The root-cause of current supply deficiency is ignited and ruled by lack of professional and scientific competences to counter-fight both uncontrolled population growth vs. declined habitual resources.. Despite the flood of degree holders worldwide, particularly in underdeveloped countries, hurdles are growing fast, indicating bureaucratic and operational barrenness.. Academia needs to restructure itself, roles and responsibilities.. Excellence is uplifting the people in reality not in those dumb research papers.. Regretfully, this dumbness is the only condition that unites the world.. yet, the maturity of some civil societies enables controls rather than amusement..!!

Politicians are products of their societies.. I don't advocate of visionary as mandate for public service, but of opportunism as practical grounds for the post-hunt.. Therefore, degree-holders are the unspoken change catalyst at each household, community and street; who justify and empower revolt against the norms.. There is no change if we reconcile with our Norms.. Typically, an immigrant fails and returns back, if holds his birthplace as intellectual model.. Scientific Forefathers had paid their lives as prices for change.. Today, we love our lives much more to scarify for both righteous and good.. Therefore, we spiral and circle, endlessly..!

http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/the-arrogance-of-a-well-fed-society

The Arrogance of a Well-Fed Society

JULY 25, 2013, 12:00 AM

by ALEX BEREZOW

Every time I write an article about population growth or poverty, I receive at least one e-mail insisting that there are too many humans on the planet. That erroneous statement is usually followed up with a not-so-subtle suggestion that letting a few people starve to death wouldn’t be a terrible thing, but instead would actually make the planet a safer, richer and more sustainable place.

Not many things shock me anymore. But the arrogance and callousness of a well-fed society toward those who are less fortunate always leaves me stunned.

What is particularly frustrating is that both sides of the political spectrum claim to be the true champions of the poor – while simultaneously endorsing policies that disproportionately harm them.

The Left repeatedly insists that climate change is the world’s #1 problem, and this has distracted us from the world’s actual #1 problem: Poverty. About 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity, meaning they also don’t have adequate access to food, healthcare or the Internet. Essentially, such communities are condemned to a life of indefinite poverty. Providing them with cheap electricity is a compassionate, progressive thing to do.

Or at least it was at one time. In an article posted on New Geography, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus explain how the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) “established the progressive principle that cheap energy for all was a public good, not a private enterprise.”

Why is it necessary to make cheap electricity a public good? Because it helps end the vicious cycle of poverty. The authors describe the stark reality of life in the American South in the 1930s:

Eighty years ago, the Tennessee Valley region was like many poor rural communities in tropical regions today. The best forests had been cut down to use as fuel for wood stoves. Soils were being rapidly depleted of nutrients, resulting in falling yields and a desperate search for new croplands. Poor farmers were plagued by malaria and had inadequate medical care. Few had indoor plumbing and even fewer had electricity.

The TVA helped change this. Cheap hydroelectric power lifted residents out of poverty and even helped restore the environment.

Therefore, providing cheap electricity to the 1.3 billion people without it should be a top global priority. Solar and wind power should be implemented if possible, but not all locations will be amenable to that technology. And that means it will be necessary to burn more fossil fuels in some locations, even though more people will die as a result of air pollution. But given a choice between a life of poverty (and all the hazards that come with it) versus a chance at a more prosperous life (albeit one with an increased risk of lung cancer), most people in the developing world would probably choose the latter, even if that upsets climate-obsessed progressives in the rich world.

On the Right, conservatives need to give up their ideological opposition to birth control. While the world is not overpopulated as a whole, overpopulation does cause issues at the regional level. (That is why I like to say the world is not overpopulated, but rather “maldistributed.”) For instance, only so many people can live in the U.S. Southwest before water shortages become a routine problem.

At the behest of President George W. Bush, the United States implemented a program called PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) that was rightfully praised for saving millions of Africans from HIV. But the program was criticized for doing little (perhaps even undermining efforts) to provide women with birth control. But, cheap birth control – just like cheap electricity – is an important tool to help end the vicious cycle of poverty.

To truly help developing societies, we need to answer their immediate needs. That is far more compassionate than trying to shape them into the societies we would like them to be.

Dr. Alex B. Berezow is the editor of RealClearScience and co-author of Science Left Behind.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Cities and Towns

 

The actual dilemma is not the rapid and massive urbanization of the world, but typical mindset to make cities larger and wealthier.. Only Japan, Scandinavia and North America have successfully transformed both functionality and likeliness of towns to be successful urban centers

The Potential Perils of Rapid-Fire Urbanization
Anthony Flint; May 06, 2013

Former mayor of Barcelona Joan Clos has an easy manner and tousled white hair, like an amiable uncle. He seems too laid-back to be delivering such a harrowing message. But as he surveys the world’s fastest growing cities, he sounds the alarm about the millions of people suffering in terrible living conditions -- and the millions more on the way that could turn the metropolis into powder keg.

As executive director of UN-HABITAT, the United Nations organization concerned with helping developing world cities establish basic services, housing, and infrastructure, Clos has come to terms with the numbers: half the world’s population of 6 billion lives in cities, and in the years ahead roughly 6 of the anticipated 9 billion people on the planet will be concentrated in urban areas, primarily in Asia and Africa.

The peril lies in the fact that the cities accommodating these many millions of mostly poor, rural migrants seem to be almost completely unprepared – barely hanging on under current conditions, let alone ready for expansion. Those moving to cities in search of a better life are going straight to the slums. In sub-Saharan Africa, Close says, 65 percent of the urban population is in informal settlements. Slums in general, he says, range from 200,000 to 750,000 in size; for comparison, the entire city of Boston is a bit over 600,000. Families live in 10 by 10-foot spaces with a crude cooking stove and no toilet, and wait in – or more often bail out of -- long lines for public restrooms.

"The urbanization taking place is spontaneous and unplanned," Clos said at a symposium last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology honoring the SPURS fellowship at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. The fellowship takes mid-career professionals from around the world for a year of training and recharging batteries at MIT. “Governments are overwhelmed."

Rapidly growing cities in the developing world must start with the basics, Clos said, thinking about just one thing to start: the street grid and the public realm. In New York City, planning commissioners laid out “the streets in 1811 that we’re still walking on today.” The zoning and regulations and real estate development changed many times over in the two centuries that followed; Manhattan was designed before there was such a thing as a car. Yet the grid has been a remarkably resilient and enduring feature of the city. “The street pattern is the foundation of urban planning."
The same can be said about Philadelphia, where the framework for urbanization was similarly established, in a timeless manner. “In Barcelona, I walk down streets built by the Romans."

But while an average 32 percent of the land in successful cities is devoted to streets and sidewalks and public space making up the public realm, that figure is only 2 percent in the cluttered shantytowns and favelas of informal settlement.

Better organizing urban land would seem to be the very essence of planning. So why aren’t there platoons of planners ready to deploy in this next round of cities poised for explosive growth? For one thing, there is a cultural lack of acceptance of the profession that is leading to inaction, Close says. “Urban planning has a bad reputation. It’s seen as a colonial thing."

If the bad associations are from places like Brasilia or Chandigarh, the reticence is justified, Clos said. "We’re still building cities like it was the first quarter of the 20th century, he said.
Instead of master plans and eminent domain, Clos prescribes a set of refined, roll-up-the-sleeves methods such as participatory land readjustment to set the street network, and value capture – though he prefers the term "value sharing," which seems less “predatory” – to help finance basic infrastructure and the public realm.

The payoff is better living conditions, basic sanitation and drinking water, and the promise of all that human capital participating in a well-functioning economy. In addition to the work of Solly Angel, who in Planet of Cities calls for minimal preparations for massive urban expansion, Clos cites the Stanford Physicist Geoffrey West and his calculation that cities keep getting better, in terms of economic activity and increased productivity, as they double or triple in size. Once investments in basic infrastructure are made up front, few additional resources need be added.

Peril waits around every corner, along with success. Detroit can barely collect its remaining property tax bills; but Medellin, once a dystopian murder capital, is now a model city. (The mayor of Medellin, Anibal Gaviria Correa, addressed the MIT group just before Clos). The remarkable thing, Clos observes, is how few cities actually die. Corporations come and go; national governments, too. But cities endure. What might be most unbearable for leaders like him is the prospect of the 21st century breaking that winning streak.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/05/potential-perils-rapid-fire-urbanization/5491/

An Egyptian Epidemic

Some Egyptian women are now scared to appear alone or even with female friends in public places

Egypt's Sexual Harassment of Women 'Epidemic'
3 September 2012 Last updated at 08:59 GMT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19440656

Campaigners in Egypt say the problem of sexual harassment is reaching epidemic proportions, with a rise in such incidents over the past three months. For many Egyptian women, sexual harassment - which sometimes turns into violent mob-style attacks - is a daily fact of life, reports the BBC's Bethany Bell in Cairo.

Last winter, an Egyptian woman was assaulted by a crowd of men in the city of Alexandria.

In video footage of the incident, posted on the internet, she is hauled over men's shoulders and dragged along the ground, her screams barely audible over the shouts of the mob.
It is hard to tell who is attacking her and who is trying to help.
The case was one of the most extreme - but surveys say many Egyptian women face some form of sexual harassment every day.

Marwa, not her real name, says she worries about being groped or verbally harassed whenever she goes downtown. She says it makes her afraid.
"This is something that scares me, as a girl. When I want to go out, walking the street and someone harasses or annoys me, it makes me afraid.
"This stops me from going out. I try to be excessively cautious in the way I dress so I avoid wearing things that attract people."

'Deeply rooted'
The day I met Marwa, she was wearing a long headscarf pinned like a wimple under her chin, and a loose flowing dress with long sleeves over baggy trousers.
But dressing conservatively is no longer a protection, according to Dina Farid of the campaign group Egypt's Girls are a Red Line.
She says even women who wear the full-face veil - the niqab - are being targeted.
"It does not make a difference at all. Most of Egyptian ladies are veiled [with a headscarf] and most of them have experienced sexual harassment.
"Statistics say that most of the women or girls who have been sexually harassed have been veiled or completely covered up with the niqab."

In 2008, a study by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights found that more than 80% of Egyptian women have experienced sexual harassment, and that the majority of the victims were those who wore Islamic headscarves.

Said Sadek, a sociologist from the American University in Cairo, says that the problem is deeply rooted in Egyptian society: a mixture of what he calls increasing Islamic conservatism, on the rise since the late 1960s, and old patriarchal attitudes.
"Religious fundamentalism arose, and they began to target women. They want women to go back to the home and not work.
"Male patriarchal culture does not accept that women are higher than men, because some women had education and got to work, and some men lagged behind and so one way to equalise status is to shock women and force a sexual situation on them anywhere.
"It is not the culture of the Pharaohs; it is the culture of the Bedouins," Mr Sadek says.

Mr Sadek and women's campaign groups also blame what they call the lack of security enforcement. They say the police should do more to enforce laws protecting women from harassment.

"If the girls were dressed respectably, no-one would touch them. It's the way girls dress that makes guys come on to them”

A Male Cairo Teenager

'Provocative dress'
And the harassers are getting younger and younger.
On the Qasr al-Nil bridge in central Cairo, a hotspot for harassment, I met a group of teenage boys hanging out near street stalls blaring loud music.
When I asked them about a recent case of mass harassment in which women at a park were groped by a gang of boys, they told me the girls brought it on themselves.
"If the girls were dressed respectably, no-one would touch them," one of them said. "It's the way girls dress that makes guys come on to them. The girls came wanting it - even women in niqab."
One of his friends told me the boys were not to blame, and that there was a difference between women who wore loose niqabs and tight ones.
A woman who wore a tight niqab was up for it, he added.

But attitudes like these horrify many Egyptian men - like Hamdy, a human rights activist.
"I really feel very upset myself because I think about my family, my sisters and my mother," he said.
"Before Eid [the festival at the end of Ramadan], I was downtown and I had my sisters with me. It gets very crowded and I had my eyes everywhere, looking around and I shouted at a pedlar who got in their way. In our religion this is something that is not allowed."

The new government says it is taking the problem seriously - although many campaigners argue it is not a priority yet.

For women - like Nancy, who lives in central Cairo - it is a question of freedom.
"I want to walk safely and like a human being. Nobody should touch or harass me - that's it."

Religion & Babies..

“I’m going to talk about religion. But it’s a broad and very delicate subject, so I have to limit myself. Therefore I will limit myself to only talk about the links between religion and sexuality…I will talk on what I remember as the most wonderful – it’s the moment when the young couple whispers, ‘tonight, we are going to make a baby,’” said Hans Rosling, the eclectic Swedish doctor and statistician known for his Gapminder tool, in a TedxSummit presentation in April.

In the past, Rosling has presented on topics ranging from human rights to washing machines. This time, in Doha, Qatar, he tackled the number of babies a woman will have in her lifetime, also known as total fertility rate (TFR). He tracks this figure, by country, along with average income and basic religion type, from 1960 to 2011.The results are intriguing.

Remarkable Progress
First, Rosling points out that humanity as a whole has experienced a rapid drop in the fertility rate over the past 50 years. “By 2010, we are actually 80 percent of humans who live in countries with about two children per woman,” he notes.
Even countries whose fertility rates seem to have stagnated more recently have experienced this “tremendous improvement.” Rosling highlights Ghana and Senegal, which have reduced their fertility rates from over seven in 1960 to between four and five today.

Rosling also notes that fertility has fallen “across the world,” even in lower income countries. For example, although Vietnam has less than five percent of the GDP of the United States, their TFR is comparable.
But high fertility remains in some poorer countries, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.7, according to Gapminder) and Afghanistan (6.6). And although these countries have relatively high mortality rates, they are still projected to double their populations in 30 years. “In the world today, it’s the countries that have the highest mortality rate that have the fastest population growth because the death of a child is compensated by one more child,” says Rosling.

Religion and Fertility
Rosling also classified each country by the basic type of religion held by the majority of its inhabitants – Christianity, Islam, or “eastern religions,” which include Hinduism and Buddhism. “In 1960, you had to be a rich Christian to have few babies,” Rosling says. “The exception was Japan,” which had a fertility rate of two children per woman in 1960.Over time, however, fertility rates fell across the board. Now, “there’s no major difference” in the fertility rate of Islamic and Christian countries; countries of each religion experience high and low fertility rates. (Countries with “eastern religions” all currently have fairly low fertility rates; the highest, Nepal, has a TFR of 2.7.)

Rosling posits that the real barriers to reducing fertility are four-fold: “children should survive, children shouldn’t be needed for work, women should get education and join the labor force, and family planning should be accessible.”

“All the religions of the world are fully capable to maintain their values and adapt to this new world,” he says.

Intuitively, however, this isn’t exactly the full story. Rosling’s three very broad categories for religion obscure a great many differences between different sects and factions, and in some countries, religion is tied directly to those barriers he mentions.

In the Philippines, for example, the Catholic Church has been a major part of opposition to more and better access to contraceptives. Other countries, like Yemen, Afghanistan, and Liberia, face deep divides over women’s role in society, with very early marriage making it difficult for women to get an education and enter the labor force. Thus while there are countries of all religions which accept the use of modern contraceptives, for others, religion remains a very real obstacle to reducing fertility rates.

“Peak Child”
Nonetheless, Rosling is right when he says, “we have reached peak child” – at least if the UN Population Division’s medium variant projections are to be believed (there are also high and low variants). The number of babies being born around the world will likely never be higher than it is now. Yet world population is expected to continue to grow throughout the rest of the century. The UN medium variant projection for 2100 is 10 billion people. Rosling explains that total world population will increase despite the number of children in the world remaining fairly constant this century because younger generations are larger than older generations.

“You can see it’s like there are three [billion] missing here,” he says, referring to an illustration of global population created by stacking boxes. “They’re not missing because they’ve died – they were never born. Because before 1980 there were much fewer people born than there were during the last 30 years.” As the smaller, older generations age, they will be replaced by younger, larger generations, a trend known as population momentum. “This is the great fill-up, it’s inevitable.”

Although a large portion of future population growth is thus inevitable, the pace of fertility decline in those areas where it is still high is not. This creates the uncertainty in projections like those made by the United Nations. It’s also an impetus for countries and the international community to continue to break down Rosling’s four barriers.

“We will be just 10 billion in this world if the poorest people get out of poverty, their children survive, they get access to family planning – that is needed,” he stresses. “This is indeed important because everyone understands that there is some sort of limit on how many people we can be on this planet.”

Sources: Gapminder, TED, UN World Population Division.
Video Credit: Hans Rosling: Religions and Babies, courtesy of TED. Image: Gapminder World.
http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2012/08/hans-rosling-religion-babies-poverty/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewSecurityBeat+%28New+Security+Beat%29