bailes

Dead livestock line the road after a coalition jet attacked a truck carrying animals to market. Almost all of the of vehicles destroyed on the road between Sanaa and Sa’dah have been civilian. Adam Bailes

Al Muhamasheen, a marginalized group at the bottom of Yemeni society, make up a large percentage of those living in camps for the displaced. Adam Bailes

At a hospital in Sa’dah, a young man is treated for injuries suffered in a coalition airstrike. Adam Bailes

In one two-hour period, the Saudi-led coalition hit Sana’a 30 times, killing 17 civilians and wounding another 77. Adam Bailes

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The Human Cost of Saudi Arabia’s Air War in Yemen, in Photos

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The Pope Wants America to Learn From Its Horrific Treatment of Native Americans

by NateSqynziclpt Posted on September 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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As expected, Pope Francis implored Congress to protect refugees and other migrants in an address at the Capitol on Thursday. But before he did, he took a step to acknowledge the nation’s (and the church’s) often horrific treatment of American Indians. America, he argued, should demonstrate a sense of compassion it so rarely showed during the colonization of the continent:

In recent centuries, millions of people came to this land to pursue their dream of building a future in freedom. We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants. Tragically, the rights of those who were here long before us were not always respected. For those peoples and their nations, from the heart of American democracy, I wish to reaffirm my highest esteem and appreciation. Those first contacts were often turbulent and violent, but it is difficult to judge the past by the criteria of the present. Nonetheless, when the stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our “neighbors” and everything around us. Building a nation calls us to recognize that we must constantly relate to others, rejecting a mindset of hostility in order to adopt one of reciprocal subsidiarity, in a constant effort to do our best. I am confident that we can do this.

This language is particularly significant because of what the Pope was up to yesterday—at a service at Catholic University, he formally canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Spanish missionary who played an important role in the conversion of American Indians to Catholicism in California. Serra wasn’t by any stretch the worst European to visit the New World (the bar is very high), but the missions of California were deadly places for American Indians, cursed with high mortality rates (from disease and abuse) and forced labor. The core purpose of Serra’s work was to purge the region of its native culture and install the church in its place. For this reason, some American Indian activists were fiercely opposed to the canonization; Francis didn’t meet with any of them until yesterday afternoon—after he’d made it official. Consider Thursday’s allusion to past transgressions something of an olive branch.

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The Pope Wants America to Learn From Its Horrific Treatment of Native Americans

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Jeb Bush Has No Clue About Business Regulation

by JosetteOneil Posted on September 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush today in the Wall Street Journal:

To understand what is wrong with the regulatory culture of the U.S. under President Obama, consider this alarming statistic: Today, according to the World Bank—not exactly a right-wing think tank—the U.S. ranks 46th in the world in terms of ease of starting a business. That is unacceptable. Think what the U.S. could be and the prosperity we could have if we rolled back the overregulation that keeps us from ranking in the top 10.

My goodness. That does sound unacceptable. Still, it never hurts to check up on these presidential candidates, does it? So let’s click the link.

Sure enough, the World Bank ranks the United States 46th in ease of starting a business. But there’s an asterisk next to that. Let’s scroll down and see what it says: “The rankings of economies with populations over 100 million are based on data for 2 cities.” Hmmm. It turns out the World Bank is ranking the US based on starting up a business in New York City. That seems to tip the scales a wee bit, no?

But let’s soldier on. New Zealand ranks first in starting a new business, so let’s see how they work their magic. Here’s the World Bank’s comparison:

So it takes half a day in New Zealand and four days in New York City. Really? Half a day to start up a new business? Maybe they’re not using the same definition of “starting” that I am. Let’s check out the details for New York City. Here they are:

Now I get it. This isn’t about getting a business up and running. It’s solely about registering a new business. And it’s got nothing to do with any of Obama’s regulations. It’s all about state and local stuff. The only part that’s federal is getting an EIN number, which is free and takes one day. I’m not sure what Jeb Bush thinks he’s going to do to streamline this.

Bottom line: this is completely meaningless. It’s a measure only of how long it takes to register a business, and it’s only for New York City. And even at that, it takes only four days and costs $750. This is not stifling American entrepreneurship.

But wait! There’s more. The World Bank does have a broader “Ease of Doing Business” rank that takes into account the things you need to do to get up and running: construction permits, electricity, credit, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, etc. As it happens, the bulk of this stuff is still state and local, and has nothing to do with Obama or the federal government. Still, let’s take a look since Jeb chose not to share it with us for some reason. Where does the US rank on this measure?

The World Bank has us in 7th place. We’re already in the top ten that Jeb is aiming for. Mission accomplished!

POSTSCRIPT: Jeb has many other statistics in his piece, and I’d take them with the same grain of salt as his World Bank numbers. He also promises that in his administration every regulation “will have to satisfy a rigorous White House review process, including a cost-benefit analysis.” Apparently he doesn’t realize that this is already the case. As for the outrageous regulations he promises to repeal on Day One, this would mostly just benefit big campaign donors, not the yeoman entrepreneurs he claims to be sticking up for. No big surprise there, I suppose.

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Jeb Bush Has No Clue About Business Regulation

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For Blue-Collar Men, Life Looks Increasingly Dismal

by AugustuHague Posted on September 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s a merger of two charts that have made the rounds recently. The first, from Brookings, shows a familiar pattern: the median pay of a man employed full-time has dropped substantially since 2010. The second, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, shows that health care deductibles have risen substantially since 2010.

Put them together and you get the chart on the right. The light red line is bad enough: blue-collar men earn about $3,000 less than they did five years ago. The dark red line is even worse: if you factor in rising deductibles, they’re earning $3,500 less than they did five years ago.

This explains a lot of the discontent of the past five years, especially among working and middle-class white workers. In theory, health care is getting better every year, and if you take that into account then wages start to look a little better. Technically, this is true. But think about it from the average worker’s point of view:

His cash wages have gone down.
Health care may be getting better, but that’s mostly invisible. It doesn’t seem any different than usual.
But high deductibles provide an incentive not to see the doctor when something minor is bothering you. So, in practice, health care actually seems not merely the same as always, but actually a bit worse and a bit more of a hassle. Either you ignore the minor stuff or else you go in and, thanks to higher deductibles, end up paying an infuriatingly high bill.

For your average blue-collar man, here’s what life seems like: wages are down, health care is more expensive, and you have to spend a lot more time worrying about whether it’s worth it to see your doctor. There’s not much to like in this picture.

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For Blue-Collar Men, Life Looks Increasingly Dismal

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VW Loses About $20 Billion in Value in 2 Hours

by BryanGraziani Posted on September 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Guess what happens when you concoct a contemptible scheme to secretly blow off emission rules on your cars—and then it suddenly becomes not so secret? Answer: your respected multinational corporation loses about $20 billion of value over the course of a few minutes. Your stock gets downgraded by pretty much every analyst on the planet. And the folks who put together the Dow Jones Sustainability Index start suggesting that maybe VW isn’t exactly a poster child for sustainability anymore.

By the way, it turns out that VW’s deception was actually discovered a year ago, but they doggedly denied any wrongdoing:

For nearly a year, Volkswagen officials told the Environmental Protection Agency that discrepancies between the formal air-quality tests on its diesel cars and the much higher pollution levels out on the road were the result of technical errors, not a deliberate attempt to deceive Washington officials.

….The company was evidently concerned that actually meeting the federal emissions standards would degrade the power of the engines, which it marketed as comparable in performance to gasoline engines. Meeting the standard would also undercut the fuel efficiency that is one of the main selling points of diesels.

Volkswagen finally fessed up only after the EPA said it planned to withhold approval for the carmaker’s new 2016 models. Until then, it was just deny, deny, deny.

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VW Loses About $20 Billion in Value in 2 Hours

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Carly Fiorina: Is She America’s Next Millard Fillmore?

by RosalinShephard Posted on September 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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From George Colony, chief executive of tech research firm Forrester, judging Carly Fiorina’s tenure as head of Hewlett-Packard:

I’d put her at the top of the bottom third of C.E.O.s.

Good enough for me! In round numbers, this means she’s another Millard Fillmore. I suppose this also means we’ll soon be getting a rash of conservative essays telling us that we really need to reevaluate Fillmore’s place in history. Also, I guess I can expect some flak from residents of Buffalo and from fanciers of the Whig Party. Bring it on.

But that’s enough about Carly’s business record. How about her political record? She does have one, you know. In case you’ve forgotten, here is Carly’s greatest claim to political fame. Fast forward to 2:20 if you just want to see the good part.

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Carly Fiorina: Is She America’s Next Millard Fillmore?

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