Note: I first added this page to my web site in the year 1999. Looking at it now (2010), the information is very outdated. However, I've decided to leave it here as a time capsule of my thoughts a decade ago. See, this is a page of negative statistics, the sort that first got me riled up about global causes. Great, but further research started revealing the misleading nature of many of these numbers ... many of these are snapshots, which don't reveal the contextual trends. More research revealed that many of these trends were actually headed in the right direction, especially after the '90s, a tipping point for many global stats. This thinking eventually led me to write my book: |
Welcome to my page of facts, figures, and quotes about relevant
world issues such as the environment, disease, war, globalization, human
rights, and more. The way I see it, there are three steps involved for
each of us to do his or her part to save our planet and ourselves. My
"Save the Earth" site is here to help with the first step, especially
this page: Learning about the issues, a complicated and ongoing process.
The second step is getting involved - volunteering, donating to worthy
causes, and changing your lifestyle. The final step is passing the information
to others and inspiring more people to action.
This page is split into two parts: statistics and quotes. I tried to mention all sources when I could. All of these are things I've been compiling informally and slowly for the past year. It's just meant to give you a taste of what's going on and some ideas and thoughts. Visit my Get Involved! page when you're finished for links to sites with a lot more comprehensive information.
The Copenhagen Consensus
What happens when you ask the world's leading economists to agree on which programs give the best ROI on saving the whole world? A surprising amount of agreement and some interesting results. Read on to find out where to best spend your money (Here's a taste: The top results focus on fighting AIDS, malaria, and malnutrition.)
The Economist's articles on the project
Copenhagen Consensus.com: A beautiful web site
Statistics
| "The average length of a food-stamp application is 12 often impenetrable pages; a permit to sell weapons is just two." - Anna Quindlen (Newsweek, June 18, 2001) In the US alone, in 1999 12 million children were hungry or at risk of going hungry. In 2000, requests for food assistance from families increased 20 percent. - US Dept. of Agriculture (Newsweek, June 18, 2001) According to the United Nations Children's Fund, one in six children in the world's richest nations live in poverty, with the United States and Britain among the worst. A report by UNICEF published this week stated that despite rising incomes in the world's 29 wealthiest nations, 47 million live in famalies so impoverished that their health and well-being are at risk. Mexico rated most poorly in terms of children living in relative poverty: More than 26 percent of children live in households with an income below 50 percent of the national median. The United States came next, with 22.4 percent; followed by Italy, 20.5 percent; Britain, 19.8 percent; Turkey, 19.7 percent; and Ireland, 16.8 percent. Rated the best were Sweden, Norway and Finland, with 2.6 percent, 3.9 percent and 4.3 percent respectively. A survey of children living in absolute poverty - defined as households with incomes below the U.S. official poverty line converted into national currencies - showed Poland was the worst, with 93.1 percent; followed by Hungary, 90.6 percent; the Czech Republic, 83.1 percent; Spain, 42.8 percent; Italy, 36.1 percent; and Britain, 29.1 percent. - WorldCampaign.net |
| Number of childen NOT covered by health insurance: |
| Eight years ago, the nine counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay instituted pollution controls to lower toxic emissions from factories and cars. In April, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District announced that the cancer rates had dropped from 356 per million (in 1991) to 186 per million (in 1999). This, despite the increase in the number of cars on the road and the presence of 6,000 industrial plants. Nationally the cancer risk is 333,000 per million - one in every three Americans. - Earth Island Journal, Autumn 2001 |
| Ten Worst Corporations 2002
Visit www.essential.org/monitor for more information. |
| Politics "In last year's [2000] Senate races, the better-funded candidate won 85 percent of the time. In House races, the figure was 95.6 percent." - Sierra, Nov/Dec 2001, p.18 |
While wealthier US men were more likely to die of cancer than poorer ones during the 1950s and 1960s, this trend was reversed in the 1970s and 1980s, a new analysis of census data shows. The research, published in the June 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is some of the first to focus on socioeconomic status and cancer in US men. Traditionally, cancer researchers investigate cancer rates based on gender, age, ethnicity and lifestyle habits. The study shows that between 1950 and 1952, cancer death rates for men living in the wealthiest US counties were 49% higher than for those living in the poorest areas. By the late 1990s, the situation had reversed, with cancer deaths 19% higher among men living in the poorest areas compared with the wealthiest. The researchers attribute the change to "social disparities in tobacco use, diet, exposure to environmental pollutants and access to and use of medical care." |
| The Deadly SUV One in four vehicles in the U.S. is an SUV. SUV sales were up 6% this year (2001), even though overall auto sales were down 5%. "Ironically, more SUV owners claim to be environmentalisats
than do drivers of other types of vehicles. 'SUVs are the classic
mirror to look at the contradictions of baby boomers, 'says Robert
Thompson, Syracuse U. professor." Thanks to SUVs, the national average miles per gallon of new vehicles
has actually decreased: Only 5% of SUV owners ever use them off-road. (Source: Newsweek, July 2, 2001.) |
| It's not impossible: Year in which Iceland plans to have ceased all use of fossil fuels, converting completely to sustainable, clean energy: 2030. - Harper's index, August 2001 For every dollar's worth of goods and services the United States produces, it consumes 40 percent more energy than other industrialized nations - New York Times, "Gobbling energy and wasting it, too." June 13, 2001 If we're not careful, globalization can kill cultures: 90% of the world's remaining languages will die out in the next 100 years. - Earth Island Journal, Summer 2001 Organizers of the Summit of the Americas in Quebec offered the world's biggest multinationals the opportunity to make provate "welcoming remarks" to George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and 32 other world leaders in exchange for a donation of 500,000 Canadian dollars ($320,000). Conservative Party Leader Joe Clark called the offer of face-time for high rollers "insulting to anyone who believes in democracy." - Earth Island Journal, Autumn 2001 |
| A quarter of the world lives on less than a dollar a day. |
| Smoking Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 37,000 heart disease deaths in U.S. nonsmokers each year. - from Rock the Vote 2000 |
| Violence Against Women 1 in 5 American high school girls reports being
a victim of physical or sexual violence in a dating relationship. |
| Energy efficiency doubled in U.S. in 20th century, but energy consumption per capita nearly tripled. - The First Measured Century A child in this country is shot every seven seconds. In fact, children in the U.S. are nine times more likely to be killed by guns than children in 25 of the world's top industrial nations. Additional gun control laws would keep handguns and assault weapons out of the hands of minors and repeat felons. - Rock the Vote 2000 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-sponsored group of 2500 scientists around the world, predicts that there will be an 20% increase in risk of infections worldwide due to global warming. |
| Alcohol Nearly 17,000 people have died from alcohol poisoning in Russia in the first half of 2001, an increase of about 30% on the same period last year. The health ministry reported that figures reflected the rising demand for alcohol and the low quality of drinks consumed. Although alcohol costs are low in Russia, many resort to home-distilled vodka which can contain lethal impurities. There are a reported 2 million alcoholics in Russia, with an estimated 56,000 under the age of 14. - BBC News, August 29, 2001 |
| Economic Footprint Economic Footprints represent the productive area of the Earth required to support the lifestyle of one individual in a given population. Industrialized countries average 20 (acres per person) compared to developing countries, which average 5 (acres per person). National averages: United States: 30.2 Sources: National Geographic, July 2001 & www.rprogress.org Calculate your own Economic Footprint at www.rprogress.org! (I got a 23.6.) Also, check out this cool Flash animation: www.luccaco.com/terra/terra.htm |
| Clean Water The Clean Water Act of 1972 called for all water to be safe for fishing and swimming by 1983. Yet, over one-third of our rivers, lakes and streams are not fit for fishing or swimming. - The Sierra Club A report published by the Tearfund says that water consumption rose sixfold between 1990 and 1995, more than twice the rate of population growth. The magnitude of severe future water shortages is such that the world will witness 'water refugees' - millions of people forced to leave their homes in search of clean water. - The Ecologist, May 2001 30,000 litres of water are used in the construction of a single personal computer. - The Ecologist, May 2001 Last year, the U.S. was forced to close 7,000 beaches due to pollution. - The Ecologist, May 2001 |
|
The Global Diet A recent GerAsians survey asked 5,700 Asia-Pacific youngsters in nine different countries to name their favorite food and drink. Their answers tell a colorful story: Australia: McDonald's, Coca-Cola |
Quotes
| "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." - Thomas Edison |
| "Our public schools, one of the bulwarks of American democracy, have sprung leaks everywhere, and the captain is content to hand out refunds to the first-class passengers while the ship sinks." - Dennis M. Clausen (letter to Newsweek, June 25, 2001) |
| "Adding highway capacity to solve traffic
congestion is like buying larger pants to deal with your weight
problem." |
| "When you give a Republican a choice
between more poison and less regulation, we need some time to think
about it." |
| "The world is being reshaped by synergy between technological revolution and global capitalism. These twin forces have produced a series of concerns - over environmentalism, bioethics, pharmaceutical research, cultural preservation, the future of the welfare system and state sovereignty itself - which are being debated around the world. How we respond to them over the next 20 years will determine the kind of world we live in for the next 200." - Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, July 30, 2001 |
| "Barring solutions, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that further global warming will disastously redraw the map and the nature of the world, leaving even the most flawless of missile-defense systems with not much left to defend." - Harper's Magazine, August 2001 "The Bush people are mired in the mind-set of doing favors for gas, oil and electricity. If they're going to be stopped, it has to be now. They are banking on the fact that America is paying attention to other things." - Robert Redford, Rolling Stone, August 30, 2001 "On the evidence of its environmental policies to date, the Bush administration is not merely pro-business: it actually appears to hold a grudge against the natural world." - The Guardian, London, August, 2001 |
| "Nobel laureate Robert Fogel showed that periods of great affluence are regularly follwed by what he calls Great Awakenings and that we are due for one in the near future." - Amitai Etzioni, The Good Society: Goals Beyond Money, The Futurist, July/August, 2001 This echoes a theory put forth in an excellent book, The Twilight of American Culture, by Morris Berman. FInd it on my book reviews page. |
| "In fact, the main value gap today is not between Europeans, Americans, Asians, and Africans, but between all of us and the values of the ruling economic fundamentalism - which even in democratic countries is presented as sacrosanct and without alternative. Our problem today is not a 'values vacuum' but that widely-agreed human values are not acted on. Indeed, they have often been rendered invisible by the refusal of commerce and finance to accept that they should be restricted by the values of the societies in which thye operate." - Jakob Von Uexkull, "A New Human Story," The Ecologist, May 2001 |