Product Placement

For once I get an interesting story that's not too difficult. All of the vocabulary is about films, or "cinema", which are fancy ways to say "movies". How hard could that be?

The theme is "product placement", meaning that movie makers deliberately put a Coca Cola can, or some other brand item, in the film. The company will pay for this "placement" as long as it makes the brand look good. This is supposed to increase sales.

Movie makers (okay, "filmmakers") may use product placement to get more money for their films. These days, "it takes money to make money": Hollywood films are expensive to make, but they can bring in a lot of money for the movie company (film studio). If companies pay the studio hundreds of thousands -- or even millions -- of dollars, that helps the studio create a more impressive movie, which (if the studio is lucky) brings in more "receipts" (ticket sales).

The article on p. 2, "Before the Cast, Picking the Brands", says (bottom of column 1) that "the devil is going to wear a lot more Prada." This means that the movie makers are going to compromise with corporate investors a lot more. The author is referring to a famous 2006 movie, "The Devil Wears Prada". You can see a trailer (a short advertisement to make you want to see the movie) here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zicgut4gpwU

Prada is a fashion company that makes very chic (expensive and fashionable) clothing, shoes and accessories (bags, hats, etc.). There is a Prada botique (expensive and fasionable shop) in Taipei 101. If you do not get sick easily, visit Prada's website to see what it's about:

http://www.prada.com

In the third column, the author of this article says "the Lumier Brothers agreed to include Lever Brothers' Sunlight soap in the 1896 film 'Washing Day in Switzerland'." She may have two movies confused, though. One is a 1906 ad, apparently in Switzerland, but not by the Lumier brothers (who pioneered movies in the 1890s). See it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zicgut4gpwU

The other, possibly the first instance of product placement, was a Sunlight soap placement in this 1896 film "Défilé du 8e Battalion" (apparently from the Lumier studios):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4hP2fL8liE&feature=related

Audiences will have to decide whether they want to pay money to see long advertisments for several products. If product placement continues to be profitable, I guess we can only see more of it. Instead, I recommend short, low budget films with plenty of impact, such as this one that my Contemporary Issues student brought in:

Chicken a la carte
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1bOteXhwrw

The filmmaker also wrote and performed the song. I get the message, and I hope you do. Of course, some people prefer Prada.

Using Wikis to Help People In Crisis

What is wiki technology?? SEE: http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

Basically, wiki websites allow pages to interconnect, and users to add and edit content. The first wiki was developed in 1995. Wikipedia is the most famous of all.

The story is about making a “crisis map” by inviting the public to tell where the problems are located. These locations are plotted on a map, which can then be used by everyone on the website. This is what the author means by “many-to-many-to-many": many people give information, many people help to make the map, and many people use the map. In the “one-to-many” paradigm, only one person gathered information, then tried to get it out to many people. Obviously, one person, or even many individuals working alone, cannot accomplish as much as a wiki network, acting together.

Part of the story involved “doing more with less”. Poor people cannot spend nearly as much money as giants of industry like Microsoft or Chevron or even the New York Times. In order to make a system that could be operated by relatively poor people, who were not professionals, the creators of Ushahidi made it use cell phones instead of computers. They used open-source software instead of copyrighted commercial software – that way, everyone could make necessary changes to the software, for various needs. Nobody has to pay to use this software. And the people get more value than they they would have, from a bigger, slower organization.

The article talks about “bearing witness in tragedy”. Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili, the main native language of Kenya. That's related to the verb "testify" which means to give truthful and important information, often in court. The one who testifies is called a "witness", and testimony is also called "bearing witness". The author talks about three types of bearing witness that were traditional before. The journalist reports on a war or earthquake “in real time”, or while the action is going on. But a journalist is only one reporter, reaching a limited audence that can do little immediate good. The victim/writer reports on his or her own suffering, but people don't hear about it right away. Anne Frank was a Jewish girl in Holland, hiding from the Nazis. She died in a Nazi death camp, but the diary she wrote while hiding is famous today. Historians write about tragedies long after they have occurred.

All of these types of “bearing witness” are of little use to the people “in real time”, because it takes a long time for understanding of the situation to reach people who can help, and a very long time before the authorities have enough information to act intelligently. By getting a lot of “aggregate, average, good-enough truths” right away, and releasing the information right away to those who can use it to help, the wiki format offers a powerful tool for humanitarian relief.

All of the bold face words can be found in this week’s vocabulary list.

NEW SEMESTER -- WELCOME

My cover story this week involves luxury apartments in Shanghai. The point of the story is that these apartments may be overpriced. Speculation (buying something expensive in the hope that it will be even more valuable later) may be driving the housing market into a bubble, much like the American housing bubble that started an economic meltdown in 2008. If you don't know the meanings of those words in bold type, you should come to class regularly (where you will certainly find them mentioned again and again).

To supplement the article, I looked up some of the references. You may find it interesting to click on these links and see what kind of "luxury items" are on offer in Shanghai. I was mostly disgusted by the lack of real comfort and delight. My tastes run in a different direction, I guess. (The exception being Salvador Dali, my favorite artist of all time.)

Swarovski crystals (Taiwan site):
http://asia.swarovski.com/taiwan

Tomson Riviera Shanghai (Chinese language site)
http://www.tomson-riviera.com/main.html

Versace (fashion company): http://www.versace.com/
... and for the Versace easy chair:
http://www.luxury-insider.com/Current_Affairs/post/2008/09/06/Versace-Home-Furniture-Collection.aspx

Richgate Shanghai http://www.joannarealestate.com.cn/shanghai/propertyshow.asp?pid=264

Park Avenue Shanghai (This is “One Park Avenue”, and there is now “8 Park Avenue”)
http://www.shrelocation.com/apartments/One_Park_Avenue.htm

Palais de Fortune Shanghai
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/french-luxury-tells-a-tale-of-chinas-haves-and-havenots-1883676.html?action=Popup

Salvador Dali (surrealist painter)
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/d/dali/cannibal.jpg
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/d/dali/persistence.jpg
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/d/dali/narciss.jpg
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/d/dali/weaning_furniture.jpg
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/d/dali/eluard.jpg
http://www.theartistsalvadordali.com/galatea.jpg

Armani (fashion company)
http://armanicollezioni.neimanmarcus.com/

Fendi (another fashion company – not disgusting?) http://www.fendi.it/#/en/foreverfendi/photogallery

Ennis House, Los Angeles (Frank Lloyd Wright) FOR SALE http://www.ennishouse.org/htmls/photo_page.htm
Other Frank Lloyd Wright homes for sale (in 2009)
http://designcrave.com/2009-05-07/frank-lloyd-wright-homes-for-sale-the-10-best

22-room residence in New Canaan, Connecticut ($24 million)
http://www.newcanaanrealestate-ct.com/homesforsale-detail/Dans_New-Canaan_CT_06840_ctmls-98401644-12775

Gaggenau appliances (Germany)
http://www.gaggenau.com/US_en/products.do
http://www.gaggenau-projects.com/index.php?lang=en

Jacuzzi (Italy) http://www.jacuzzi.eu/eu/it-IT

“This lock can read the palm of your hand.”
http://www.beyondifsolutions.com/html/handkeyll.html

All in all, it seems to me that you don't get a lot more for $45 million in Shanghai than you might for half a million in a nice part of America. But if you have to be doing some kind of business in Shanghai, I guess Thomson Riviera is the address to own. Makes me wonder what the point is, of working so hard -- in Shanghai, especially -- if you just end up living in a concrete box with a view of a polluted and neurotic city. But I told you, my tastes run in a different direction.

Articles that should change your mind

One of the best reasons for studying newspaper English is to be able to read information about your own world, that will definitely affect you and your family. Below I list excerpts (little pieces) of articles about subjects so important, that you are in danger if you do not understand them. The first, from this week's Washington Post, indicates that thousands of chemicals used in common products (including children's products) are secret from both the general public and most government officials. That is to say, millions of tons of industrial chemicals are used to make the stuff you use, and nobody even knows what these chemicals are, or what they might do to the human body.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/03/AR2010010302110.html?nav=hcmodule
Use of potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under law January 4, 2010

"Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision.

"Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, manufacturers must report to the federal government new chemicals they intend to market. But the law exempts from public disclosure any information that could harm their bottom line. (= their profit)

"Government officials, scientists and environmental groups say that manufacturers have exploited weaknesses in the law to claim secrecy for an ever-increasing number of chemicals. In the past several years, 95 percent of the notices for new chemicals sent to the government requested some secrecy, according to the Government Accountability Office. About 700 chemicals are introduced annually.

"Of the secret chemicals, 151 are made in quantities of more than 1 million tons a year and 10 are used specifically in children's products, according to the EPA."

...............

Okay, and here's a website by popular author Matt Savinar, which shows how Peak Oil will affect our lives in the very near future, and why. If you are able to take the time and go to his sources, you will see that he is not making this up. The world is about to change a great deal. Find out how, here:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

We're not "running out of oil". What's happening is that the population is growing quickly, and these billions are also becoming more "developed", meaning more dependent on oil. Thus demand increases steadily. Unfortunately, supply is already in decline, and will continue to decline ... forever, until the energy required to extract the oil is more than the energy produced. As supply declines, and demand increases, the gap will be very, very damaging to the world economy.

Here's an excerpt:

"The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

"In a similar sense, an oil based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10 to 15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty."

................

Speaking of demand for oil (and gas, and coal, and uranium, and iron, and copper, etc.) ... here's a recent article by a Guardian reporter who claims to have witnessed the final Copenhagen meetings between Obama and the (now disgraced) Chinese diplomant He Yafei and the other representatives of major nations. It seems that industrial might -- and the political power that gives -- are just too important to worry about the environment. So we can expect no help from big world powers, in saving the planet from eco-destruction. Journalist Mark Lynas is a specialist in climate change, and has this to say about China's role in the talks:

'Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, "not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?" The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time".

'This does not mean China is not serious about global warming. It is strong in both the wind and solar industries. But China's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless they absolutely have to.'

Read the whole article, if you like. I will be glad to help you understand the meaning. China destroyed the Copenhagen Conference because its government wants -- feels that it needs -- to burn more and more coal, in order to build the power of China. The government of India has similar ambitions. And the US buys most of its products from countries dependent on dirty energy plants.

Some feel that economic collapse is the only event that will save the human race from quick extinction. This is a very good time to read newspapers, make necessary lifestyle changes and get ready for big changes. This is why I teach you newspaper English. Good luck.

Gannet Newspapers and the Copenhagen Conference

Gannett is the company which publishes USA Today, the #2 newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of nearly 2 million readers. The only paper which is read by more people than USA Today is the Wall Street Journal (owned by Ruppert Murdoch's News Corp.). Gannett is, in fact, the number one news publisher in the nation, with 84 daily newspapers and 850 non-daily publications. Of the nation's 100 biggest papers, Gannett publishes 13.

It also broadcasts from 23 American TV stations, with a total of 20 million viewers. In addition, 27 million people (16% of American internet users) browse Gannett sites. Furthermore, Gannett has installed TV sets in office buildings (waiting rooms, elevators, lobbies) which broadcast news and entertainment to around 3 million viewers.* This means that someone reading USA Today, then surfing the internet, then watching TV, after coming home from an office building, may have seen the same "news" from 4 apparently different sources.

If media inform you four times a day "There are terrorists out there," you will begin to believe. If these media tell you that the president is doing a good job on climate change, you may rest assured that it is so. Many viewers and readers do not have time or interest enough to pursue the matter further, so their "reality" is defined by Gannett and similar mainstream news sources.

The company's British arm publishes 17 daily papers and 200 weekly papers, reaching 13 million people a week. In addition, its web presence "informs" 6 million web users. Most of its papers are distributed free, for the purpose of selling advertising mixed with feel-good local news. But it also publishes the Glasgow Herald and the Lancashire Telegraph.*

* (These data come from the company's website, accessed this month.)

Because USA Today is known for shallow reporting and a conservative outlook, I formed a hypothesis (use your dictionary - that's an important word) that all of its papers would react to the Copenhagen Conference with empty "feel-good" reporting that left readers unaware of the tragic failure of that summit meeting. Mostly, I was right.

USA Today had this headline on December 19th:
U.N. chief says 'we have a deal' on climate change
(While the first two paragraphs extolled the Conference, the third paragraph introduced some "balanced reporting".)
"Obama's successful 11th-hour bargaining Friday with China, India, Brazil and South Africa— the world's key developing nations — sets the stage for future cooperation between developed and developing nations. But the resulting "Copenhagen Accord" was protested by several nations that demanded deeper emissions cuts by the industrialized world and felt excluded from the major-nation bargaining process."

Some of the objections to the "deal" were mentioned, but the general approval of world leaders was noted and the supposed advantages of the treaty were enumerated. The fairly long article ended by noting that:

"The $100-billion-a-year climate aid goal set for 2020 falls below estimates made in some expert studies, including by the World Bank, which foresee a need for hundreds of billions of dollars each year to combat global warming as seas rise, species go extinct, farmlands go dry and storms become more severe."

In other words, the climate comes down to politicians talking and money moving around. The article, significantly, was not generated by Gannett, but by Associated Press (AP), which (along with UPI, Reuters and AFP) generate quite a bit of news content around the English-speaking world. While covering various objections to the Copenhagen Summit, this article left the reader assuming that everything will be all right, as long as we spend enough money. (This financialization of the environment allows rich investors to manipulate "carbon credits" and make fortunes, but may not be counted on to solve the climate crisis, in my humble opinion.)

Now, USA Today is a national newspaper, and uses AP news. What about the local papers Gannett runs? The Honolulu Advertiser's most up-to-date story was filed Dec. 17 (before an agreement was reached) and had little to report. The Indianapolis Star had not even covered the Summit, but ran this (Dec. 12) story:

The new socialism
"The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

"One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World..."

The Des Moines Register's latest story, when I checked on the 20th, was a Dec. 17 commentary that relations with China could be improved at the Climate Summit. It urged new respect for China. Des Moines, located in America's farming Midwest, is a large exporter of American food products. The previous day's article had noted that Tom Vilsack, Obama's Agriculture Secretary (former governor of Iowa) had given a speech in Copenhagen. The environmental issues of the Conference were not discussed in either article.

I checked several smaller Gannett papers across the US and they had generally ignored Copenhagen. Fine. I went to the British (Newsquest) papers that Gannett owns. Predictably, the smaller ones failed to mention any significant international news. But Lancashire is a large industrial town in Britain, source of quite a lot of carbon emissions. The Lancashire Telegraph had completely ignored the Summit, too.

So I was quite surprised to see not one but a series of scathing critiques in the Glasgow Herald. It's Dec. 19 article was titled:

Copenhagen: The deal explained
(After detailing the failures of the deal, the article noted that some politicians held out hope, but concluded:)

"But if this is, as leaders said, the first step, then it is the first step on what seems likely to be a long and difficult road."

The next day, one of the paper's editors printed an even more strongly worded editorial:

Copenhagen climate deal ‘a disaster for the planet’

Since this conforms to my own bias (yes, of course I have one), I was interested to find out how a Gannett paper had completely contradicted the overwhelming tendency to minimize objections to Copenhagen. I wrote to the paper, which was purchased by Gannett six years ago. When I get a reply, I will share it with the class.

Looking at the news-makers

I sent out 29 pages of articles about the environment. While looking up articles I found some news sources that should be added to the list I offered 12/1. These two offer a non-American point of view on the news:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/ and http://news.xinhuanet.com/english Xinhua News Agency is, of course, an organ of the P.R.C. government. Its news and views are those deliberately published by the Chinese state. While this is not a very reliable source of general news, Xinhua makes an interesting comparison to the news and views of the American press. Its carefully chosen language on Copenhagen may be worth reading.

http://www.spiegel.de/international Der Spiegel is a famous German newspaper, and the international edition is published online in English. Because it is "out of step" with the American government and media, one occassionally finds a different sort of news here. Spiegel may be critical of the Afghan war, for instance, or look at trade issues quite differently than the New York Times.

A third source is:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
The Times is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which also owns quite a large number of other famous media:
The Wall Street Journal
The Sun (a London tabloid)
Fox News
Sky Satellite Network
Star TV
National Geographic Channel Worldwide
20th Century Fox (movie and TV studios)
HarperCollins (huge book publisher)
Digital News Media (a popular Australian digital news source)
My Space

Murdoch was also responsible for the creation of the Weekly Standard, a neocon opinion magazine edited by William Kristol:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/006/025sapgi.asp
As luck would have it, Kristol knew Rupert Murdoch thanks to a mutual friend, Irwin Stelzer. So when Murdoch dropped by Kristol's office a few weeks later, Kristol popped the question. Would he be interested in funding a new conservative magazine? Yes, he said. To lock up the deal, Kristol, Podhoretz, Tell, and I met over dinner with Murdoch in March 1995 at his home in Beverly Hills. Thanks to Murdoch's generosity, The Standard was born a couple of months later.

Murdoch's relationship with the state of Israel can be seen in this Jerusalem Post article he wrote:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237392665709&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

This is what the Center for American Progress (an American think tank with strong connections in the Obama administration) has to say about Murdoch:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/07/b122948.html

'But who is the real Rupert Murdoch? As this report shows, he is a far-right partisan who has used his empire explicitly to pull American political debate to the right.

'… Murdoch owns the Weekly Standard, the neoconservative journal that employed key figures who pushed for war in Iraq. As the American Journalism Review noted, the circulation of Murdoch's Weekly Standard "hovers at only around 65,000. But its voice is much louder than those numbers suggest." Editor Bill Kristol "is particularly adept at steering Washington policy debates by inserting himself and his views into the discussion." In the early weeks of the War on Terror, Kristol "shepherded a letter to President Bush, signed by 40 D.c= opinion-makers, urging a wider military engagement." [Source: AJR, 12/01]

'… The last governor of Hong Kong before it was handed back to China, Chris Patten, signed a contract to write his memoirs with Murdoch's publishing company, HarperCollins. But according to the Evening Standard, when "Murdoch heard that the book, East and West, would say unflattering things about the Chinese leadership, with whom he was doing satellite TV business, the contract was cancelled. It caused a furor in the press - except, of course, in the Murdoch papers, which barely mentioned the story." According to BusinessWeek, internal memos surfaced suggesting the canceling of the contract was motivated by "corporate worries about friction with China, where HarperCollins' boss, Rupert Murdoch, has many business interests." [Evening Standard, 8/13/03; BusinessWeek, 9/15/98]

'… Time Magazine reported that while Murdoch is supposedly "a devout anti-Soviet and anti-communist" he "became bewitched by China in the early '90s." In an effort to persuade Chinese dictators that he would never challenge their behavior, Murdoch "threw the BBC off Star TV" (his satellite network operating in China) after BBC aired reports about Chinese human rights violations. Murdoch argued the BBC "was gratuitously attacking the regime, playing film of the massacre in Tiananmen Square over and over again." In 1998 Chinese President Jiang Zemin praised Murdoch for the "objective" way in which his papers and television covered China. [Source: Time Magazine, 10/25/99]'

The Times Online is often a source of breaking news. But it's good to compare its viewpoint with that of the Guardian, which is run by the Scott Trust on a non-profit basis, dedicated to "liberal journalism". These two British papers represent opposite sides of the politcal fence on several issues, and you may find it interesting to see both sides.

It's amazing that one man can so affect the information that Americans (and thus Taiwanese) receive, however. Of course, he's not the only powerful media tycoon. We'll look at some more next week.

Under-reported stories that will change your Life

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a story that will change Taiwan and the world: a report by the United States Navy announcing that it soon will be unable to protect its interests along Asia’s Pacific coastline. This means that Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines are no longer under U.S. protection. Below is the link to the Bloomberg story. Bloomberg is one of America’s most respected financial news sources, and its main owner is the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. He is also called the 8th richest American by Forbes, which claims he has a personal fortune of $16 billion. The world is like that.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=annrZr9ybk7A
China’s New Missile May Create a ‘No-Go Zone’ for U.S. Fleet

That story was not followed up in the New York Times or other mainstream news sources. As far as I know, it has not been reported in Taiwan. Why? Because it would cause panic and a lack of confidence in the economy. This news will change the world, but the corporations who control the news dare not stress the implications. Only those who are really trying to get the real news will get it.

Here’s another story, reported in the Guardian, but ignored by the American and Taiwanese media. Again, the implications of the story are huge. And that’s why the story has been buried.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-energy-agency
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower
Watchdog's estimates of reserves inflated says top official

"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," he added.

This story – which has not appeared in the mainstream US or Taiwan news (!) – implies that the financial markets (Wall Street, London, Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai) are being manipulated to believe that continuous growth is possible when it is not. The world economy needs energy to produce wealth, and it needs more and more energy if it is going to grow. If the economy does not grow, it collapses. Non-growth is called "Recession". If the economy shrinks enough, it’s called a "Depression". (Think: 1930s.)

That’s because economic growth is based on debt with interest payments. If you borrow 100 dollars at 4% interest, you must repay the 100 dollars PLUS the interest. If everyone is trying to do this at the same time, the total economy must grow by 4% or many will fail to pay their debts. The total exposure of the financial system to risky debts (derivatives) is now over $1 quadrillion. That’s A MILLION BILLIONS.

The BBC reports:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/10/a_global_solution_needed.html The derivatives market represents a debt of 1.2 QUADRILLION dollars globally. There is not 1.2 Quadrillion dollars in existence in all the currency on earth. Much of that derivatives are loans for gambles made at 10% and then passed on at another % and so on and so on. The institutions left holding the debt have on their books (in writing) assets worth trillions, BUT are in reality debts that could never possibly be be repaid as the money does not, and has never existed.

This is why, although the mainstream media continue to comment on Obama's "green shoots", there is a much larger economic collapse in store for the world.

Dr. Colin Campbell, one of the world’s foremost oil geologists, replied to the Guardian story about phony oil statistics with (among many other comments) these words:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5970
“In fact, today 28 billion barrels a year support a world population on 6.7 billion people, but by 2050 the supply will have fallen to a level able to support less than half that number in their present way of life.”

The meaning of Campbell’s statement is obvious: either there will be less than 3.4 billion people in 2050, or they will, on the average, be living a lifestyle only half as wonderful and convenient. (Or something between the two.) For us, in the first world, living with only half of the resources we now enjoy would be very frustrating, but it would be endurable. For the “bottom billion” it certainly means starvation.

That's why distorted statistics form the basis of the news you read, such as Obama’s famous “green shoots”. If the general public knew that our economy will not grow, but shrink over the next generation, it would be very upset – and in no mood to buy more stuff from the global corporations who are responsible for the mainstream news. Much of the real news is not comfortable, so it’s seldom mentioned.

You, as intelligent world citizens, want to know what’s really going on – not just accept what the mainstream media are telling you. That way, you can plan your own lives in a way that maximizes your chances for survival and happiness. And to get the real information, you have to really try. It’s hard work, especially for ESL students. I am trying to help you.