The World In 2050 Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith

The World In 2050 Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith





Laurence C. Smith is a geographer and a professor of earth and space science at UCLA. This book is about much more than climate change. It is about how the arctic is changing. This change is fueling a race for new resources in oil, natural gas, fisheries, mining, shipping, and open land.



In the beginning of the book, he focuses on four forces that bring change to the world; demographics, climate change, natural resource demand, and globalization. All of these are increasingly important. Global temperatures are rising, there are more people, more people are moving to cities, there is less water and other resources, and trade is more interdependent worldwide.



I think he may be wrong about some things. He does not factor in new technologies like urban farming, wave power, or digital fabrication. He is basing his predictions on there being no major breakthrough technologies.



The book is fascinating. It is easy to follow the changes he is describing. Brazil, Russia, India, and China are becoming manufacturing powers. India's cities are going to be the largest in the world.



We get to read about the consequences both negative and positive of the four forces. One thing I found especially interesting was his description of how wildlife and plant life are starting to move northward towards the heating arctic. I especially liked his description of a hybrid grizzly/polar bear.



In the second part of the book, he describes how the NORC countries; Canada, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and the United States are going to benefit in some ways from the opening of the arctic. Part of this description is how the United Nations arctic treaties are cementing the NORC countries peaceful control over the area.



Russia and Canada will be the futures largest suppliers of oil and natural gas. Also, there will be more water in the north as the arctic warms, and the southern countries water supplies dry up. The predictions show a pattern of rising importance for the northern countires.



We also learn how native populations in the Arctic will become more important, just like in Alaska where land and oil rights were given to many native Americans; in Canada, a whole new territory called New Nunavut has been carved out of the Arctic for the Canadian native peoples. It is being developed along a similar pattern to Alaska.



This is a fascinating story. I think the changes he is describing will be much faster than Laurence C. Smith anticipates. He is using very mainstream measurements.. There is a lot in this book worth thinking about.

Third World America How Our Politicians Are Abandoning The Middle Class And Betraying The American Dream by Arianna Huffington

Third World America How Our Politicians Are Abandoning The Middle Class And Betraying The American Dream by Arianna Huffington



Arianna Huffington is the founder of The Huffington Post which is a liberal news and opinion site. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ . This book is being used as a platform for change.


Third World America attacks lobbyists and financial institutions for destroying the American middle class. It is more vitriolic against the Republican party than the Democratic party, but does not spare either side.



Arianna Huffington's main focus of attack is the lobbyists and financial institutions which participated in creating the mortgage and financial crisis which drove many homes into foreclosure, eliminated jobs, and had devastating consequences for the middle class. She describes how foreclosures and credit card debt have created a poverty industry fueled by lobbyists.



She gives many examples of how it is harder and harder to stay part of the middle class. Now, the dream is to keep what you have; stay in your home, keep your job, and hold onto your assets. Wealth is being transferred out of public institutions into private companies.



Congress looks the other way when we bailout companies like AIG, pay massive amounts for contracts to polluters like British Petroleum, and don't monitor companies like Blackwater closely enough. She is describing a fusion of government with private industry that lacks transparency.



This is most apparent in our infrastructure which is crumbling. Our roads, schools, trains, bridges, dams, and electrical grid all need upgrading. It is obvious that things are not quite working right. Trains are slower, schools are worse, and government is entangled.



In my own industry, I have watched downsizing, layoffs, and cuts to libraries. Now, I am seeing for the first time corporate takeover of public institutions like libraries by private companies like LSSI http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html  . It is an example of how companies will take over private institutions if possible, lower pay of people in communities, and be less transparent. What she is writing is very relevant to my own experience.



The answers which she gives are very liberal in nature. Have the government hire more people in public service, invest in infrastructure, stimulate green jobs, stop foreclosures, and regulate Wall Street. I am not sure this will work that well. It is a consistent liberal message. It feels very much like the consistent conservative message about what we should do about the economy. Both have pieces that have been tried to limited effect. There seems to be an unwillingness to acknowledge the world has changed and we might need to change and try a slightly different approach.



Where she most resonates with me is on the individual level. We can take money out of the banks and insurance companies which caused the crisis and invest in local banks and credit unions. We can start managing our personal finances better. We can also try to stay healthier, educate ourselves, and volunteer in our community. The personal steps which she suggests are not liberal or conservative, they are practical.



The book has an index and extensive notes. It is written as liberal opinion piece for the man on the street. The book is muckraking, expressive, and entertaining.



This is an excellent work. It is a call for change. It is a reminder that we should try and get the government to work for us, not lobbyists, financial institutions, or special interests. While many of Arianna Huffington's solutions on the national level seem impractical, her call to change on the individual level is very appropriate. This book is well worth reading. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thirdworldamerica

Refugees

Mass expulsion of the Poles by the nazi Reich in 1939.

Refugees

I feel a little remiss for not having written something earlier. This is a kind of hard topic for me to write about. Philosophically, I believe more democracy in the world can help stem the tide of refugees. Because I am not a particularly violent person, I support the notion of nonviolent ends to bring more democracy to the world. Numerous dictatorships have fallen recently because of the educated will of the people. http://aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf This is a free ebook From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.

People are more likely to flee oppression and dictatorial rule than open democracies. Genocide is often the product of harsh dictatorial regimes. Also, in democratic regimes people have a tendency to not starve.

Many of the problems of todays refugees stem from totalitarianism and genocide. Every day we see news about genocide in the Congo and Sudan. There is always some new atrocity being committed. Now, they no longer call it genocide, they call it ethnic cleansing.

The perpetrators claim they are cleansing an area of a particular people. Of course, it is not genocide because they are not necessarily killing all the people, they are instead forcing many of them to become refugees. This is a link to the Merriam Webster definition of "Ethnic Cleansing".
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethnic%20cleansing

Every "ethnic cleansing" creates refugee camps where the people from a particular ethnic group are concentrated into a camp where they wait for help. These refugees are forced into neighboring countries where they bring chaos. This is an interesting article on the chaos which has been caused in Chad from Sudan.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/11/africa/darfur.php

Oppressive regimes have learned it is impolitic to committ genocide, but it is still somewhat acceptable politically to force people from their homes into refugee camps. The people are not dead. But many seem to be waiting to die. Many of the camps seem like concentration camps with open doors.

I do not have a solution for this. It is an eternal problem. Sometimes being aware and telling others is the only thing you can do. The euphemisms being used in todays media are misleading at best. They are designed to lull you into accepting things which are inhuman.

The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria-- Review

The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria-- Review

I did not like The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. I thought it was a hyped up book designed to capitalize on Americans preconceptions of how the world works. The book focused on India and China and their rise in the world. It fed into the idea that a rising China will be the most important world power. So will a rising India. I think that this is overblown. Certainly, the world is changing, but not in the way the author is describing.

While the book applauds China's rise to being the largest manufacturer, it does little to point out that while China is a producer of cheap goods, it is not as productive in patents and selling end products where most of the money is made. Essentially, China has become the worlds manufacturer for basic goods the world over.

It also applauds India's rise as a manufacturer and producer of services. Once again, the book misses the boat in many ways. The Philippines are producing nurses, doctors, and programmers and sending them abroad. Indonesia is doing the same. We look at India and we see their ubiquitousness in customer service and call center work. India is very good at producing high technology manufacturing. The Tata corporation is massive. It already is producing the worlds cheapest cars.

My main objection to the book is that it mainly focuses on second world countries, glosses over the European Union, and does not touch deeply enough on the rise of the Scandinavian countries, Australia, and Canada. While India and China are important, several other things which will have more impact are already occurring than the rise of India and China.

Also, I think it avoids talking about the rise of the Central Asian Republics, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the rebirth of Turkey as a world power. There is also very little about the coming energy crunch which will reshape the middle east.

The Canadian, Australian, and European currencies are matching the dollar. Canada is growing much stronger economically. Australia is also. Canada has the largest reserves of tar sands or hard to extract oil. It is also adopting clean energy technologies at a much greater pace than the United States.

We look at China making goods, but the book does not acknowledge what is happening with  German reunification. Germany is becoming even more of a manufacturing powerhouse. It is now the third largest exporter in the world after China. Germany is not manufacturing cheap goods. German machinery is already becoming superior to American counterparts. For example, BMW had to send Americans to Germany to train them for precision manufacturing. No American trade school could match their training.

There is a brief nod toward Sweden when Fareed Zakaria mentions that China is looking towards the Swedish model for its future economic and political success, not the American model. However, the author once again does not acknowledge the changes in politics which are putting many of the Scandinavian countries as the model for economic and political development. It is not just in economics that we are seeing changes. Australia, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, and many of the European countries have higher standards of living than the United States.

United States politicians like this author are telling us to look backwards and be afraid of (BRIC) Brazil, Russia, India, and China because they are taking jobs away from us. It is called outsourcing. These jobs, however, are often not the highest paying jobs, nor the most technically skilled.

In many areas of manufacturing other countries are moving way ahead of the United States. The United States imports most of its solar panels from Japan and Germany. Vestas sends us many of our new windmills. We buy many of our cell phones from Nokia.
Mr. Zakaria talks about how the world is slowly pulling out of poverty. India and China have moved away from a large portion of their populations being in poverty. So have many other countries like Nigeria and Vietnam. This is a good sign that the world is changing in positive ways. However, it has not changed enough. There is still too much poverty in the global south.

I think the book panders to much to what we expect seeing. It focuses too much on China and India which are important, but not as important as the story of the rise of  Australia, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, and the expansion of the European Union. The book should have been more inclusive. I thought it missed too much.

Morning Thoughts

I picked up Nova Swing by M. John Harrison and The Citizen Powered Energy Handbook by Greg Pahl. I have started reading The Citizen Powered Energy Handbook.

Right now, I am thinking about the workshop on March 10, 2008 for google in libraries. I am also thinking about Library Legislation Day which is on March 11, 2008. I might go visit my state senator and representative to talk about libraries. There is a bus going to Albany, New York the state capital and I am considering getting on it. I think it would be a good experience for me to do this. I have a pretty good idea who I might visit. I am going to ask to go on library time.

I went back over and looked at the location of the legislation event and decided against it. Maybe, I am being elitist, but four other county library systems are part of the group. This does not seem particularly effective to me. I was hoping for a chance to speak with a representative.

There are not even a few minutes to speak to our representative one on one which I would prefer to do. The event listing says we will get to meet with our legislators as a group, attend a rally, hear lectures, and eat a breakfast. After looking at this, I am rather disappointed. A personal letter is more effective than this kind of thing. I am probably more likely to get a response that will be satisfactory this way.

Please write your representatives in support of libraries and local bookstores. Say something positive.

Anyways, this is my morning thought.

Freedom From Oil-- David Sandalow-- Review

Ford Edge Hydrogen Hybrid

Freedom From Oil How The Next President Can End The United States Oil Addiction by David Sandalow, Introduction by U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar. This book presents what looks like a bipartisan solution to helping end the United States dependence on oil. The book is about how the United States can diversify its transportation sector away from oil to other sources like electricity and biofuels. The book largely consists of memorandums between a fictitious president and his different advisors. At first, when I read this, I thought "oh no", a book about committee meetings between a politician and his staff. But, luckily it turned out to not be so dull.

There is a lot of material covered in this book. Some of it is surprising. Each chapter has a guest cameo. General Richard Zilmer talks about how it is necessary to introduce solar and wind power in the military to reduce the need for vulnerable fuel convoys, Chelsea Sexton who starred in Who Killed The Electric Car talks about the need for electric cars. There are a lot of interesting cameos.

96% of the United States transportation sector relies on oil. The majority of this oil comes from the Middle East and countries unfriendly to the United States like Venezuela. The political costs of this oil are high, vulnerability to attack on oil fields by terrorists, problems sanctioning Iran, going to war with Iraq, being dependent on non-democratic countries like Saudia Arabia, global warming, dwindling suppies, and pollution. The costs are described in plain language.

The book itself is divided into three sections, problems, solutions, and decisions. In the problems section, David Sandalow describes how every president since Nixon has tried on some level to reduce dependence on foreign oil and failed. Taxes on oil and gas are practically unpassable as legislation. So is breaking the pork barrel politics which hands out benefits to oil and gas companies. Yet, the next president has to do this according to Mr. Sandalow.

There is also some material on the intransigence of the car companies in relation to change. There is a culture built around the internal combustion engine and big powerful race car fantasies.

The section on solutions is very interesting. I don't agree with him on many points, but he is talking about real things which can be done which is more than most politicians are doing. The main focus of the book seems to be getting millions of plug in hybrid electric vehicles on the road with a combination of tax incentives for individuals and incentives for American companies to retool factories so we can produce better cars. The second focus is on developing a strong biofuels infrastructure. This is focused on ethanol mainly, with wishful thinking on cellulosic ethanol.

There is also a section on improving fuel efficiency for cars by improving engines and materials. It is mostly about improving engines. Although he does mention that the fuel efficiency standards should be the same for cars and light trucks. He has come up with a new acronym which is kind of funny, Fuel Reduction and Energy Efficiency standard, FREEdom standars. I think the section on fuel efficiency could have included more on the idea of reducing weight for cars. The Hypercar created by the Rocky Mountain Institute doubles fuel efficiency by building the body of the car from superstrong carbon fiber.

There is an overemphasis on corn ethanol which many people are debating as a fuel source. Sugarcane ethanol, the main ethanol crop in Brazil is much more environmentally friendly. I don't think it would be that bad for the American public if we had sugar shortages because it is being used as a fuel. It might even be healthy. There is a bit on importing ethanol from Brazil instead of oil from Venezuela. This of course is completely opposed to by the American farm lobby.

I think the book shortchanges biodiesel. Biodiesel in my opinion is a better source of fuel than ethanol. Biodiesel can be used in any diesel engine with minimal changes. Also biodiesel can be made from feedstocks like human and animal wastes, restaurant grease, and oil seed bearing trees all of which use much less land than corn or sugar cane. I am going to mention two companies in the biodiesel arena. Aquaflow Bionomics in New Zealand grows algae to clean up settling ponds, the algae then is processed into biodiesel. This is a double benefit for the environment. Another company is Cleanfuel Technologies. Algae is grown in a process where it extracts carbon from flue stacks. Then the algae is processed into biodiesel.
http://www.greenfuelonline.com/gf_files/GreenFuel%20Growth%20Rates.pdf
Hybrid diesel engines are also being developed. I think as a potential fuel source algae trumps cellulosic ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol is discussed as the fuel of the future. There is a description where they plan to make every gas station have an E85 pump. E85, is a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% gas. I am not sure how they are going to do this. It is a nice idea, however, they have to pass the legislation through congress and senate. They can't seem to get the congress or senate to pass a 10% requirement for ethanol in gasoline. I am really not sure how they will do this. A lot of the big companies are already invested in FFV's or flexible fuel vehicles that can run on either gasoline or E85. General Motors has invested a lot of money into this.

Coal liquification is considered a good idea in this book. At least that was my take when I was reading the book. He says something different during the video presentation, that coal gasification is not so good. Maybe, I interpreted things the wrong way.

I am not a big fan of big coal. Coal accounts for 50% of our stationary energy use. Claiming that we will reduce global warming by investing in clean coal then sequestering the carbon dioxide in holes in the ground seems like a fantasy. I think there are other options for coal like the aforementioned GreenFuel Technologies. There is also cofiring with biomass. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy00osti/28009.pdf He says wind is simply not an option. I disagree with him. There is no discussion of diversifying the United States energy base with more geothermal, improved hydroelectric plants, solar power, more natural gas, and even nuclear energy. Diversification is essential, it is the best way to create a positive bipartisan energy policy.

The next section is about driving and highways. There is a brief statement that instead of putting money into roads, we should put money into mass transit. Also we should allow more telecommuting. Telecommuting at the level which he is describing would require a major change in the way most Americans think about work. Maybe if we put some money into better trains, things like the GE Hybrid locomotive http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1840706/posts people might be more interested in mass transit. I love trains.

The ideas in this book are interesting. Many of them seem implementable, I'd say about half of them. This is far better than most political books which I have read.

He summarzies the main goals of his program for ending oil addiction. He even spends some time describing what oil addiction is. Then he creates a speech which reminds me slightly of Ronald Reagan's speaking style on how we should kick the oil habit.

Here is the summary of his ideas reworded in my own language:

1) Transform the vehicle fleet to PHEV-- plug in hybrid electric vehicles . Get the government to order a PHEV fleet.

2) Change the fuel supply to ethanol and other biofuels.

3) Spend more money on mass transit and telecommuting.

4) Invest in research in cellulosic ethanol, biobutanol, and improved battery technology.

5) Create a gas tax to fund the changes as well as introduce a PHEV rebate for tax payers.

6) Change our diplomacy. During the video he mentions that we should cooperate with China in creating better standards. He implies that we should open our borders to Brazilian ethanol.

He describes his solution as a big government solution. Personally, it seems a bit too big government, but it is a better start than almost any other politician has come out and talked about. This is well worth reading if you are interested in energy policy.

David Sandalow is an Energy & Environment Scholar and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.

The Atomic Bazaar by William Langewieschke

14 Kiloton Nuclear Explosion

The Atomic Bazaar the Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche is a book about poor countries acquiring nuclear weapons. It starts out by describing what happens when a nuclear bomb blows up whether it be fission, fusion, or dirty bomb. The inital start is rather slow and a bit dense, but once you get past the first two chapters it becomes very readable. There is an interview with Paul Tibbetts, the man who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Paul has no regrets he did it, and thinks after 9/11 the United States should have dropped the atomic bomb on Mecca or Cairo. The book at times can be quite frightening.

The second part of the book is about how a terrorist or non-state organization might get the bomb. There is a large section on how someone might attempt to get nuclear material from Russia and the former soviet republics. There is quite a bit on the bomb making facilities and security in Russua as well as the dismantling programs funded by the United States. An interesting fact, is that the hardest part to hide is the construction of a nuclear bomb, because of all the specialists and materials needed to make it.

The third and most intresting part of the book is the story of A.Q. Khan the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb. It is a rather amazing story, a combination espionage, international greed, failure to stop the shipping of dual use products in making atomic bombs, nationalist anger, and conflict with India. The story shows the real limits on stopping proliferation the way things are being done now.

The fourth part is about how A.Q. Khan proliferated nuclear secrets to many other countries like Libya, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. For $100 million dollars a country could buy the facilities to make a nuclear bomb from Khan's laboratories. It ends with Musharraf placing A.Q. Khan under house arrest as Musharraf's personal advisor and scientist.

William Langiewiesche writing is very concise, easy to understand, and crisp. He manages to cover all of these topics in 171 pages.

This is a really fascinating book. It gives a lot of insights into how and why poor countries are trying to get nuclear weapons.

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