An oil pipeline to Canada's untapped Tar Sands deposits would create short-term construction jobs, but its effects on the climate could permanently destroy jobs elsewhere. Photo: rickz (Flickr)

Proponents of the proposed pipeline from Canada’s Athabasca Tar Sands to the Gulf of Mexico claim that its construction would create jobs. But while the long-term employment prospects are debatable at best, the resulting long-term economic devastation is far more certain.

The recent decision by the Obama administration to deny a permit for the construction of the pipeline has received much press and been touted as a victory for environmentalists. But as climate activist Bill McKibben and his organization point out, stopping the extraction of the tar sands would be a victory for those far removed from the American environmental movement as well.

McKibben said in an interview with Green Prophet that “Any place that is already living close to the margins is in the greatest danger” when facing climate change.

This means the world’s poorest, already suffering from food shortages and decreased agricultural production, would be hardest hit by this carbon bomb. And scientific consensus backs up McKibben’s view.

Country Ranks, Estimated Percentage of Agricultural Productivity Loss by 2080: Potential Carbon Emissions from Canadian Oil Sands. Photo: Center for Global Development

David Wheeler, senior fellow emeritus of the Center for Global Development, compiled a recent study specifically tying the exploitation of the Canadian oil sands to increased agricultural losses.

Wheeler concluded that “full exploitation of Canada’s oil sands deposit would impose significant agricultural productivity losses on over 3 billion people in the developing world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.” He calculates that “combustion of the Alberta deposit would increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by 99 ppm, or 21.3 percent of the increase already projected to occur by 2100.”

Or, as reputed climate scientist Jim Hansen of NASA put it, tapping the tar sands would be “essentially game over for the climate."

Wheeler's findings show a "game over" scenario in poor rural regions, in particular, predicting agricultural productivity losses of up to nearly 13 percent in Africa and 9 percent in Asia. Wheeler, who also created a ‘Climate Vulnerability Index’ by country, sums up his findings powerfully and succinctly, stating "Put simply, the potential destructive power in Canada’s oil sands exceeds anything modern civilization has witnessed to date."

“This new report puts into stark relief exactly what ‘game over’ looks like: Millions upon millions of starving people across the planet," says 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn.

On the ground, countries projected by Wheeler to see further damaging impacts are already struggling with agricultural losses. Another 350.org co-founder, Phil Aroneanu, told Global Envision that “we have a plethora of anecdotal and story-based thoughts from our organizers around the world” of agricultural devastation and food shortages linked to changing climate patterns.

Drought-stricken countries in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia and Sudan, among others, provide some of the most poignant images of climate-related suffering. An Oxfam International report points out that 85 percent of Ethiopians depend directly on agriculture. And as a local farmer told Oxfam, “The rain doesn’t come on time anymore. After we plant, the rain stops just as our crops start to grow. And it begins to rain after the crops have already been ruined.”

And with the projections from scientists like Hansen and Wheeler, Africa’s farmers and communities appear unlikely to recover soon.

While McKibben writes that “Blocking one pipeline was never going to stop global warming,” and Obama’s denial of the Keystone permit may well not kill the project in the long run, the scientific and anecdotal evidence is clear: Vulnerable populations are suffering at the hands of carbon kings already, and tapping the tar sands will exacerbate their problems.

So the Keystone proposal may or may not be dead. But the political discourse around potential job-killing has mostly left out an important aspect: the killing of crops and livelihoods elsewhere in the world.

McKibben has said that extracting Canada’s tar sands would mean lighting the “fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” For now, at least, that fuse remains unlit.

Women in Kenya drag jerry cans of water 4 kilometers through a parched landscape. Photo by Erin Gray/Mercy Corps.

How bad is the drought and famine in East Africa? Climate scientist Simon Mason elaborates in this video interview. Comparing East Africa’s situation to other drought situations, Mason highlights the dramatic impacts in a region receiving 5 to 25% of its usual expected rainfall.

With the world facing more and more severe climate-related disruptions, Mason explains some ways in which weather forecasting is being used to help humanitarian aid organizations prepare responses in the short and long term. Check out his interview here.

Mercy Corps made cutting down trees for cooking fuel more sustainable through a reforestation project in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Photo: JGrant for Mercy Corps.

A new program in Brazil is turning tragedy on its head by paying the poor to preserve their natural surroundings.

Resource depletion and environmental degradation are common echoes of poverty. Desperate to get by, many rural poor turn to the only income source around: the natural environment.

That's why Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff outlined a new program called Bolsa Verde (green allowance) to promote environmental protection and decrease deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, according to mongabay.com. The program will provide BR $300 (US $180 US) every three months to extremely impoverished families living in national forests and sustainable reserves. Recipient families must currently have monthly incomes of less than BR $70 (US $40) to qualify.

In exchange, residents pledge not to deforest illegally or to poach timber. It’s a huge jump in income for the poor, and in one of the world’s most rapidly growing economies, it's a small price for the public to pay.

“Incentive is important because we assign an economic value to nature. It's as if it were compensation for conservation," said Manuel Cunha, president of the National Council of Extractive Populations of Amazonia.

The program is modeled after Brazil’s existing and widely respected Bolsa Familia (family allowance) program, which has helped reduce poverty and inequality over the past several decades, according to The Economist.

Bolsa Verde seeks to expand these successes, reducing the strain of poverty on ecosystem services as well. And when the environment is protected, the poor lead better, healthier lives. So Brazil plans to increase people’s income so they take better care of their environment and themselves.

The government, however, isn’t trying to stop resource consumption that people depend on. "It is an incentive to have sustainable use of natural resources. [Residents] have the right to use biodiversity, but in a sustainable manner," Roberto Vizentin, Secretary of Sustainable Rural Development of the MMA, told Globo News.

If effective, this could mean both improved financial livelihoods and reduced vulnerability for Amazonian residents. And the environment and the rest of the world get something from the deal as well.

Yesterday's news could be tomorrow's biofuel. Photo: Lisa Batty (Flickr)

Why not do something useful with those stacks of holiday cards languishing at home? Like re-charge your cell phone.

Japan has taken recycling to the next level: Sony recently unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype. How does it work? Engineers use the enzyme cellulase to break down paper matter into glucose sugar. Combine a few more enzymes with a dash of oxygen and you get a bona fide biofuel.

The process is pulled right from nature, researchers explained: it's used by white ants and termites, which use digested wood as a form of energy.

The paper-fueled battery is still in the early stages of development, but even low-output experiments have big potential. If brought to market, the prospect of using paper waste to recharge mobile phones or run small devices such as fans or lights is a bright spot on the innovation frontier. Whether off-the-grid in rural Africa or struggling with energy payments in the U.S. or Europe, turning paper waste into usable energy can play a part in alleviating poverty.

Perhaps the newspaper industry can capitalize on this green initiative to generate a little green of its own.

Informal trash collectors may gain "green" jobs in the formal sector with the closure of the world's largest trash dump. Photo: basmati - authentic help (flickr)

Does your old lunch bag go in the garbage or the recycle bin? For hundreds of thousands of garbage scavengers worldwide who make a meager living by collecting, recycling and reselling trash, that decision is worth its weight in cash.

But at the end of this month, the world’s largest dump will close, leaving many scavengers without a livelihood.

The closure of Mexico City’s Bordo Poniente dump, which will divert nearly 12,600 tons of garbage into recycling and composting plants daily, reports the Associated Press, is a win for environmental groups. It’s also a win for the city’s mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, who announced the closure will take place December 31, the day before he steps down to focus on his campaign for the 2012 presidential race, the LA Times reports.

But trucking the garbage directly to sorting plants leaves out a key player in the waste management system—dump dwellers who for decades have sorted much of the trash and sold the recyclables for income, like freelance garbage collectors.

If the city agrees as promised to negotiate with the guild that the garbage scavengers have organized to voice their concerns, it could mean formal jobs for pepenadores, jobs that pay many times more than what they earn now reselling what they find. After all, living on the dump creates a level of trash expertise and relying on it for an income is quite an incentive to sort it efficiently. They’ve been greasing the wheels of the old system for years; it seems only fair they be part of the new one.

A flourishing economy has enabled many Chinese citizens to climb the socio-economic ranks. Photo:xiaming (flickr)

The spirit of 1989’s Tiananmen Square is alive in China, except the swarm of charged students has been replaced by a disgruntled, expanding middle class.

Inadvertently, an economic boom has resounded with cries for change.

2011 has been an exceptionally rough year for government officials trying to maintain social complacency across China’s far-reaching borders. Perhaps inspired by the Arab Spring, Chinese civilians took to the streets in February to enact their own “Jasmine Revolution” (taken from the Tunisian movement of the same name), demanding greater accountability and transparency from their current one-party system. At least 54 activists, including lawyers and intellectuals, were arrested, and, the New York Times reports, the term “jasmine” was blocked on internet search engines. In recent months, labor strikes have swept the People’s Republic, resulting in street rallies filled with middle class voices expressing their frustrations with meager wages and unhealthy work conditions.

However, the butterfly effect of protests—originating from the Arab Spring and expanding into the Occupy Wall Street movements—reaches beyond income inequality. Much of the Chinese middle class will no longer play the passive bystander to haphazard industrialization. On July 23rd, a high speed train collision, killing 40 passengers, moved government-backed news broadcasters to risk publicly questioning the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to provide the public with safe, accessible infrastructures.

In early August, more than 12,000 people converged in the city of Dalian to stop the re-opening of a paraxylene plant (a toxic chemical used to make polyester) after a storm had exposed citizens to chemicals known to cause leukemia and birth defects. The plant’s closure provided a significant win for the protesters—the government agreed to the shutdown despite a reported $1.5 billion invested in the industry.

In a land where censorship and submissiveness are ingrained in the cultural psyche, why are so many compelled to take a stand now? It’s a complex question, but part of the explanation lies in the problem itself: the rise of China’s economy.

Globalization, specifically global export trade, has upshot China into a leading economic powerhouse. Now the fulcrum of production in the globalized world, many Chinese workers are finally transitioning from poor to middle class (defined by The Brookings Institution as households that spend $10 per person daily).

By 2015, the Brookings Institution estimates that for the first time in 300 years, "the number of Asian middle class consumers will equal the number in Europe and North America. By 2021, on present trends, there could be more than 2 billion Asians in middle class households. In China alone, there could be over 670 million middle class consumers, compared with only perhaps 150 million today.”

The Chinese Communist Party has come to rely on the middle class for support; in the past they have served as a relatively quiet buffer between a populous but powerless poor class and a power-driven rich minority. The Economist observes that China has “kept themselves to themselves as a result of the implicit social contract offered by the Communist Party: you let us rule and we will let you get rich.”

China's middle class wants to renegotiate this contract, demanding more environmental and wellness security from their political leaders. “As many previously poor people adopt middle-class lifestyles in the decades ahead,” Brookings researchers observe, “they may find themselves not only consuming more but also more forcefully advocating for less pollution and lower emissions.” In other words, more money means more demands.

If the party chooses to reinvest its money into the people’s pockets through increased incomes, subsidized health care, lowered taxes, and environmental protection, the middle class is expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. However, one only needs to look back at China’s Great Leap Forward to see that blind fixation on economic prowess can result in a neglected, damaged social sector. Looks like China will need to take a middle-road approach if it hopes to flourish.

Industrial emissions are a major source of CO2 contributing to climate change. Photo: United Nations Photo (flickr)

The ongoing global financial crisis should not impede the fight against climate change. That's the concern coming from a surprising corner of the world: China.

As the latest round of UN-sponsored climate talks continue in Durban, South Africa, Chinese officials warn that financial hardships in Europe, the United States and elsewhere are no excuse for inaction on climate change.

With the Kyoto Protocol about to die, the global financial crisis could add another dimension to the already complex relationship between rich and poor countries when it comes to climate change.

China’s top climate official said a global pact to fight climate change should be a top priority for developed countries, even as they face severe economic challenges at home. "After the financial crisis, every country has had its problems, but these problems are just temporary," Xie Zhenhua, vice-director of the National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters, according to Reuters. He expressed concern that rich countries will break their promises to help poor ones mitigate and adapt to climate change.

According to The Economist, the vast majority of ‘climate finance’ for developing countries comes from western nations. Over $75 billion a year, or more than 75 percent of climate finance to the developing world, comes from a combination of private donors and multilateral and bilateral banks funded by taxpayers in wealthy countries. These sources have been hit the hardest by the global financial crisis.

"Climate change hasn't become less important because of the international financial crisis, but it has become less prominent," Xie said.

Developing countries, meanwhile, would be hit hardest by climate-related disasters. They lack the infrastructure and financial resources to deal with problems they have had less of a hand in causing. The 2010 climate talks in Cancun included a commitment of $30 billion to poorer nations to adapt to impacts of climate change, and an increase to $100 billion a year by 2020 for this ‘green climate fund.’ Now, says China, even the initial $30 billion commitment seems unlikely to be met.

China might seem an unlikely voice of support for carbon cuts, as it has surpassed the United States as the world’s leading producer of CO2 emissions. Under the Kyoto protocol, China was deemed an emerging economy, and not bound to the stipulations placed on developed countries. Yet China has pledged to reduce its emissions intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, and hopes western countries sign on for an extension of the protocol’s commitment period. Kyoto signatories Canada and Japan have already refused to extend the protocol’s requirements. The United States has also said further negotiations are off the table.

That means the Durban discussions themselves may well determine the direction of climate funding and its impacts. And without climate action, the financial crisis could soon seem like a small-scale problem.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

PepsiCo and Cambridge University recently unveiled the i-crop, a web-based system that could reduce agricultural water waste by 50 percent. Photo:zekasaur (flickr)

This article was republished in The Christian Science Monitor.

"More Bounce to the Ounce.” In the 1950’s, it was a cola slogan; thanks to a new partnership with Cambridge University, it could become the catch phrase of PepsiCo’s i-crop, a web based program that helps farmers reduce water waste.

Here’s how it works: data systems collect information on local weather conditions, farming activity, and soil moisture from underground probes and compiles them online. With a few keystrokes, farmers can eliminate the guessing games about water consumption, resulting in more precise and environmentally-friendly farming. In October, PepsiCo publicly announced its goal of reducing carbon emissions and water usage from their largest UK farms by 50 percent in five years. So far i-crop is testing well: preliminary reports from 22 farms in the UK show farmers have achieved 90 percent efficiency in water usage.

"Farming is in the DNA of our business - we rely on fresh produce everyday," said Richard Evans, President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland, according to PR Newswire. "Finding ways to produce more food with less environmental impact is essential to our future." He added, "i-crop has the potential to revolutionize the way we farm, enabling our farmers to save costs and [reduce] water and carbon consumption, while at the same time improving their yields.”

PepsiCo’s potential to revolutionize water efficiencies in farming is sizable. Netting approximately $43.3 billion annually and employing more than a quarter million people, PepsiCo is the second largest food and beverage business in the world.

Ever enjoyed Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Lay's, Gatorade, Tropicana, 7Up, Doritos, Lipton Teas, Quaker Oats, Cheetos, Ruffles, Aquafina, Tostitos, Sierra Mist, or Fritos? If the i-crop can deliver as hoped, those products will soon be made with less water waste than most competitive grocery items (and who doesn’t want something positive to hold onto after downing a bag of Cheetos?).

Although the i-crop is only accessible to UK farmers, PepsiCo hopes to introduce its technology to farms in India, China, Mexico, and Australia by 2012. However, speculation about i-crop’s availability has raised some eyebrows and provoked the question: Will the i-crop technology, owned privately by PepsiCo, be withheld from those who most need it?

Brain Pickings editor Maria Popova argues that owning such coveted technological rights will put PepsiCo in the middle of an often tense relationship between profiteering and humanitarianism. “The technology is currently only available to PepsiCo-affiliated growers, which raises interesting questions about the relationship between corporate interests and social good in innovation, as well as bespeaking the disconnect between the value of open-source software and the fact that the best-funded research initiatives, most competent scientists and highest-grade technology tend to be subsidized by private corporations.”

If, how, and with whom PepsiCo shares i-crop technology has yet to be determined. In any case, PepsiCo has taken corporate social responsibility by the horns, hopefully luring other influential corporations to recognize that being green is achievable. "Every Generation Refreshes the World," Pespi ads claim. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that PepsiCo can do so for the next generation’s water supply.

Even in the driest of deserts, there’s a hidden water source: the air.

That's the insight of this year's Dyson Award winner. The annual prizes call on “design and engineering students from 18 countries to create innovative, practical, elegant solutions to some of humanity's greatest challenges,” according to The Huffington Post. This year the award went to Edward Linacre for his groundbreaking solution to agricultural catastrophes caused by drought. He won £10,000 for his invention—the Airdrop—and so did his school, Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology. The Airdrop pulls air into a network of tubes underground, where it is cooled to extract moisture and then funneled down to plants’ roots. See his “elevator pitch” for the project below:

Harvesting water from the air isn’t a new idea; National Geographic reported on the ancient technique of fog harvesting back in 2009. Linacre told the Daily Mail that his design is a unique solution for agricultural issues because “other systems of harvesting water from the atmosphere usually require massive amounts of energy, as they run refrigeration units. Airdrop simply uses the temperature difference between the air and the cool earth beneath the surface.” The Airdrop, he says, is a good solution for rural farmers because it’s low-tech: they can install and maintain it themselves.

Whether or not this design can practically translate to the developing world is still up in the air and probably depends largely upon its cost. Still, the simple idea of tapping into the water that’s present in the air in even the driest of environments could be very promising for increasingly parched areas of the globe.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

On Monday, the world welcomed its 7 billionth person. The implications of population growth are similarly staggering in number, but here are five of the more important things to know about the growing world community.

There might not be 7 billion of us. Yet.

The October 31st date was chosen by the United Nations Population Fund, and it’s somewhat symbolic. "There is a window of uncertainty of at least six months before and six months after the 31 October date for the world population to reach seven billion," UN population estimates chief Gerhard Heilig told the BBC. However, the crux of the matter—the ever-increasing world population and the problems that come with it—stands.

Human being No. 7,000,000,000 is probably poor—and it's likely the parents didn't plan the pregnancy.

The developing world acted as the engine for most of the last decade's population growth. It’s home to the world’s seven fastest-growing cities, according to Foreign Policy. As such, it’s attracting the attention of policymakers and crystal-ball-gazers alike. Many, like the Worldwatch Institute’s Robert Engelman, propose extending access to contraceptives and encouraging smaller family size to curb population-related problems, though a recent Economist article says that this would only have a modest effect in the face of scarce world resources.

Sure, resource scarcity is a problem, but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Not all commentators are equally pessimistic about continuing population growth. Some of the most basic problems, like access to food and water, might really be problems of efficiency rather than scarcity. Global Envision contributor Ben Osborn recently wrote about a study by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research that showed that given proper integration and storage of water resources, no one would have to go thirsty. On the food front, a scientific study published in Nature showed that proper agricultural reforms “could increase global food availability by 100–180%,” more than enough to meet the needs of our growing population.

The antidote to population could be migration.

Ensuring good quality of life for the earth’s inhabitants goes beyond just food and water. The UN’s State of the World Population 2011 report identifies migration as a trend that can be used to help aid in economic development. Wealthy countries with declining fertility rates could provide job opportunities for workers disenfranchised in their overpopulated home countries. At the same time, migration is a hot-button issue for developed nations that may not be so keen to open their borders. The report also cites increased access to education as a key factor in reducing population growth and providing better opportunities for youth in developing nations.

Maybe we should all just learn to stop worrying and love the population bomb.

Many fear rapid population growth in a world with limited resources, but given the proper policies it might not have to be so scary. Since there’s no “undo” button for world population, perhaps the best question to ask in light of the 7 billion marker is “How can we make the best of it?”

Want to know where you fit into the 7 billion? Check out The BBC’s “What’s Your Number” tool.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Anger over food prices helped lead to Muammar el-Gadhafi's assassination Thursday. Photo: Thierry Ehrmann (flickr)

Muammar el-Gadhafi gave Libya's people plenty of reasons to hate him. But it may have taken climate change to do him in.

That's the interesting perspective of CSR Talkwire's Francesca Rheannon, who explained last March how, across the Arab world, climate change begat draught begat famine begat unrest:

The recent sharp rise in food prices was the spark to the flame fanned by decades of tyranny, beginning in Tunisia, spreading to Egypt and now roiling Bahrain, Algeria, Oman, Yemen and Libya. Libya imports fully 80 percent of its food; the other countries are also heavy food importers. … While other factors play a role, climate change has been the major driver behind higher food prices.

In May, a study in the journal Science estimated that climate change was responsible for a 3 percent drop in global wheat and corn output, enough to drive commodity prices up 20 percent from where they would otherwise have been, Reuters reported.

The cost of food was just one of many factors in Gadhafi's bloody assassination Thursday. But if the world's fossil fuel dependence continues to drive up global temperatures and food prices, the world's poorest won't be content to be the only victims of climate change. Starving people take governments and leaders down with them—sometimes through violence.

Gadhafi's many sins made his government especially vulnerable. But history may remember him as the canary in the climate-change coal mine.

The Ganges River Delta, in Pakistan, could be feeding a lot more people. Photo: Lunar Planetary Institute (Flickr)

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

The next century is going to leave the planet parched for drinking water. But a new study asserts that the problem isn't water scarcity -- it's water efficiency.

The global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says we need to increase food and water production by 70% if we are to feed that population. Can we do that with the resources we have?

Yes, says the study, published by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Researchers looked at 10 major river basins to assess how the world uses its water, and concluded that with refined practices, we can sustainably exceed the needs of current and future generations.

It is not how much water we have, but how we use that water, that will drive resource politics. According to CGIAR, most of the world considers different uses of water in isolation from one another. A more integrated approach to the water needs of food, industry, and energy would lead to more efficient allocation.

Dr. Simon Cook, of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture described the current practice as one of “complete fragmentation of how river basins are managed amongst different actors and even countries where the water needs of different sectors – agriculture, industry, environment and mining – are considered separately rather than as interrelated and interdependent.”

Today, for example, water rights are allocated to hydroelectricity in the Mekong, leaving farmers and fishermen up and down the river bereft of water. There's no shortage of Mekong water. It's just being unevenly distributed. CGIAR recommend water institutions take a more integrated approach, one the total needs of water within a region, rather than having compartmentalized institutions working independent from one another.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the land is regularly parched and massive droughts like the current one in East Africa may become more commonplace, improving methods to save and store rain for agriculture use would also boost food production.

So the problem may not be an issue of resource scarcity or carrying capacity. But with this news comes responsibility: if the problems lie with us, then so must the solution.

Wind catchers on a cistern near Yazd, Iran, that help to keep the water cool. Photo: birdfarm (flickr)

Part of a Global Envision miniseries about Portland State University's effort to become the "Consumer Reports" of developing-world technology. Read the introduction.

Sometimes, it turns out that the wisdom of the ages is wrong. Portland State University’s Green Building Research Lab is out to tease science from superstition.

Cultures around the globe have adopted unique tricks for coping with the peculiarities of their local environments. But how much of the wisdom behind conventional designs and survival methods is rooted in real science?

That's the question that led PSU researchers to the Persian wind catcher.

Long before the unprecedented heat waves of the last decade, whose increased frequency National Geographic links to climate change, both the Middle East and the American Deep South developed building styles that allow for greater air circulation. The American dogtrot house, recently profiled in an article by The Atlantic, is a bit hard to find since the advent of air conditioning, but Persian wind catchers have been around for several hundred years and still dot the arid landscape around the Persian Gulf. The idea is that open-faced towers on the ends of a building draw in cooler, moving air from high above the ground; the air is pulled through the lower portions of the house and then up and out another tower.

Both the dogtrot house and the wind catcher are culturally accepted ways to beat the heat, but PSU asked: How well do they actually work? They put tiny models of each house into a self-constructed wind tunnel that can measure exactly how—and how well—they work to circulate air. A machine attached to the tunnel creates bubbles that lack an electromagnetic charge, which means that they simply float along on the air currents, providing a seemingly magical way to visually track airflow through the models. Researchers hope they can use the test results to help develop new building designs.

Testing traditional solutions to timeless problems like this one not only tells us something about other cultures; it also shows how old design principles could be melded with current technology to produce more efficient, livable, and sustainable spaces. And if the PSU labs are onto something, maybe your children—or grandchildren—will grow up in a house with a wind catcher.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

According to Riane Eisler, the work of raising childern is devalued the world over. Photo: Mishimoto (flickr)

Unlearn economics. Forget GDPs and growth rates. Ignore financial institutions (and their crises). Rethink well-being and worth. What do you care about? What in your life holds the greatest value?

This is a good starting place for a conversation with Riane Eisler, author of the highly successful book "The Real Wealth of Nations," amongst others. She believes it is time for a practical critique of modern economics.

Eisler’s work in the fields of economics, women’s studies and social science has attracted a lot of attention. Some list her work beside great thinkers like Smith, Marx and Hegel. The book "Great Peacemakers" named her one of 20 subjects along with Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Theresa. This recognition is largely a result of her work on developing the ideas of a system of "caring economics." We caught up with Eisler this week to discuss just what a caring economy would look like and how it might change the way the world works.

Global Envision: What's wrong with modern economics?

Economics is the study of value, and for decades it has been assumed that value is measured mostly by money. If I value organic vegetables, I will be willing to spend more money for them. It should follow that if the government values organic vegetables, it would support the farmers that grow them. Economists devise ways to assess these values and attach number and formulas to quantify them: net worth, salary, gross domestic product. Flip to any news channel or radio station and you will hear endless debate about these figures as they rise and fall.

Eisler ignores this chatter.

“We have been stuck on a conservation that does not get to the core of the challenges we face,” she says. If economics is to be a measure of what we value and care about, why has it ignored raising infants, supporting families and nursing the elderly or infirmed? The constructs of caring extends beyond human relations and applies to the natural environment. But under both capitalism and communism, land is seen only as a source of profit. “An old stand of trees is only given value when it is chopped down," Eisler says. "And yet we need them standing to breathe.”

Economic measures have become divorced from the real values they were originally intended to quantify, Eisler argues. For her, this is no coincidence. "Economic systems don’t evolve in a vacuum," she says. "They are cultural constructs.” According to Eisler, the current system evolved in an environment where nature was exploited and so-called "women’s work" was devalued. Consider this: a women who stays at home and cooks, cleans, gardens, feeds, washes, and rears her three children for 16 hours a day contributes absolutely nothing to the GDP, a measure of a country's standard of living. Instead, the GDP values only income. This includes the cleanup of environmental disasters, the sale of cancer causing cigarettes, war operations and weapon manufacture.

GE: If GDP is a bad measure of value, what statistics should replace it?

Eisler was ready for this question. In a recent report commissioned by Center for Partnership Studies, Eisler helped to synthesize 14 categories with 79 indicators that more accurately measure well-being, including human rights ratings, the number of premature deaths from pollution, and access to health care, as well as more traditional measures of joblessness rates and average annual earnings.

Eisler also hinted that measuring mechanisms should be secondary to the values behind them.

GE: In past economic transformations, the people with the least have been first to lose their livelihoods.

Eisler assured me this would not be the case. “After all, the majority of poor are women and children and a major reason for this is that care-giving is given no value,” she said. To prove her point, she pointed to societies who have already taken steps to place a greater value on caring. Many Nordic countries, who always seem to score high on human development indices, provide extended paternity leave for both parents, offer universal health care, and support government-funded child support. But can low income countries afford such programs? Eisler acknowledged the challenges they would face but also reminded me of CCTs in Latin America, a government program that financially rewards mothers for taking their children to health checkups and primary school.

GE: With this week's massive spending cuts by an austere U.S. Congress, could the transition to "caring economics" happen here?

Eisler agrees the signs don’t look good but still remains hopeful. The way she sees it, creating an economic system that values the unpaid work of caring is an investment, not just an expenditure. In other words, the money spent now will be returned in future savings and revenues. And she has the scientific research to back her up. In her book, "The Real Wealth of Nations," she cites substantial evidence that private corporations have been able to realize savings and increase profits by taking care of their workers.

GE: It sounds like there's a lot of work to be done. What's the role for those of us without advanced degrees in economic theory?

Eisler's answer was surprising: Everything. She believes that interdisciplinary support outside the field of economics must begin valuing the work of caring. Gender equality, civil rights, environmental responsibility, access to quality education, the right to health care, and supporting families are all areas that work towards the goal of overriding the top-down, masculine-valued economic system currently in place.

“Change doesn’t happen quickly,” Eisler reminded me. “It can, but there are many steps that need to be taken.” Eisler is hoping to create a ground swelling grassroots movement that can champion such a transformation. Her foundation, the Center for Partnership Studies is making progress and inviting others to do the same. For example, the foundation offers an online training program where people from all over the world are able take leadership roles in the economic transformation. The next session begins this fall.

“The response to the online program has been wonderful,” Eisler said. But she also mentioned that with the size of this paradigm shift, “We will need more people.”

Eisler will speak on "The Power of Partnership: Towards a Caring Economics and Society" at 2 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 5, at Marylhurst University, just south of Portland, Ore. The event is free and open to the public. Questions above were edited for clarity.

Could the meat you eat one day be born in this? Photo:chesbayprogram (flickr)

Historically, meat has been for the world’s rich. Lab-grown meat could change that forever—while helping solve the environmental and resource dilemmas of the future.

Amid widespread speculation that the current market for food production won’t be able to provide for the world’s population by 2050, a recent innovation cooked up in a Dutch lab has been getting attention for its in vitro meat – also known as cultured or fake meat. A concept which is "becoming a holy grail for anyone concerned about the environmental and ethical impacts of rearing millions of animals around the world each year for human consumption," says The Guardian.

In another article from The Guardian, a group of Oxford researchers said that lab-grown meat could help feed the growing world population while reducing the impact on the environment.

The product may seem distasteful, but the statistics are compelling. This more sustainable method of producing protein promises to increase the chances of food security for the world’s poor while simultaneously protecting the environment. The projected resource savings from artificial meat are remarkable–an Oxford study estimated it could be engineered to use only 1 percent of the land and 4 percent of the water required for conventional meat.

For decades, environmentalists have been lamenting meat production, acccording to The Guardian:

Links between meat consumption and climate change have been widely known for many years, partly due to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest to make room for the livestock. Clearing these forests is estimated to produce a staggering 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transport sector.

Many scientists are adamant that changes will have to be made. But will it be possible to strike a balance between preserving the environment and providing for the world’s rapidly increasing population? As it is, the statistics on global hunger are alarming. According to the UN’s World Food Programme, there are 925 million chronically hungry people, 98 percent of whom live in the developing world. More than one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet.

The UN estimates that to feed a global population of 9 billion by 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 percent. Table: Farming First

Increased meat-eating usually correlates with a country’s rising affluence, but this could soon change. Many scientists insist that with further research, man-made meat will someday be on the menu of solutions to the global resource dilemmas of the future.