Over-Population

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It took all of human history until 1830 for world population to reach one billion. The second billion was achieved in 100 years, the third billion in 30 years, the fourth billion in 15 years, and the fifth billion in only 12 years. In 2005, world population exceed 6.5 billion people, growing by nearly 80 million per year with virtually all of the growth taking place in the poorest countries in the world, where population already strains economies, environments and social services. - The Population Institute

World Population Throughout History

An estimate of the total number of people who have ever lived was prepared by Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in 1995, and subsequently updated in 2002; the updated figure totalled approximately 106 billion...Rapid population growth causes or perpetuates poverty, hunger, stress on the environmental, economic stagnation, resource depletion and disease  a perfect formula for global instability. Human needs are growing rapidly all over the globe. We all want more food, more cars, more fuel, and more industry more of everything and more than ever before. As our numbers grow and our needs and demands are met, so does our impact on the environment...

Global Warning! Climate change is perhaps the most crucial environmental challenge of this century. Eleven of the world's 12 highest annual global temperatures on record have occurred since 1995, leading many of the world's top scientists and environmentalists to conclude that global warming has begun in earnest. -The Population Institute

We entered the 20th century with a population of 1.6 billion people.
We entered the 21st century with 6.1 billion people.
And in 2007, world population is 6.6 billion.

Population Growth

The increase in the size of the human population in the last half-century is unprecedented. And nearly all of the growth is occurring in the less developed countries. Currently, 80 million people are being added every year in less developed countries, compared with about 1.6 million in more developed countries. While the less developed countries will keep growing, the more developed countries may grow slowly or not at all.

Population change is linked to economic development, education, the environment, the status of women, epidemics and other health threats, and access to family planning information and services. All of these factors interact with every facet of our lives, regardless of where we live. It is remarkable that, despite many new developments over the past 50 years, one fact looks very much the same: Populations are growing most rapidly where such growth can be afforded the least.

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Mortality Rates

The phenomenal increase in population in the 20th century resulted from plummeting mortality rates, primarily in less developed countries. Advances in health and medicine that had taken many centuries to achieve in the developed countries spread quickly among developing countries. Even with the high death rates from HIV/AIDS, mortality has declined enough to fuel rapid population growth. Life expectancy at birth rose rapidly and infant mortality declined sharply, narrowing the gap between rich and poor countries. In just 35 years, Costa Rica nearly closed its life expectancy gap with the world's wealthiest country, the United States.

The average life expectancy at birth in less developed countries rose from 41 years in 1950 to 66 years in 2007. The Middle East and North Africa region has experienced the largest increase in life expectancy since the late 1950s: from 43 years to 70 years. Since 1950, the greatest gains in life expectancy at birth occurred among women. In more developed countries, average life expectancy for women rose from 69 years in 1950 to 80 years in 2007, while the average for men rose from 64 years to 73 years.

Fertility Rates

A dramatic decline in fertility rates during the 20th century coincided with decreased child mortality, access to family planning, economic development, increases in girl's and women's education, and urbanization. Other factors including stiffer competition for jobs, housing shortages, and government efforts to lower birth rates also encouraged fertility decline.

Fertility rates have fallen in every major world region, but in some regions, the rate remains quite high. Worldwide, the average number of children
per woman fell from 5.0 around 1950 to 2.7 in 2007. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest average at 5.5, falling from a level of 6.7 around 1950.
Couples were able to reduce family size by adopting methods of family planning. Worldwide, use of contraception rose from less than 10 percent of
married women of childbearing age in the 1960s to 62 percent in 2007. Again, regional variations provide stark contrasts. In Africa, 28 percent of
married women use contraception; in Latin America, the share is 71 percent; North America, 73 percent; Europe, 67 percent; and Asia, 66 percent.

Demographic Divide

Attention has focused recently on the œdemographic divide, the vast gulf in birth and death rates among countries. On one side are mostly poor
countries with relatively high birth rates and low life expectancies. On the other side are mostly wealthy countries with birth rates so low that population decline and rapid aging are likely.

This is not a simple divide that perpetuates the status quo among the have and have-not countries. Rather, it involves a set of demographic forces
that will affect the economic, social, and political circumstances in these countries, and consequently, their place on the world stage. Demographic
trends are just one of the factors determining their future, but they are a crucial factor.

 

Corporate Greed

Definition of Greed

"Greed is the selfish desire for or pursuit of money, wealth, power, food, or other possessions, especially when this denies the same goods to others. It is generally considered a vice, and is one of the seven deadly sins in Catholicism."

Greed denotes desire to acquire wealth or possessions beyond the needs of the individual, especially when this accumulation of possession denies others legitimate needs or access to those or other resources. For example, amassing a large collection of seashells would not be considered greed, unless in doing so, the needs of others were jeopardized. Essential to the concept of greed is the awareness that the needs of others are denied, thus rivalrous goods exemplify greed while non-rivalrous goods may not. Greed also often involves using wealth to gain power over others, sometimes by denying wealth or power.

Some desire to increase one's wealth is nearly universal and acceptable in any culture, but this simple want is not considered greed. Greed is the extreme form of this desire, especially where one desires things simply for the sake of owning them (such as the desire to have great amounts of money not to purchase objects, but possession or the money is an end in itself). Greed typically entails acquiring material possessions at the expense of other person's welfare (for example, a father buying himself a new car rather than fix the roof of his family's home) or otherwise reflect priorities.

In the past decade, globalization--meaning the rise of market capitalism around the world--has undeniably contributed to America's New Economy boom. In the late 20th century, global capitalism was pushed by leaps in technology, the failure of socialism, and East Asia's seemingly miraculous success. Now, it's time to get realistic. The plain truth is that market liberalization by itself does not lift all boats, and in some cases, it has caused severe damage to poor nations. What's more, there's no point denying that multinationals have contributed to labor, environmental, and human-rights abuses as they pursue profit around the globe. [Business Week]

The downside of global capitalism is the disruption of whole societies, from financial meltdowns to practices by multinationals that would never be tolerated in the West. [Business Week]

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Greed".

The Impact of Globalization

Income Inequality

The globalization of the job market has had negative consequences in developed countries. “Mind workers” (engineers, attorneys, scientists, professors, executives, journalists, consultants) are able to compete successfully in the world market and command high wages. Conversely, production workers and service workers in industrialized nations are unable to compete directly with workers in third world countries.[2] Workflow changes so that poor countries gain the low-value-added element of work formerly done in rich countries, while higher-value work is retained; for instance, the total number of people employed in manufacturing in the USA declined, but there were great increases in value added per worker.[3] This has resulted in a growing gap between the incomes of the rich and poor.

This trend seems to be greater in the United States than other industrial countries. Income inequality in the United States started to rise in the late 1970s, however the rate of increase rose sharply in the 21st century; it has now reached a level comparable with that found in developing countries.[4] (Cf. The impact of the information age on the workforce)

Brain Drains

Opportunities in rich countries drive talent away from poor countries, leading to brain drains. Brain drain has cost the African continent over $4.1 billion in the employment of 150,000 expatriate professionals annually.[5] The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) estimates that the brain drain of Indian students cost India $10 billion per year.[6] A maquila in MexicoSweatshopsIn many poorer nations, globalization is the result of foreign businesses utilizing workers in a country to take advantage of the lower wage rates. One example used by anti-globalization protestors is the use of sweatshops by manufacturers. According to Global Exchange these "Sweat Shops" are widely used by sports shoe manufacturers and mentions one company in particular – Nike.[7]

There are factories set up in the poor countries where employees agree to work for lower wages than would be required in richer countries. Several agencies have been set up worldwide specifically designed to focus on anti-sweatshop campaigns and education of such. In the USA, the National Labor Committee has proposed a number of bills as part of Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act, which have thus far failed in Congress. The legislation would legally require companies to respect human and worker rights by prohibiting the import, sale, or export of sweatshop goods.[8] Specifically, these core standards include no child labor, no forced labor, freedom of association, right to organize and bargain collectively, as well as the right to decent working conditions.[9]

Business Process Outsourcing

In the rich world, business process outsourcing has, like most other arms of globalisation, been a double-edged sword; it enables cheaper services but displaces some service-sector jobs. However, in poorer countries to which service jobs are outsourced, the benefits have been unambiguous; in India, the outsourcing industry is the "primary engine of the country’s development over the next few decades, contributing broadly to GDP growth, employment growth, and poverty alleviation".[10][11]

Natural Resources

AirIn 2007, China surpassed the United States as the top emitter of CO2.[12] Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city inhabitants (2007) breathe air deemed safe by the European Union. Burning forest in Brazil. The removal of forest to make way for cattle ranching was the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from the mid 1960s. Recently,[when?] soybeans have become one of the most important contributors to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.[13]

Forests

A major source of deforestation is the logging industry, driven spectacularly by China and Japan.[14] China and India are quickly becoming large oil consumers.[15][16] China has seen oil consumption grow by 8% yearly since 2002, doubling from 1996–2006.[17] State of the World 2006 report said the two countries' high economic growth hid a reality of severe pollution. The report states: The world's ecological capacity is simply insufficient to satisfy the ambitions of China, India, Japan, Europe and the United States as well as the aspirations of the rest of the world in a sustainable way[18] At present rates, tropical rainforests in Indonesia would be logged out in 10 years, Papua New Guinea in 13 to 16 years.[19]

Minerals

Without more recycling, zinc could be used up by 2037, both indium and hafnium could run out by 2017, and terbium could be gone before 2012.[20] In a 2006 news story, BBC reported, "...if China and India were to consume as much resources per capita as United States or Japan in 2030 together they would require a full planet Earth to meet their needs. In the longterm these effects can lead to increased conflict over dwindling resources[21] and in the worst case a Malthusian catastrophe.

Effects of Population Growth on Food Supplies

The head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, stated in 2008 that the gradual change in diet among newly prosperous populations is the most important factor underpinning the rise in global food prices.[22] From 1950 to 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the world, grain production increased by over 250%.[23] The world population has grown by about 4 billion since the beginning of the Green Revolution and most believe that, without the Revolution, there would be greater famine and malnutrition than the UN presently documents (approximately 850 million people suffering from chronic malnutrition in 2005).[24][25]t is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain food security in a world beset by a confluence of "peak" phenomena, namely peak oil, peak water, peak phosphorus, peak grain and peak fish. Growing populations, falling energy sources and food shortages will create the "perfect storm" by 2030, according to the UK government chief scientist. He said food reserves are at a 50-year low but the world requires 50% more energy, food and water by 2030.[26[27] The world will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people and as incomes rise, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned.[28]Social scientists have warned of the possibility that global civilization is due for a period of contraction and economic re-localization, due to the decline in fossil fuels and resulting crisis in transportation and food production.[29][30][31] One paper even suggested that the future might even bring about a restoration of sustainable local economic activities based on hunting and gathering, shifting horticulture, and pastoralism.[32] In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse.[33] The journal Science published a four-year study in November 2006, which predicted that, at prevailing trends, the world would run out of wild-caught seafood in 2048.[34]

Health

Further information: Globalization and disease Globalization has also helped to spread some of the deadliest infectious diseases known to humans.[35] Starting in Asia, the Black Death killed at least one-third of Europe's population in the 14th century.[36] Even worse devastation was inflicted on the American supercontinent by European arrivals. 90% of the populations of the civilizations of the "New World" such as the Aztec, Maya, and Inca were killed by small pox brought by European colonization. Modern modes of transportation allow more people and products to travel around the world at a faster pace, but they also open the airways to the transcontinental movement of infectious disease vectors.[37] One example of this occurring is AIDS/HIV.[38] Due to immigration, approximately 500,000 people in the United States are believed to be infected with Chagas disease.[39] In 2006, the tuberculosis (TB) rate among foreign-born persons in the United States was 9.5 times that of U.S.-born persons.[40]

Global Market Expansion

A flood of consumer goods such as televisions, radios, bicycles, and textiles into the United States, Europe, and Japan has helped fuel the economic expansion of Asian tiger economies in recent decades.[41] However, Chinese textile and clothing exports have recently[when?] encountered criticism from Europe. This criticism has been settling after Beijing and Brussels reached a compromise. Still in 2004, EU China sold textiles worth about 514 million euros, while the value of Chinese apparel exports to the EU amounted to 16 billion euros and these mighty exports from China results job losses. In France, ceased to exist about 7 thousand. Positions in Spain 70 thousand, about 200 thousand in Italy.[42] the United States and some African countries.[43][44] As of 26 April 2005 Asia Times article notes that, "In regional giant South Africa, some 300,000 textile workers have lost their jobs in the past two years due to the influx of Chinese goods".[45] The increasing U.S. trade deficit with China has cost 2.4 million American jobs between 2001 and 2008, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).[46] From 2000 to 2007, the United States had lost a total of 3.2 million manufacturing jobs.[47] A report issued in 2007 by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP predicted that by 2050 the economies of the E7 emerging economies (the BRIC countries: China, India, Brazil, and Russia, plus Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey) will be around 50% larger than the current G7 (US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada). China is expected to overtake the US as the largest economy around 2025, while India will overtake the US in 2050.[48] A more recent report issued by Goldman Sachs that was compiled after China released their GDP growth figures for 2009 predicted that China is about to overtake Japan and may become the world's largest economy by 2020.[49]

Financial Interdependency

The world today is so interconnected that the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the U.S. led to a global financial crisis and recession on a scale not seen since the Great Depression.[50] According to critics, government deregulation and failed regulation of Wall Street's investment banks were important contributors to the subprime mortgage crisis.[51][52]

Drug and Illicit Goods Trade

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a report that the global drug trade generates more than $320 billion a year in revenues.[53] Worldwide, the UN estimates there are more than 50 million regular users of heroin, cocaine and synthetic drugs.[54] The international trade of endangered species is second only to drug trafficking.[55] Traditional Chinese medicine often incorporates ingredients from all parts of plants, the leaf, stem, flower, root, and also ingredients from animals and minerals. The use of parts of endangered species (such as seahorses, rhinoceros horns, saiga antelope horns, and tiger bones and claws) has created controversy and resulted in a black market of poachers who hunt restricted animals.[56][57]

Footnotes:
1. Steger, Manfred.Globalization. New York: Sterling Publishing, 2009.
2. Reich, Robert. The Work of the Nations, Preparing Ourselves for 21st century Capitalism. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992
3. "Economics focus: Cash machines". 16 April 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/18484080. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
4.  Noah, Timothy. “The United States of Inequality, Introducing the great Divergence”, Slate, Sept 3, 2010. http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/
5.  "Brain drain in Africa[dead link]"
6.  "Students’ exodus costs India forex outflow of $10 bn: Assocham". Thaindian News. 26 January 2009.
7.  "Globalexchange.org". Globalexchange.org. 28 October 2007. http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/sweatshops/nike/faq.html. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
8.  GovTrack, S. 3485
9.  "Educatingforjustrice.org". Educatingforjustice.org. http://www.educatingforjustice.org/stopnikesweatshops.htm. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
10.  a b Kuruvilla; Ranganathan (October 2008). "ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AND MACRO- AND MICRO-LEVEL HUMAN RESOURCE POLICIES: THE CASE OF INDIA'S "OUTSOURCING" INDUSTRY". Industrial & Labor Relations Review 62 (1): 39–72.
11. "Outsourcing to Africa: The world economy calls". 16 April 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/15777592?story_id=E1_TVSSSVJN. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
12. "China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter". Guardian.co.uk. 19 June 2007.
13. "Brazil Amazon deforestation soars". BBC News. 24 January 2008.
14. "Japan depletes Borneo's rainforests; China remains largest log importer"
15. Oil price 'may hit $200 a barrel', BBC News
16. "Running Out of Planet to Exploit". The New York Times. 21 April 2008.
17. "International Petroleum (Oil) Consumption Data". U.S. Energy Information Administration. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/oilconsumption.html. Retrieved 20 December 2007.
18. a b "Booming nations 'threaten Earth'". BBC News. 12 January 2006.
19. "China is black hole of Asia's deforestation." Asia News. 24 March 2008.
20. "Earth's natural wealth: an audit". New Scientist. 23 May 2007.
21. "Effects of Over-Consumption and Increasing Populations". 26 September 2001. Retrieved on 19 June 2007 22. von Braun, "High and Rising Food Prices", 2008, p 5, slide 14
23. Kindall, Henery W & Pimentel, David (May 1994). "Constraints on the Expansion of the Global Food Supply". Ambio. 23 (3). http://dieoff.org/page36.htm.
24. "The limits of a Green Revolution?". BBC News. 29 March 2007.
25. "Feed the world? We are fighting a losing battle, UN admits". The Guardian. 26 February 2008.
26. "World faces 'perfect storm' of problems by 2030, chief scientist to warn". The Guardian. 18 March 2009. 27. "Global crisis 'to strike by 2030'". BBC News. 19 March 2009.
28. "Global food production will have to increase 70% for additional 2.3 billion people by 2050". Finfacts.com. 24 September 2009.
29. Tainter, JA 1996. Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies. In Costanza, R, Segura,O & Martinez-Alier, J (eds) Getting Down to Earth: Practical Applications of Ecological Economics. Washington, D.C.: Island Press:61–76.
30. Pimentel, D & Pimentel, M 2008. Food, Energy, and Society. 3rd edition. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press:137–159.
31. Catton, WR Jr 1980. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
32. Helga Vierich "Before farming and after globalization: the future of hunter- gatherers may be brighter than you think", In Before Farming 2008/4 article 4(1). See also discussion at: Waspress.co.uk
33. "'Only 50 years left' for sea fish", BBC News. 2 November 2006.
34. Juliet Eilperin (2 November 2006). "Seafood Population Depleted by 2048, Study Finds". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/AR2006110200913.html.
35. Dr. Daulaire. Globalization and Health. Retrieved 11 October 2006 from http://www.globalhealth.org/assets/html/drmed3.html
36. Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, in L'Histoire n° 310, June 2006, pp.45–46, say "between one-third and two-thirds"; Robert Gottfried (1983). "Black Death" in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, volume 2, pp.257–67, says "between 25 and 45 percent".
37. "The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control: Exploring the Consequences and Opportunities, Workshop Summary – Forum on Microbial Threats". Nap.edu. 1 June 2003. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309100984/html/22.html. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
38. "The virus from Africa reached the U.S. by way of Haiti, a genetic study shows". Los Angelese Times. 30 October 2007.
39.  "Chagas disease", HealthCentral.com.
40. "Trends in Tuberculosis Incidence --- United States, 2006". CDC.gov. 23 March 2007 / 56(11);245–250.
41. Vogel, Ezra F. 1991. The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
42. "Chinese textile and clothing export hit Europe". The Textile Icon News. 8 June 2011. http://www.thetextileicon.com/blog/2011/07/made-in-china-spank-europe. Retrieved 14 July 2011.
43. "South Africa: Fallout as China sews up textile market". IRIN Africa. 29 June 2005.
44. Growth of China's textile industry slows". Chinadaily.com.cn. 21 March 2007.
45. "Asia strips Africa's textile industry". Asia Times. 26 April 2005.
46. "China trade blamed for 2.4 mln lost US jobs-report". Reuters. 23 March 2010.
47. "Factory jobs: 3 million lost since 2000". USATODAY.com. 20 April 2007.
48. Hanksworth John and Cookson, Gordon. The World in 2050, Beyond the BRICs: a broader look at emerging market growth prospects. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/world-2050/pdf/world_2050_brics.pdf
49. EM Equity in Two Decades, A Changing Landscape. Global Economics Paper No: 204, Goldman Sachs Global Economics, Comodities and Strategy Research
50. "Economic Crisis in a Globalized World". Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). 21 November 2008
51. "The fruit of hypocrisy". The Guardian. 16 September 2008
52. "Banks Taking Same Risks That Led to Crisis: ECB's Noyer". CNBC.com. 26 October 2009.
53. "UN.org". United Nations. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/gashc3947.doc.htm. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
54. "Drug Trade". BBC News.
55. "Will traditional Chinese medicine mean the end of the wild tiger?". San Francisco Chronicle. 11 November 2007.
56. "India says Chinese medicine fuels tiger poaching". Reuters. 17 September 2009.
57. "Rhino rescue plan decimates Asian antelopes". New Scientist. 12 February 2003.

The deregulation movement of the late 20th century had substantial economic effects and engendered substantial controversy. As preceding sections of this article indicate, the movement was based on intellectual perspectives which prescribed substantial scope for market forces, and opposing perspectives have been in play in national and international discourse.

The movement toward greater reliance on market forces has been closely related to the growth of economic and institutional globalization between about 1950 and 2010. There are a significant number of risks associated with economic liberalisation and deregulation, which many see the need to secure against with regulation that does not distort markets and allows them to continue to be competitive, or perhaps even more so.

Just like the state plays an important role through issues such as property rights, appropriate regulation is argued by some to be "crucial to realise the benefits of service liberalisation".

Regulation can play an important role in, but not exclusive to, the following situations:

• Creating a level playing field and ensuring competition (e.g. ensuring new energy providers have competitive access to the national grid)
• Maintaining quality standards for services (e.g. by specifying qualification requirements for service providers); protecting consumers (e.g. from fraud)
• Ensuring sufficient provision of information (e.g. about the features of competing services); preventing environmental degradation (e.g. arising from high levels of tourist development); guaranteeing wide access to services (e.g. ensuring poorer areas where profit margins are lower are also provided with electricity and health services)
• Preventing financial instability and protecting consumer savings from excessive risk-taking by financial institutions.

 These issues can cause high levels of market distortions and barriers to entry.

For instance, regulation ensuring that specific qualifications are needed to provide a service can be problematic for foreign firms wishing to invest, when those qualifications are provided only by domestic institutions. Thus, regulation must be carefully implemented and respond to any issues that develop to ensure that liberalisation delivers the expected benefits, for instance by creating mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) of qualifications or cross-border harmonisation of rules.

Regulation often involves a complex balancing act between market and social objectives and it is argued policy space is required to ensure regulation can constantly be adjusted and adapted to changing market and social realities.

For deregulation...Adam Thierer wrote, "The first step toward creating a free market in electricity is to repeal the federal statutes and regulations that hinder electricity competition and consumer choice."

Against deregulation..."Electricity deregulation was supposed to bring cheaper electricity prices and more choice of suppliers to householders. Instead it has brought wildly volatile wholesale prices and undermined the reliability of the electricity supply."

G M Foods

The process of producing a GMO used for GM Foods may involve taking DNA from one organism, modifying it in a laboratory, and then inserting it into the target organism's genome to produce new and useful genotypes or phenotypes. Such GMOs are generally referred to as transgenics. Other methods of producing a GMO include increasing or decreasing the number of copies of a gene already present in the target organism, silencing or removing a particular gene or modifying the position of a gene within the genome.

History
The first commercially made very big genetically modified whole food crop was the Flavr Savr tomato, which was made more resistant to rotting by Californian company Calgene. Calgene was allowed to release the tomatoes into the market in 1994 without any special labeling.  It was welcomed by consumers that purchased the fruit at two to five times the price of regular tomatoes. However, production problems  and competition from a conventionally bred, longer shelf-life variety prevented the product from becoming profitable. A variant of the Flavr Savr was used by Zeneca to produce tomato paste which was sold in Europe during the summer of 1996. The labeling and pricing were designed as a marketing experiment, which proved, at the time, that European consumers would accept genetically engineered foods.

The attitude toward GM foods would be drastically changed after outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease weakened consumer trust in government regulators, and protesters rallied against the introduction of Monsanto's "Roundup-Ready" soybeans. The next GM crops included insect-resistant cotton and herbicide-tolerant soybeans both of which were commercially released in 1996. GM crops have been widely adopted in the United States. They have also been extensively planted in several other countries (Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) where the agriculture is a major part of the total economy. Other GM crops include insect-resistant maize and herbicide-tolerant maize, cotton, and rapeseed varieties.

Between 1995 and 2005, the total surface area of land cultivated with GMOs had increased by a factor of 50, from 17,000 km² (4.2 million acres) to 900,000 km² (222 million acres), of which 55 percent were Brazil. In the US, by 2006 89% of the planted area of soybeans, 83 percent of cotton, and 61 percent maize was genetically modified varieties. Genetically modified soybeans carried herbicide tolerant traits only, but maize and cotton carried both herbicide tolerance and insect protection traits.

America's Health Care Crisis

Buy Sicko (Special Edition) at Amazon

History of the Rise of America's Health Care Crisis

Starting in the 1950s, the price of hospital care doubled...in the early 1960s, those outside the workplace, especially the elderly, have difficulty affording insurance. so over 700 insurance companies began selling health insurance. Concern about a "doctor shortage" and the need for more "health manpower" leads to federal measures to expand education in the health professions. Major medical insurance endorses high-cost medicine.President Lyndon Johnson signs Medicare and Medicaid into law. "Compulsory Health Insurance" advocates are no longer optimistic'. The number of doctors reporting themselves as full-time specialists grows from 55% in 1960 to 69%.

The Growth of the Health Care Industry

1970's

• President Richard Nixon renames prepaid group health care plans as health maintenance organizations (HMOs), with legislation that provides federal endorsement, certification, and assistance.
• Healthcare costs are escalating rapidly, partially due to unexpectedly high Medicare expenditures, rapid inflation in the economy, expansion of hospital expenses and profits, and changes in medical care including greater use of technology, medications, and conservative approaches to treatment.
• American medicine is now seen as in crisis.President Nixon's plan for national health insurance rejected by liberals & labor unions, but his "War on Cancer" centralizes research at the NIH. 

1980's 

• Corporations begin to integrate the hospital system (previously a decentralized structure), enter many other healthcare-related businesses, and consolidate control.
• Overall, there is a shift toward privatization and corporatization of healthcare.Under President Reagan, Medicare shifts to payment by diagnosis (DRG) instead of by treatment.
• Private plans quickly follow suit.Growing complaints by insurance companies that the traditional fee-for-service method of payment to doctors is being exploited."Capitation" payments to doctors become more common.

1990's

• Health care costs rise at double the rate of inflation.Expansion of managed care helps to moderate increases in health care costs.
• Federal health care reform legislation fails again to pass in the U.S. Congress.By the end of the decade there are 44 million Americans, 16 % of the nation, with no health insurance at all.Human Genome Project to identify all of the more than 100,000 genes in human DNA gets underway.
• By June 1990, 139,765 people in the United States have HIV/AIDS, with a 60 percent mortality rate.

The Healthcare Atrocities Continue 

2000's

• Health care costs are on the rise again.
• Medicare is viewed by some as unsustainable under the present structure and must be "rescued".
• Changing demographics of the workplace lead many to believe the employer-based system of insurance can't last.
• Human Genome Project to identify all of the more than 100,000 genes in human DNA is expected to be completed a full two years ahead of schedule, in 2003.
• Direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals and medical devices is on the rise.

Credits for timeline at PBS http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/credits.htm

The Cost of War

Throughout history war has been the source of serious moral questions. Although many ancient nations and some modern ones have viewed war as noble, over the sweep of history, concerns about the morality of war have gradually increased. Today, war is seen by some as undesirable and morally problematic. At the same time, many view war, or at least the preparation and readiness and willingness to engage in war, as necessary for the defense of their country. Pacifists believe that war is inherently immoral and that no war should ever be fought. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses some material from the Wikipedia article "War".

Pollution

Pollution Facts

• Americans use approximately 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides every year. Research shows that target pests will eventually develop resistance to these pesticides anyway.
•  Seventy-three different kinds of pesticides have been found in groundwater, which is potential drinking water.
• More than 100 active pesticide ingredients are suspected of causing cancer, birth defects, and gene mutation.
• A growing list of pesticides have the potential to disrupt the immune and endocrine systems and of having long term impacts on the offspring of exposed humans and animals.
• The cost of one nuclear weapons test alone could finance the installation of eighty thousand hand pumps, giving third world villages access to clean water.E
• Estimated costs of cleaning up the 24,000 contaminated federal nuclear facilities range from $100 billion to $400 billion. (The Environmental Protection Agency)
• Each year U.S. factories spew 3 million tons of toxic chemicals into the air, land, and water. That compounds the over one-half billion tons of solid hazardous wastes - we're not talking about your garbage here - that get dumped across the nation for our generation to one day clean up. (The Gale Environmental Scorecard)
• In 1987, the U.S. released 1.2 million tons of toxic chemicals into our atmosphere, 670,000 tons into our soil, and 250,000 tons into our water. (International Wildlife magazine)
• PCB's haven't been used in the U.S. for more than two decades. But dangerous levels of PCB's remain in the natural environment and pose a threat to human health. --ENN for 5/27/98
• "Everyone has some amount of dioxin in his or her body, and the average level is already high enough to endanger health." --Lois Gibbs
• Nitrogen is essential to crops but too much will leak into groundwater and rivers causing nutrient pollution in rivers and oceans and severe human health problems from nitrate pollution.
• In the US, 41% of all insecticides are used on corn. Eighty per cent of these are used to treat a pest that could be controlled simply by rotating the corn for one year with any other crop.

Plastic Vortex

In the north eastern Pacific is an area of floating plastic garbage more than twice the area of Texas. And what is being done about it?

Oil Depletion

Oil depletion is the inescapable result of extracting and consuming oil faster than it is naturally produced, due to the fact that the formation of new natural petroleum is a continuous geologic process which takes millions of years. No one knows for sure when the long-term decline of oil reserves will begin, or what the consequences will be.

The Hubbert peak is an influential theory concerning the long-term rate of conventional Petroleum (and other fossil fuel) extraction and depletion. The Hubbert peak is named for United States geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who created a model of known reserves, and proposed the theory. The concept of passing the peak-point, so that society is on the downward side of the oil supply curve, is also referred to as Peak oil or the end of cheap oil. By most projections, this point has already been passed or is about to be at some point between the years 2007 and 2010, although by United States government prediction , world consumption of oil will increase to 98.3 million barrels a day in 2015 and 118 million barrels a day in 2030. This represents more than a 25% increase in world oil production. Many predictions have been made about the potential implications of passing the peak. These estimates range from warnings of a doomsday scenario created by long term lack of growth to faith that the market economy will allow a relatively smooth transition to other energy sources through technological solutions.