To qualify “Third World,” just a bit, and contradict some presumptions you may have, Hans Rosling presents some interesting statistics.

A great number of factors contribute to the changes he presents in the following video (including education, western cultural advances, technological advances, et cetera), but it is undeniable that the World Bank and IMF loans / advisory councils do have some part to play in the few good effects of globalization. Increased trade and imports of the kind created by IMF opportunities, as well as the infrastructural models prescribed by the World Bank for creating prosperity in developing nations (though mostly benefiting U.S. of A corporations, and almost always damaging local economies) can help in feeding a nation more efficiently, and relieve certain political stresses.

These positive changes which have occurred are fairly surprising:

It is of paramount importance to recall that not only did we create The Third World, but we extend it’s plight day by day. To be more explicit: those ruling powers of the world, the countries to which we commonly refer as First World countries, or The West, at one time managed all third world countries in the form of imperial political control. It might be hard to remember that most countries around the world were monarchies until this last century, and many of them held political control over other parts of the world via Political imperialism (then just as popular a foreign policy as economic and corporate imperialism are today).

Most countries in Central and South America gained independence from Portugal or Spain toward the middle of the 19th century, whereas those in the middle east or Asia got their independence from Great Britain starting in some cases as early as the 1920’s and in others the 1970’s. Most of the countries now in Africa (as well as some others around the world) were created during the 1960’s by a wave of independence movements against mostly British and French rule, with some Portuguese.

No small part of the problems these countries now face are a result of the ways in which those political empires ended, and the continued struggle they face is a result of the economic and corporate empires which were begun shortly after WWII, here in the west.

For one detailed example, see Jamaica:

(pollution in food. intellectual property, part four. the economy, part two.)

This guy’s a little nuts, and sometimes hard to follow, but he’s doing interesting research into one of our more mysterious terrestrial cousins. Not all of his ideas are great (ecanol?), but some are amazing, the primary interest to me in this video is the section talking about the oil polluted soil (starting about 8 minutes in).

“If the upholstery fabric isn’t abrading an allergen, the paint and the office furniture are off-gassing formaldehyde. If the carpet is said to be recyclable, it might be backed with PVC, a polymer built with a vinyl chloride monomer, a known carcinogen”

~ William McDonough & Michael Braungart, from the essay redefining green

waste = life

There was a time in human pre-history when we were primarily consumers. We ate, and we drank; any parts of an animal or plant which were unused in nourishing, clothing, or housing ourselves was left for scavenging animals, fed to pets, or for the earth itself to consume. Our structures and clothes themselves would, when abandoned, become food for further production by other animals or the earth. In this kind of pre-historic state, the word waste (should it have existed) would not have been a negative: nearly any waste was fodder for growth.¹

Stone, used in the early construction of some of our smallest and most enormous structures alike, can also be swallowed by the earth, in eons long geological processes. Stone is constantly being eroded by wind, water or sun, or broken apart by plants and freeze/thaw cycles, and while mountains of earth and stone turn to fields of soil, volcanic and seismic activity make new mountains.

Simply to observe the earth is to realize that it wants constantly to reuse everything (and that come what may, it will reuse everything, whether to it’s health benefit or not). When we speak of a closed loop industrial production cycle, like the one being begun by HP for sale and take-back of it’s ink-jet cartridges, it’s based on exactly this: earth’s basic cradle to cradle closed loop of energy and matter.

waste = death

“consumption”

Now, as the descriptor “consumer” gains everyday use and acceptance in characterizing our increasingly world-wide lifestyle, we see it become increasingly abstract (as with so many things in our culture). In the mid 18th century, political changes began generating the first middle class—a group of people able to buy things they didn’t need—to this group, early economists applied the word: consumer. (the word had existed for at least 400 years by that time, but was used to mean “to take, to use, or to eat.” it now carried the specific economic meaning it still has today, “to buy.”)

For a period in the U.S. of A, beginning in the 1920s (with a gap during the depression), and lasting until quite recently, the word was used by politicians, and public-relations men almost exclusively; and generally, the public resented the implications that they were of no good to the country other than as spenders of money. During the cold war, political promotion of spending was veiled in anti-communist rhetoric, imbuing the spending of money with an ideological importance. In campaigns from this era, the word consumer was generally absent. Recently, however, it has been taken up with some pride by the public, and can now be used unabashedly. It is even politically correct: President Bush told us to fight the recession by buying, to help our country by consuming.

And we are able, by and large, to do just that (although, how much it will help our financial predicament is debatable). Various facets of the industrial revolution gave the United States middle class citizen more income than they need (and by the widest margin in the history of having income (in the form of money)). Based on U.S. census averages, our necessary expenditures break down as follows: 17% of our income on food, 21% on housing, and 15% on cars. This leaves 47% of our income “expendable.” Certainly you can argue about just how necessary the car is—or could be—in the above figures, along with the choice of not including other “necessities” like digital communication tools: computers or cell phones, TV or cable service, et cetera.

What most of us are able to ignore or forget in this “consumption,” is that all we’re really consuming is that same old food and drink from 100,000 years ago. The difference with our waste, then to now, is that not only could the earth reuse that pre-historic waste, but it was actually beneficial to do so, it was nourishing to the earth and benign to us. Most of the waste we create now is dangerous or deadly to us and the earth. We often call this kind of waste pollution.

A question might leap to mind: how is this possible? If we are indeed a part of nature (undeniable), and we’ve been using natural resources that have always been on the planet to make what we make (equally true), then what are we doing wrong? how is it so dangerous? The answer, it turns out, is that we’re just not thinking about our future, or not putting any value on it when deciding how to make what we make. In efforts to make things as efficiently as possible, to achieve a limited set of productions goals (often cost and profit related), we make poor decisions. These decisions have led scientists and tinkerers alike to make combinations of things that nature never made before we came along. As when Leo Baekeland mixed tarry carbolic acid and formaldehyde in this garage in Yonkers to make the first commercially made plastic: “Bakelite.” Leo’s process (and those of the rest of the world’s chemists soon at work trying to make their own polymer breakthrough) did not put much thought into what would be done with the stuff once it was no longer useful. In other words, as a species, we’re making poor design decisions.

So let’s look at just what it is we buy, briefly address how it’s made, and what pollution that creates. First our food: industrially grown and processed plants, industrially fed and processed animals, both shipped over great distances for our convenience, some shipped and processed under refrigeration in an effort both to keep it fresher longer, as well as to combat the time taken up in processing and shipping.²

Read more »

Now, the heavy-handed style Michael Moore chooses for making his documentaries grates on me a bit, but he often presents fantastic information, and well researched information. Some people question correlations he draws, and just who it is he picks to interview, and certainly his work is incredibly biased and leading, but for him: that’s the idea. Sicko, his most recent documentary is centered on the problems of the health industry in the U.S. of A. It can be seen via google video for the time being:

Also:

Another episode of PBS’ Frontline, this one from earlier in 2008, focusing on health care in other capitalist nations around the world. It is interesting to see how other countries have handled “the problem,” especially in light of the political talk surrounding the topic this year. The most striking part for me is part of the summary at the end of the program: after having looked at these various systems, the presenter points out that the U.S. of A actually has 3 concurrent programs (catering to distinct parts of our population) which are closely analogous to systems that other countries have chosen to use for all. How much of our problem could be a result of this fragmentation?

A quick rundown of the topics covered in the program is available on the frontline site, here.

the complete episode can be seen here.

This video, Waste = Food, is one of two documentaries produced thus far that are based on the book Cradle to Cradle (see the bibliography), the other is The Next Industrial Revolution.

Waste = Food is by far the better of the two—at least in production value. As far as information is concerned, they are probably about equal, though ever so slightly different in focus. The Next Industrial Revolution spends more time on the issues of social and environmental justice (though a little vaguely), while Waste = Food spends more time (still vaguely) on design and economics.

Both are worth a watch if you’re really interested in the topic (and (if you do watch both) hearing quite a bit of repeated information), although the other is only “available” as a torrent download (if you don’t know what that means, forget i mentioned it), at around 450mb: here.

The Atlantic Monthly, a fine magazine of general news content and cultural digest, recently begun a new campaign, called: Think. Again.

The campaign hopes to enliven a questioning of so many things we take for granted, and to look at things in a slightly different way. This is done by way of live interviews with people in the street and posts on the project’s blog, but primarily through what amounts to viral marketing. In the end, you could say it’s just an ad for the magazine, if a somewhat unusual one. On the other hand, there is supposedly a documentary to follow, to be based on the outcome of the interviews and public response to the campaign, which has potential to be very thought provoking.

Check out the website and their blog for some questions, and some rather nice photographs (i’d say).

It is interesting how almost none of the popular conversation concerning climate change (whomever or whatever could be said to causing it), contains the following concerns about water:

As the temperature on earth rises, not only do the polar ice caps and permafrost fields of the north melt (causing all of the troubles we are now beginning to see), but so do mountain snow fields and glaciers. This is significant because it is the largest direct source of water to the statistical majority of the people on the earth, in the form of rivers. Now, these snow fields exist in the first place because of receding glaciers from the last ice age, but are maintained in a delicate balance by the weather conditions allowing continued rain and snowfall, which happen to be the major creators of the second largest water source: aquifers.

As our weather patterns change, and ice in various locations melts, this becomes a terrifying prospect.

We can talk about climate change as a function of many things, but perhaps the most significant is this, the one we are almost ignoring: the universal human right to clean water. This has been difficult enough for us to attempt before the recent rapid climate changes, but it will only get more difficult as we continue down this road.

The website for the movie, Flow (due to be released on DVD toward the end of 2008), has a page called Take Action, which has some intersting links. Check it out.

What our politicians rather absurdly call our “free market” is often championed for allowing greater choice to the average U.S. of A. consumer, whether it be in some commodity or health care.

Corporate mergers and transnational conglomerates lessen the economic significance of this choice, and our very human psychology lessens the personal significance of this choice. Barry Schwartz tells us a little about the latter: