Signs From Earth

Population Trends: Magic Number is 2.1: Go forth and multiply a lot less (via @TheEconomist)

Live chart here: http://tinyurl.com/yf75sko

Gapminder chart of children per woman as GDP per person increases (2007) 

Large Blue circle is India, large red is China, large yellow at right is United States.

Economist: "Fertility and living standards: Lower fertility is changing the world for the better"

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14743589

"Sometime in the next few years (if it hasn’t happened already) the world will reach a milestone: half of humanity will be having only enough children to replace itself. That is, the fertility rate of half the world will be 2.1 or below..."

Economist Opinion: Demography, growth, and the environment: 

Falling Fertility: Astonishing falls in fertility are bringing with them big benefits

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14744915

After Borlaug: A New Green Revolution?

Wheat near Dalby, Western Australia. Photo by Raeallen/flickr

Norman Borlaug improved wheat harvests and kept starvation at bay. As population keeps rising what will the world do for a second act?

In the early 1970’s when I was studying agriculture at Oregon State, the name of Norman Borlaug was spoken with great reverence, especially in my cereal grains class, where we learned how Borlaug bred short, stocky wheat plants with big heads that could hold more grain than before. His efforts to improve grain production and stave off starvation in places like Latin America and Asia earned Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize.

Borlaug became known as the father of the “Green Revolution,” a transformation of world grain production that produced better harvests of wheat and rice when irrigation water, nitrogen fertilizers, and weed and insect pesticides were applied to crop fields.

So now Borlaug is gone, but we must continue the hard work of feeding an ever more populous world. World population nears seven billion people, about twice as many as when Borlaug’s Green Revolution began raising grain yields in the 1960s, and it is expected to top nine billion by mid-century.

Rising living standards pressure grain stocks as more people eat meat fed by harvests that otherwise would go to people. We’re also seeing large portions of corn harvests devoted to ethanol as a substitute for gasoline.

In late 2008 we saw severe price spikes for cereal grains and food. Supplies and prices of oil and natural gas have become volatile. Many analysts say we have seen the end of cheap oil. The Green Revolution would not have been green had it not been for cheap oil, and inexpensive natural gas used to produce synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

Then there are the droughts, floods, and heat waves from climate change beginning to affect farm productivity in food growing regions worldwide. We’re seeing soil erosion, aquifer depletion, and loss of glaciers that feed farm irrigation. Nearly half of the world’s people live in tropical and sub-tropical subsistence agriculture regions, increasingly vulnerable to crop loss as rainfall and temperature patterns are disrupted.

So Borlaug's work must continue with even higher stakes. Just as when Borlaug worked to feed the earth, whether we achieve food security ahead remains a daunting challenge, as National Geographic reported this June in its article Global Food Crisis: The End of Plenty.

Costa Rica Said to Be Happiest Place

The place to be these days is Costa Rica, if you seek a spot on earth where happiness abounds, or at least is in measurably greater quantities than the alternative. This according to the Happy Planet Index 2.0, which gave runner-up status to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Nine of the top ten nations in the index are in Latin America.

Apparently happiness is not in great surplus globally, as the New Economics Foundation, patron and host of the survey, has renamed the index website "The (Un)Happy Planet Index 2.0." 

So if you are looking for a hangout with more happiness potential than your current outpost, here is the resource to locate that new address. To produce its rankings, the unhappy planet index adds up measures such as life expectancy, life satisfaction, and ecological footprint.

In case you are interested, the United States ranks 114th of 143. Apparently our huge cars, mega-mortgage starter mansions, and endless credit card debt aren't always tickets to happiness. Perhaps, among other things, our ecological footprint is working against us.

Below: A map of the world, color coded by the Happy Planet Index. Countries in red are said by the index to rank poorly in at least two of the three measures.

 

More Heat, Less Money

Andrew Leonard at Salon notes research indicating that national per capita income drops 8.5 percent for each degree Celsius increase in temperature. This by Melissa Dell, Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken and summarized at VoxEu: Does Climate Change Affect Economic Growth?

"Hot countries tend to be poorer, but debate continues over whether the temperature-income relationship is simply a happenstance association. This column uses within-country estimates to show that higher temperatures have large, negative effects on economic growth – but only in poor countries. The findings are big news for future global inequality."

Dell, Jones and Olken: Climate Change and Economic Growth over the Last Half Century

Who Doesn't Work Where

Geography of a Recession: The New York Times offers an interactive map showing unemployment across the United States by county (above,) metropolitan area, those areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers. The map was based on a nationwide average unemployment rate of 7.1 percent. Most severe job losses are in housing boom and manufacturing areas, and those with previously high unemployment rates. 

The map accompanies an article by David Leonhardt, "Job Losses Show Breadth of Recession":

"What does the worst recession in a generation look like?

"It is both deep and broad. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. And even that band has recently begun to suffer, because of the sharp fall in both oil and crop prices..."

Impoverished Girls' Sad Lot in Life

A poignant story in The Washington Post with an elegant set of pictures by Nikki Kahn on the the life of poverty led by girls in south Asia who never go to school or are forced to drop out. Girls like like Jyotsna Patadia, who had to leave school at age 10 to help her parents work in the salt pans while her brothers stayed in school.

'This Is the Destiny of Girls'

Across Much of South Asia, a Daughter's Life Is Circumscribed By Tradition and Poverty. But for Some, the Dreams Die Slower.

By Mary Jordan - Little Ran of Kutch, India. In the soft light of dawn, the cracked, dry seabed stretched endlessly in every difrection. Jyotsna Patadia was alone - she is often alone in her family's grass hut, a speck of life in the emltimess, cooking potatoes and onions over an open fire..