Robert Paterson's List: Messy World - Resiliency

The European dream is under assault, as the wave of inflation sweeping the globe mixes with this continent’s long-stagnant wages. Families that once enjoyed Europe’s vaunted quality of life are pinching pennies to buy necessities, and cutting back on extras like movies and vacations abroad.

Potentially more disturbing — especially to the political and social order — are the millions across the continent grappling with the realization that they may have lives worse, not better, than their parents.

Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have hit on a new way to pander to American voters: a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The proposal may draw applause and votes from Americans feeling the pain of nearly $4-a-gallon gasoline. But it is an expensive and environmentally unsound policy that would do nothing to help American drivers.

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Last updated at 12:19 AM on 30/04/08

P.E.I. students finish last in reading, math assessments print this article
TERESA WRIGHT
The Guardian

Prince Edward Island 13-year-olds have placed last in the country in reading and math in the latest student assessment results.
The Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) was introduced last year and assesses the performance of 13-year-old students across the country in core reading, mathematics and science.
The results showed that 13-year-olds on P.E.I. tested last in math and reading, and second-last in science compared to students of the same age in the other provinces.
Opposition Leader Olive Crane questioned the Education minister on the results in the provincial legislature Tuesday.
She said the test results are shocking.
“The report suggests that Prince Edward Island 13-year-olds are at the bottom of the pack,” Crane told reporters.

On My Mind 30 Apr 2008 09:16 am

“Clueless in America”

Still digging through my stack of reading that I neglected, and this Bob Herbert column from the Times last week bubbled up.

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.

The latest census data suggests the average family in Charlottetown has more in its wallets than it did the last time Statistics Canada asked people about how much money they make.
New information from the 2006 census released Thursday indicates the median income for families in Charlottetown was $58,994 — an increase from the 2001 census, when it was $55,427 when adjusted for inflation.
The 6.4 per cent increase compares with a national increase in income of 3.7 per cent and a provincial increase of 4.3 per cent.
Individuals in Charlottetown had a median income of $22,205. Five years earlier, the median income was $21,996.

Young people entering the job market today may be better educated, but they’re earning less money than their parents did a generation ago, according to new census data released Thursday by Statistics Canada.
In fact, it’s a trend that began a quarter century ago and doesn’t appear to be slowing down — especially for young men entering the workforce.
Across all age groups, median salaries for full-time workers have changed little in 25 years. Workers today make, on average, a mere $53 more than they did in 1980, when adjusted for inflation, according to the census.
That stagnation mainly afflicted the middle class. The top earners in Canada saw their wages increase 16.4 per cent since 1980, while the bottom rung saw a 20-per-cent decrease.
For the 25- to 29-year-old group, it’s also a story of decreasing fortunes

Let's look at how the poorest working Canadians have been faring — those at the bottom 20 per cent of the income pyramid. Between 1980 and 2005, this group's full-time income fell by 20.6 per cent, after adjusting for inflation. The median income for this low-income group dropped from $19,367 in 1980 to $15,375 in 2005 (all figures in 2005 dollars).

For the lowest-earning families, the median income fell 9.1 per cent over the 25-year period to $14,176.

"Earnings for this group have fallen steadily since 1980," Statistics Canada note

While incomes in Canada rose in the first half of this decade, income for Prince Edward Island farmers dropped 21.6 per cent, a report released Thursday by Statistics Canada shows.

The report uses data from the 2006 and 2001 censuses to provide a wide range of income comparisons by place, occupation, education level and other factors. The numbers show a massive drop in income for farmers between 2000 and 2005, before the latest talk of trouble on the farm.

“Many people in low-income neighborhoods are spending their food budget at discount stores or pharmacies where there is no fresh produce,” said Amanda Burden, the city’s planning director. “In our study, a significant percentage of them reported that in the day before our survey, they had not eaten fresh fruit or vegetables. Not one. That really is a health crisis in the city.”

When Cuba lost access to Soviet oil in the early 1990s, the country faced an immediate crisis – feeding the population – and an ongoing challenge: how to create a new low-energy society. This film tells the story of the Cuban people�s hardship, ingenuity, and triumph over sudden adversity – through cooperation, conservation, and community.
  "Everyone concerned about Peak Oil should see this film." Richard Heinberg.

It should be clear, as we watch the gyrations and excesses of global markets, that no organization/state/group has any meaningful control over its direction. The same is true for almost every other aspect of globalization, from the environment to transnational crime to energy flows. In short, we've lost control and our collective future is in the hands of a morally neutral system that is operating in ways that we don't fully understand (nor will we). The best defense against this emerging situation is not to call for new Manhattan projects or global treaties or Marshall plans, which won't work since we can neither marshal the resources necessary nor collectively agree on anything other than the most basic rules of connectivity, it is to slowly introduce organic stability into out global system. The concept I've latched onto as a solution is what I call the resilient community.
This conceptual model creates a set of new services that allow the smallest viable subset of social systems, the community (however you define it), to enjoy the fruits of globalization without being completely vulnerable to its excesses. These services are configured to provide the ability to survive an extended disconnection from the global grid in the following areas (an incomplete list):

* Energy.
* Food.
* Security (both active and passive).
* Communications.
* Transportation.

LOS ANGELES, Apr. 29 -- Mexico will reduce its crude oil exports to the US by an average of 184,000 b/d throughout 2008, a situation that could continue for 2 years longer, reported a Mexican media outlet.

Citing PMI Comercio Internacional, the Petroleos Mexicanos affiliate in charge of marketing, El Universal newspaper said a reduction in US-bound exports for 2008—and possibly until 2010—was due to Mexico's reduced oil output.

It said the original plan for oil exports in 2008 envisioned some 1.678 million b/d heading to the international market, but the sales volume at the end of the first quarter stood at 1.499 million b/d, or 179,000 b/d less than initially anticipated.

El Universal said the US Energy Information Administration earlier this month predicted a 13.2% shortfall of imports from Mexico during the current fiscal year. According to EIA figures, Mexico exported 1.533 million b/d to the US in 2007.

Based on its December 2007 Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecast Mexico would produce 3.52 million b/d of oil in 2007 and 3.32 million b/d in 2008. The decline in Mexican output is driven mainly by falling production at supergiant Cantarell field, according to EIA.

A billion Asians require assistance to weather the effects of the soaring price of food around the globe, the head of the Asian Development Bank said Monday.

Haruhiko Kuroda, the bank's president, said an erosion of purchasing power has put Asia's poor at risk of hunger and malnutrition and could “seriously undermine the global fight against poverty and erode the gains of the past decades.”

"This price surge has a stark human dimension and has greatly affected over a billion people in Asia and the Pacific alone,” Kuroda said as the bank opened its two-day annual meeting in Madrid.

The price of basic staples has increased dramatically in the past three years, spurred by poor harvests, increased use of biofuels, fuel costs and surging demand for food-grains in China and other emerging economies.

A study on energy efficiency says Prince Edward Island has the potential to save as much as $151 million annually by 2017 through changes to energy use in the residential and commercial/institutional sectors.
The study, performed by the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation on behalf of the government of Prince Edward Island, also identifies eight transportation strategies that it says could lead to annual savings of more than 40 million litres of fuel.

DENVER — With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.
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Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

Rod Crane, right, and other commuters use Denver’s rail line.
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Riding the Rails
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Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

Mass transit ridership was up 8 percent in Denver in the first three months of the year compared with last year, despite a fare increase in January and a slowing economy.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

“In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,” said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.

“It’s very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.”