EFTA00717841.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Fwd: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 07/14/2013 Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 15:51:49 +0000 Attachments: United States of decay MAILOnline July 3, 2013.pdf; Politics, ne_20,_2013.pdf; Austerity_Won't_Work_ifthe_Roof_ls_Leaking_Robert_Frank_NYT_July_6,2013.pdf; Global_threat_to_food_supply_as_water_wells_dry_up,wams_top_environment_expert_Le ster_Brown The_Guardian July_6,2013.pdf; Drowning_slowly,_How_the_America's Golden State cities_will look in_500years_if se a_levels_rise_as_predictediames_Daniel_MailOnline_July_6„2013.pdf; When the Best Hospitals Are the Worst- .pdf; Good_to know—HEALTH informationJuly_14„2013.pdf; The_FOUR TOPS_bio_7-14- 2013.pdf George_Zimmerman_Not_Guilty_Jermaine_Spradle_Huff Post_July_13,2013.pdf Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png DEAR FRIEND After deliberating for more than 16 hours, a jury of six women on Saturday evening found George Zimmerman not guilty in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman had pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder with an affirmative defense, claiming he had shot Martin to save his own life after being attacked by the teen on Feb. 26, 2012. The trial, televised nationally on cable networks and streamed live across the Internet on various sites, kept the country captivated awaiting a verdict on the tragic events that took place that rainy night. Following four weeks of testimony, more than a dozen witnesses and a host of controversy, Zimmerman walked out of court a free man. The verdict is a travesty of justice. Because where I come from; if you stalk someone who is walking alone on a rainy night, get out of the safety of your car after being told by a police dispatcher to not, confront them and a fight erupts, the fact that you introduced a gun into the altercation killing some one is manslaughter if not 2nd degree murder. 2,Inline image 1 As Judith Browne Dianis wrote: "It is distressing that George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was gunned down last year by a man who saw him as a threat, not because he posed a threat, but because of the color of his skin. We call on the Department of Justice to act on the violation of Trayvon Martin's civil rights. There is no more fundamental right than the right to live. 2,Inline image 2 Trayvon Martin is America's son. He represents the precariousness of life as a young black man in America. Although the overall murder rate is dropping in the U.S., homicides of young black men are EFTA00717841 at 28 per 100,000, the highest rate amongst all young people. More than half the nation's homicide victims are African American, even though they make up only 13 percent of the population, and of those black murder victims, 85 percent are men, most of them young. Black men are routinely racially profiled whether by a neighborhood watch captain like George Zimmerman, or the stop-and-frisk policy of the New York City Police, in which a staggering 86 percent of those stopped during the Bloomberg administration were black or Latino; 88 percent of which ended up being innocent. All across the country, young black men continue to be the victims of police killings by officers who are then rarely held accountable for their actions: In March of this year, 16-year-old unarmed Kimani Gray was shot seven times, including three times in his back by New York City police as he left his friend's birthday party. An unarmed 19-year-old college student, Kendrec McDade, was shot and killed by officers in March 2012 in Pasadena, California. In Las Vegas, 28-year-old Orlando Barlow was surrendering on his knees when officers fatally shot him in 2003. And four years ago, 22-year-old Oscar Grant was killed by Oakland transit police, who said they accidentally used a gun instead of a Taser. All of these young men were unarmed and in almost all of the cases the officers were exonerated and returned to the beat. In the case of Grant, despite video showing the young man being shot as he was handcuffed and lying face down on the platform, the officer was convicted of manslaughter and served less than one year. Sadly, the saga of police killings and beatings of unarmed black youth is as story that forms a part of the fabric of the everyday life of most American black men. Young men of color are also victimized by schools' zero-tolerance policies that result in the arrest, suspension, and expulsion of students for minor infractions. Black and Latino students represent more than 70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement for violating minor school rules like the dress code, carrying a cell phone, or talking back to a teacher. The statistics paint a portrait of racial inequity. African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-fifth of all confined youth today. Black men represent 7.9 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in America, but only 2.8 percent of undergraduates at public flagship universities. The jobless rate among poor black teen drop outs is an alarming 95 percent, according to Northeastern University. The disparities, unfortunately, do not end there. According to Human Rights Watch, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they have higher rate of arrests. African Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses. From 1980 to 2007, about one in three of the 25.4 million adults arrested for drugs was African American. Upon conviction, black offenders often receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison. The killing of Trayvon Martin is a clarion call for our nation to finally grapple with the issue of racial injustice and the continued victimization of young black men. The response of millions to the injustice of failing to arrest and try Trayvon's killer is a testament to the power and effectiveness of grassroots movements. The movement must not stop with this verdict but continue on until each and every young man of color in America can walk the streets in any of our nation's neighborhoods unafraid, knowing not only that he is safe, but that his country walks beside him." When I was growing up in the 195os and 196os in New York, street gangs would call each other to rumble (fight), but there would be rules, fist only, baseball bats and chains or totally lethal (knives and guns). And if the rumble started with fist-only, should your opponents get the better of the rumble, EFTA00717842 your guys accepted the beat-down. AGAIN: On a rainy night a seventeen year-old was followed by a older man who after being told by police to stop, proceeded stalking his prey, getting out of the safety of his car, confronting the teenager which erupted into a fight and (to be generous), instead of accepting a beat-down he introduced a gun shooting his unarmed adversary and killing him. Where I come from that is called at manslaughter if not 2nd degree murder. We have all seen Westside Story, the kid who kills the other kid with a knife in the rumble, goes to jail. I would normally call the not-guilty decision by the Zimmerman jury blatant racism, except that in 2011 another Florida jury gave the similar verdict in the Casey Anthony trial — who while partying with friends covered up the death of her two year-old daughter Caylee, for more than a month. And only after Caylee's grandparents called the police, Casey told detectives several falsehoods, including that the child had been kidnapped by a nanny on June 9, and that she had been trying to find her, too frightened to alert the authorities. The not guilty murder verdict was greeted with public outrage. Some complained that the jury misunderstood the meaning of reasonable doubt, while others said the prosecution relied too heavily on the defendant's allegedly poor moral character because they had been unable to show conclusively how the victim had died. Both verdicts are travesties of justice, with the exception that if Trayvon Martin had shot George Zimmerman for stalking him, getting out of his car and starting a fight, I am not sure that his jury would have judged him not guilty. And as Tracy Martin (Trayvon'sfather) tweeted, "thanks to everyone who are with us and who will be with us so we together can make sure that this doesn't happen again." Last week I ran across an article on ItIAILOnline - The United States of decay: Forgotten ruins of once booming towns that litter landscape in some ofAmerica's most populated areas. A new collection of photographs showcases some of the abandoned buildings and decaying infrastructure that can be found throughout New York and other northeastern states. Photographers Daniel Barter and Daniel Marbaix visited dozen of locations on their journey which took in New York City and the infamous Rust Belt, once home to America's heavy industry. They visited dozens of now derelict spaces including the Seaview Tuberculosis Sanatorium on Staten Island, The Steubenville Steel works in Ohio, plus the Rockland Psychiatric Hospital and Buffalo Central Terminal in New York state. They found countless examples of decaying infrastructure including abandoned power plants, hospitals, asylums, schools, theaters, steel mills, prisons, factories, hotels, cathedrals, blast furnaces, and convents to a boat graveyard. 2,Inline image 1 The stunning collection of photographs has been gathered in a book entitled `States of Decay: New York & Americas Forgotten North East.' The photographers say their aim was to give people a glimpse of the broken and doomed spaces which have been left behind in some of the county's largest urban areas almost as monuments to a different era that is now gone. The book is now available on buy on Amazon in the U.S. and U.K. 2,Inline image to We have to ask ourselves why do we allow so much infrastructure go to waste. You don't see this in other industrialized countries. But all across the Northeast and Midwest we see entire cities, towns and neighborhoods in advance decay. Physical decay is the sibling to spiritual decay and moral decay which ends up with economic decay. And with the current growing inequality in wealth, power and influence, if not changed we will see much more of this type of decay. I have lived in wonderful homes in Europe that were 300, 400 and 500 years old. I have worked and shopped in wonderful neighborhoods that were centuries old in the time of Napoleon, Henry VIII and Christopher Columbus. EFTA00717843  Online image 11 I remember asking Mayor Tom Bradley who was beaming about the revitalization of downtown Los Angeles, "why did he allow developers to build 5o story islands that you had to get into a car if you wanted to go to the next building which was in the next block. Had anyone seen Paris? Walked the Champs of Elysess? Driven around the Trocadero? Or relaxed in the Luxembourg Gardens?" But then our easiness to discard our elderly, poor, children and disadvantage is symptomatic of the physical decay that these pictures show. Until we value our past we will never fully appreciate what we have — hence our easiness to let so much of America go into decay with such ease. R,Inline image 12 Please see the attached article and pictures as well as the enclosed video. Website: http:ilwww.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic le-2354175/Uni ted-States-decay-Images-forgotten-America- ruins-20th-century-left-abandoned-New-York-north-eastem-states.html Please see the video on website above to see more. 2Inline image 2 Good to know HEALTH information HEART ATTACKS AND WATER ! • How many folks do you know who say they don't want to drink anything before going to bed because they'll have to get up during the night. • Heart Attack and Water - I never knew all of this ! Interesting Something else I didn't know ... I asked my Doctor why people need to urinate so much at night time. Answer from my Cardiac Doctor - Gravity holds water in the lower part of your body when you are upright (legs swell). When you lie down and the lower body (legs and etc) seeks level with the kidneys, it is then that the kidneys remove the water because it is easier. This then ties in with the last statement! I knew you need your minimum water to help flush the toxins out of your body, but this was news to me. Correct time to drink water... Very Important. From A Cardiac Specialist! Drinking water at a certain time maximizes its effectiveness on the body • 2 glasses of water after waking up - helps activate internal organs • 1 glass of water 3o minutes before a meal - helps digestion • 1 glass of water before taking a bath - helps lower blood pressure • 1 glass of water before going to bed - avoids stroke or heart attack I can also add to this... My Physician told me that water at bed time will also help prevent night time leg cramps. Your leg muscles are seeking hydration when they cramp and wake you up with a Charlie Horse. EFTA00717844 Mayo Clinic Aspirin Dr. Virend Somers, is a Cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic, who is lead author of the report in the July 29, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Most heart attacks occur in the day, generally between 6 M. and noon. Having one during the night, when the heart should be most at rest, means that something unusual happened. Somers and his colleagues have been working for a decade to show that sleep apnea is to blame. 1. If you take an aspirin or a baby aspirin once a day, take it at night. The reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour "half-life"; therefore, if most heart attacks happen in the wee hours of the morning, the Aspirin would be strongest in your system. 2. FYI, Aspirin lasts a really long time in your medicine chest, for years, (when it gets old, it smells like vinegar). Please read on... Something that we can do to help ourselves - nice to know. Bayer is making crystal aspirin to dissolve instantly on the tongue. They work much faster than the tablets. Why keep Aspirin by your bedside? It's about Heart Attacks. There are other symptoms of a heart attack, besides the pain on the left arm. One must also be aware of an intense pain on the chin, as well as nausea and lots of sweating; however, these symptoms may also occur less frequently. Note: There may be NO pain in the chest during a heart attack. The majority of people (about 6o%) who had a heart attack during their sleep did not wake up. However, if it occurs, the chest pain may wake you up from your deep sleep. If that happens, immediately dissolve two aspirins in your mouth and swallow them with a bit of water. Afterwards: - Call 911. - Phone a neighbor or a family member who lives very close by.- Say "heart attack!" - Say that you have taken 2 Aspirins. Take a seat on a chair or sofa near the front door, and wait for their arrival and ...DO NOT LIE DOWN! A Cardiologist has stated that if each person after receiving this e-mail, sends it to to people, probably one life could be saved! I have already shared this information. What about you? Do forward this message. It may save lives! "Life is a one-time gift" ***** In The Atlantic this week Derek Thompson wrote — Disney Is Not a Movie Company; It's a Television Company - to explain why Disney's latest movie, 'The Lone Ranger" which cost $225 million and did not live up to box-office expectations, having only made a disappointing $49 million over the extended 4th of July holiday weekend opening is not a problem for the parent EFTA00717845 company. As a result, analysts are projecting that the Walt Disney Company will have to write-down $190 million. And although it is bad for Disney it is not that bad because in reality Disney is no longer just a movie company. In reality, it is a television company with a number of other interconnecting assets. Yes, it still makes movies, but now less than a dozen films a year. In fact, a blockbuster film is only icing on the cake for the parent's company's financials. Because it owns amusement parks all over the world. Cruise ships. A lucrative merchandising business. So if you look at Disney's financials, the majority of its earnings don't come from its film studio. They come from its TV holdings: cable networks, particularly ESPN and the Disney Channel, and ABC. Take a look. (Broadcasting, here, refers to its ABC ownership.) 2,Inline image 10 Financial reports aren't perfectly precise snapshots of a company's identity. Movie accounting is totally wacky and the studio division might not reflect its true significance to the parent company. Without its movies, you might say, Disney wouldn't have much of a merchandise business. Without its movies, it wouldn't have much of an amusement park business. It wouldn't have characters and plots of spin off and license on TV. And so on. All of that's true. But at its core, the Disney company draws its largest and most dependable source of income from subscriptions fees that power its cable networks ... even though casual newspaper readers could be forgiven for thinking the company lives and dies by the opening weekend of its summer blockbusters. And that's the brilliant thing about Disney. The movie business is a rotten thing. American audiences don't go the movies every week, so they have to be lured with egregiously expensive marketing campaigns for a handful of "tentpole" movies that, if they blow up, can destroy quarterly earnings for the film division and take down careers. The TV business is somewhat the opposite. The subscription fee model (wherein a sliver of your cable bill goes straight to the networks' pockets) guarantees that cable networks get paid with or without a "hit." Think of it this way. "The Lone Ranger," the movie, only earns money from people who choose to sit at watch it in a theater. And as Thompson points out, "That's a high bar." But if "The Lone Ranger" were on TV, its network would earn money from all pay-TV households, whether they watched "The Lone Ranger" or not. That's the dirty secret and the dark genius of the cable TV business. And that's why it's the business Disney is in. So for all of you who own Disney stock don't panic, as one or two failed Disney movies won't really hurt the company's bottom line. On July 8, Bill Moyers sat with Charlie Rose to talk about Bill's Frontline project "Two American Families." They talk about the many challenges facing America's shrinking middle class and how our economy is biased toward the very rich and the disappearing American dream. Two American Families follows two families over twenty-one years starting in 1991 (the Stanleys and the Neumanns two middle-classfamilies) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hard workers, caring parents and faithful church goers seeking to secure a foothold in the American middle-class, as their security comes unglued and they stubbornly fall into poverty. The big ugly is that these two families are not the exceptions, as they are part of a overwhelming growing number of families where their primary breadwinner lose their manufacturing job (asfactories closed throughout the Midwest and Northeast), struggled to keep out of poverty, and are now often working two to three jobs that pay minimum wage with no benefits. While the jobs they lose were paying $19, $20, $21 an hour and now they can only get part-time jobs paying $6 or $7 dollars an hour with no benefits and often on the graveyard shift (npm to 7am or midnight to 8am). The film puts a face on the growing number of working poor who are spiraling down into poverty. EFTA00717846  charlierose2 See the Charlie Rose interview with Bill Moyers: Two American Families.: "I think the hardest time is when you have to worry about coming home,"says Keith Stanley, "And there's always a bill on the door saying the water's cut off, or the guy just called saying he's gonna cut off the phone, or the electricity's off, and you have to waitfor a couple of days until mom and dad can get enough money to put it back on." Keith is just 14 years old here, long and lanky and wearing a bright green t-shirt, and as hefinishes speaking, the camera pans left, to his mom, Jackie. She listens carefully, then turns to walk away. The scene cuts here, to a look at the block in Sherman Park where the Stanleys live—a long shot of neat single-story homes, with lawns and hedges and driveways. Keith & Jackie Stanley and Terry & Tony Neumann After watching their American Dream slowly wither away they continued to accept responsibility. They did what they were told. They did retraining. Took two jobs. Less prestigious jobs. Part-time jobs. Graveyard shifts and weekends. Often at the expense of the deterioration of their families, as they were unable to tend to the needs of their children and spouses Bill Moyers believes that although the 199os was a prosperous time and the economy grew the percentage of the nation income was on a downward slide. These are families who believed in America and the American Dream. That if you worked hard and try and played by the rules, you could take care of your family and your kids would inherit a better life with more opportunities because of your sacrifice. There are now twenty- one million families in America whose primary bread-winner is working one of more part-time jobs because they can't find full-time permanent employment. What happened? Conventional experts will tell you that their problems were caused by globalization, mobility of financial capital, technology. But Moyers believes that it is due to engineered inequality, as businesses EFTA00717847 have aggressively campaigned to drive wages down along with a series of political decisions over the last thirty years and business deciding to cut labor costs by eliminating collective bargaining and unions, in addition to favorable taxes that allowed owners of capital and business to move their money abroad chasing cheaper and cheaper labor, which has now created a growing underclass of working poor of formally middle class people with no future, benefiting of the rich at the top. The consequence is that we are becoming an oligarchy of people at the very top and people at the very bottom with no middle class stabilizer in the center. If we lose the ability to hope and if we lose the belief that you can work hard and get ahead we truly lose the character of what made this country great and the beacon of prosperity and democracy to others around the world. And if we don't reverse this course we will have a two-tier society with an enormous base at the bottom of poor people barely making it on minimum wage and the i% living very well. Even in the Great Depression there was a belief that the average person would eventually do well because whatever you feel about FDR there was a sense that the government was working to improve the lot of the poor and the average Americans. Today people have lost faith in the political process in America. They have been hit so hard and they see no response from their politicians. And no one is trying to help them or working on their behalf. One of the problems is money in politics. The average politicians has to spend three to four hours a day trolling for money. A third of the money given to politicians in the last election came from 138,000. And when you are mostly speaking to financial supporters who tend to be in the Top i%, the policies that you support and embrace are those that favor their desires. And both parties are to fault. The root of the challenges facing these two families is systemic, it's not a matter of personal virtue or moral accountability as their situation is because the way our system works only for a very few at the top. Moyers: Never underestimate the power Learned Helplessness -- when you hear propaganda over and over again or ideology over and over again, such as -- it was the people who couldn't pay their mortgages caused the housing crisis and thefinancial meltdown, or those who lost their jobs - why can't they hold a job or their pensions were too generous, why did they have children, why did they buy this house, even though the Neumann's mortgage was only $850 a month — and as a result you buy into the argument that you and you alone are responsible for your dire situation. Instead of responding with charity, our financial class should respond by making sure that there is a level playing field and justice for all. I also invite you to see Frontline's "Two American Families": http://video.pbssocal.orgivideo/2365042061 Again, Two American Families shows the process and the pain over two decades and puts a face and proud people struggling to survive. Because it puts a face on what's happen to America. We have lost our sense of collective responsibility, we have loss that sense of connection, over government is dysfunctional both parties are owned and operated by powerful financial interest in America. We no longer have the optimism of a Norman Rockwell poster of the 4os and 5os. The film shows a staggering fear and the uncertainty and a loss of hope that has falling across the face of America. The strength of America has always been a ever growing Middle Class. When wages are systematically push downward they can't buy the goods and services produced. If this situation continues America will no longer be the country of our fathers, where dedication and hard work would insure that you had a better quality of life than your parents and your children would have more opportunities than you. Two American Families shows this is no longer America and the American Dream may be a myth, as economist Joseph Stiglitz says. THIS WEEK's READINGS EFTA00717848 Last month in the Rolling Stone Magazine, Jeff Goodell wrote - Why the City ofMiami Is Doomed to Drown - telling a sobering story about the affects of Hurricane Milo in 2030 which overwhelms the low-lying city of Miami with a 24-foot storm surge, flooding South Beach, mansions in Star Island, Highway AiA , knocking out the wastewater-treatment plant on Virginia Key, forcing the city to dump hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into Biscayne Bay. Tampons and condoms litter the beaches, and the stench of human excrement stoked fears of cholera. With more than Boo people dying as many of them swept are away by the surging waters that submerged much of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale; 13 people were killed in traffic accidents as they scrambled to escape the city. If this were to happen, it would signal the end of the City of Miami, especially if the sea levels are a foot higher then they are today. The irony is that all of this is possible, if we continue to ignore global warming. 2,Inline image 9 Miami after Hurricane Wilma in 2005 Sea-level rise is not a hypothetical disaster. It is a physical fact of life on a warming planet, the basic dynamics of which even a child can understand: Heat melts ice. Since the 1920s, the global average sea level has risen about nine inches, mostly from the thermal expansion of the ocean water. But thanks to our 200-year-long fossil-fuel binge, the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are starting to melt rapidly now, causing the rate of sea-level rise to grow exponentially. The latest research, including an assessment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that sea level could rise more than six feet by the end of the century. James Hansen, the godfather of global-warming science, has argued that it could increase as high as i6 feet by then — and Wanless believes that it could continue rising a foot each decade after that. "With six feet of sea-level rise, South Florida is toast," says Tom Gustafson, a former Florida speaker of the House and a climate- change-policy advocate. Even if we cut carbon pollution overnight, it won't save us. Ohio State glaciologist Jason Box has said he believes we already have 70 feet of sea-level rise baked into the system. South Florida is not the only place that will be devastated by sea-level rise. London, Boston, New York and Shanghai are all vulnerable, as are low-lying underdeveloped nations like Bangladesh. But South Florida is uniquely screwed, in part because about 75 percent of the 5.5 million people in South Florida live along the coast. And unlike many cities, where the wealth congregates in the hills, southern Florida's most valuable real estate is right on the water. The Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development lists Miami as the number-one most vulnerable city worldwide in terms ofproperty damage, with more than $p6 billion in assets at risk to storm-relatedflooding and sea-level rise. South Florida has two big problems. The first is its remarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level. Its highest natural elevation, a limestone ridge that runs from Palm Beach to just south of the city, averages a scant 12 feet. With just three feet of sea- level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone; if the seas rise 12 feet, South Florida will be little more than an isolated archipelago surrounded by abandoned buildings and crumbling overpasses. And the waters won't just come in from the east — because the region is so flat, rising seas will come in nearly as fast from the west too, through the Everglades. Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. "Imagine Swiss cheese, and you'll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like," says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily — it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. "Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here," says EFTA00717849 Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas. "Protecting the city, if it is possible, will require innovative solutions." One of the biggest uncertainties in Miami's future is how the rest of America will feel about rescuing the city. Nobody questioned the wisdom of spending $40 billion in tax dollars to rebuild after Katrina and another $60 billion to help rebuild after Sandy, but will they feel the same about Miami — land of millionaires and beach condos — when the time comes? Not that everyone doesn't love Miami. But at some point, Congress is going to balk at spending $50 billion to rebuild the city every time a tropical storm passes by. "South Florida doesn't have the power of New York," says Daniel Kreeger, the South Florida-based executive director of the Association of Climate Change Officers. "We don't have any major cultural institutions, we don't have Wall Street, we don't have any great universities. The unpleasant truth is that it will be all too easyfor the rest of the nation to just let South Florida go." That is, of course, not the American way. We don't let cities go. We don't secede territory to the ocean. But this is the direction that our failure to cut carbon pollution is taking us. The loss of Miami will be a manifestation of years of denial and apathy, of allowing Big Oil and Big Coal to divert us from understanding the real-world consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels. In Wanless' view, the wisest course of action now is to stop subsidizing coastal development and create federal and state policies that encourage people to move out of at-risk low-lying areas. "Instead of spending a billion dollars to build a new tunnelfor the Port of Miami, we should be spending that money to buy people out of their homes and relocate them to higher ground," Wanless says. "We have to accept the reality of what is about to happen to us." But that won't happen without political leadership, and on this issue, of course, the state of Florida has none. ("I have a solutionfor that," says former speaker Gustafson. "We need to all march up to the capital in Tallahassee and burn thefucker down. That's the only way we're gonna save South Florida.") Stuart compares Miami with Baiae, the ancient Roman resort town in the bay of Naples that was once a playground for Nero and Julius Ceasar. Today, because of volcanic activity, the ruins of Baiae are mostly under water. "This is what humans do," says Stuart . "We inhabit cities, and then when something happens, we move on. The same thing will happen with Miami. The only question is, how long can we stick it out?" But for Stuart, who lives in Miami Beach, the fact that the city is doomed doesn't diminish his love for the place. "That's the thing about Miami," he says. "You'll want to be here until the very end." This story is from the July 4th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone and you can find it attached to this week's offerings. This week in MAIL-Online - Drowning slowly: How the America's Golden State cities will look in 500 years if sea levels rise as predicted - as 2012 was the hottest year ever in the United States with sea levels are rising by around 1.7mm per year and is expected to continue for centuries. Artist Nickolay Lamm, has produced some worrying illustrations of how California's biggest cities will become lost to the ocean if scientists' predictions of the effects of global warming prove correct. San Francisco, becomes consumed by the very bay it is constructed next to. Venice Beach resembles scenes from Venice, Italy as the Pacific Ocean slowly deluges the trendy Los Angeles neighborhood. And San Diego's position as a naval town is virtually washed away as the unforgiving sea water floods the towns docks and promenades. 2, Venice, California: Today, Venice is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two- and-a-half-mile pedestrian-only promenade Venice, California: Today, Venice is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-haff-mie pedestrian-only promenade 2, Venice of America: Venice Beach would have more in common with its Italian namesake if the sea levels rise 12 feet as shown here Venice of America: Venice Beach would have more in common with its Italian namesake if the sea levels rise 12 feet as shown here EFTA00717850 According to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, the seas will rise by an average of 6.6 feet by 2100. Then over the coming centuries, as temperatures rise and ice sheets melt, the oceans could rise as much as 20 or 3o feet. Lamm has created images which show famous cities will look like under 5 feet (projected increase over the next 100 to 300 years), 12 feet (potential level in 2300), and 25 feet (the potential level in coming centuries) of water. The U.S. National Climate Assessment report notes that of an increase in average U.S. temperatures of about 1.5 degrees F since 1895, when reliable national record-keeping began, more than 8o percent had occurred in the past three decades. With heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere, temperatures could rise by a further 210 4 degrees F in most parts of the country over the next few decades, the report said. 2, The City by the Bay: AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team is already perched perilously close to the bay from which the city earns its nickname The City by the Bay: AT&T Park home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team is already perched perilously dose to the bay from which the city earns its nickname g2, Fancy a swim? Just 12 feet of water turns the baseball stadium into an open-air swimming pool as the bay begins to consume the city Just 12 feet of water turns the basebaff stadium into an open-air swimming pod as the bay begins to conswne the city To see more images, please download the web-link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- 2357309/How-Americas-cities-look-centuries-sea-level-rises-predicted-scientists-prove-correct.html Last week The Guardian had an article - Global threat tofood supply as water wells dry up, warns top environment expert based on Lester Brown who says that grain harvests are already shrinking as US, India and China come close to peak water; as wells are drying up and underwater tables falling so fast in the Middle East and parts of India, China and the US that food supplies are seriously threatened, one of the world's leading resource analysts has warned. In a major new essay Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, claims that 18 countries, together containing half the world's people, are now over-pumping their underground water tables to the point — known as "peak water" — where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year. 2,Inline image 8 Iraq is among the countries in the Middle East facing severe water shortages. The situation is most serious in the Middle East. According to Brown: "Among the countries whose water supply has peaked and begun to decline are Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. By 2016 Saudi Arabia projects it will be importing some 15tH tonnes of wheat, rice, corn and barley tofeed its population of 30 million people. It is thefirst country to publicly project how aquifer depletion will shrink its grain harvest. "The world is seeing the collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For thefirst time in history, grain production is dropping in a geographic region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Because of thefailure of governments in the region to mesh population and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people tofeed and less irrigation water with which tofeed them." Brown warns that Syria's grain production peaked in 2002 and since then has dropped 30%; Iraq has dropped its grain production 33% since 2004; and production in Iran dropped io% between 2007 and 2012 as its irrigation wells started to go dry. "Iran is already in deep trouble. It isfeeling the effects of shrinking water suppliesfrom over-pumping Yemen isfast becoming a hydrological basket case. Grain production hasfallen there by half over the last 35 years. By 2015 irrigatedfields will be a rarity and the country will be importing virtually all of its grain." 2Inline image 7 EFTA00717851 There is also concern about falling water tables in China, India and the US, the world's three largest food-producing countries. "In India,175 million people are being fed with grain produced by overpumping, in China 130 million. In the United States the irrigated area is shrinking in leading farm states with rapid population growth, such as California and Texas, as aquifers are depleted and irrigation water is diverted to cities." Falling water tables are already adversely affecting harvest prospects in China, which rivals the US as the world's largest grain producer, says Brown. "The water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country's wheat and a third of its maize isfallingfast. Overpumping has largely depleted the shallow aquifer,forcing well drillers to turn to the region's deep aquifer, which is not replenishable." The situation in India may be even worse, given that well drillers are now using modified oil-drilling technology to reach water half a mile or more deep. "The harvest has been expanding rapidly in recent years, but only because of massive over-pumpingfrom the water table. The margin between food consumption and survival is precarious in India, whose population is growing by 18 million per year and where irrigation depends almost entirely on underground water. Farmers have drilled some 21m irrigation wells and are pumping vast amounts of underground water, and water tables are declining at an accelerating rate in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu." In the US, fanners are overpumping in the Western Great Plains, including in several leading grain- producing states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Irrigated agriculture has thrived in these states, but the water is drawn from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge underground water body that stretches from Nebraska southwards to the Texas Panhandle. "It is, unfortunately, a fossil aquifer, one that does not recharge. Once it is depleted, the wells go dry andfarmers either go back to dry- landfarming or abandonfarming altogether, depending on local conditions," says Brown. "In Texas, located on the shallow end of the aquifer, the irrigated area peaked in 1975 and has dropped 37% since then. In Oklahoma irrigation peaked in 1982 and has dropped by 25%. In Kansas the peak did not come until 2009, but during the three years since then it has dropped precipitously,falling nearly 30%. Nebraska saw its irrigated area peak in 2007. Since then its grain harvest has shrunk by 15%." Brown warned that many other countries may be on the verge of declining harvests. "With less water for irrigation, Mexico may be on the verge of a downturn in its grain harvest. Pakistan may also have reached peak water. If so, peak grain may not befar behind." ****** Last week in the New York Times, Cornell University economic professor Robert Frank wrote this op-ed — Austerity Won't Work if the Roof Is Leaking — based on observations during a recent trip to Berlin, where the entire city seemed under construction. In every direction, cranes and other heavy equipment dominated the landscape. Although many projects appeared to be in the private sector, innumerable others — including bridge and highway repairs, new subway stations and other infrastructure work — are financed by taxpayers. Wondering aloud how could this be, since Germany has been one of the most outspoken advocates of fiscal austerity after the financial crisis? He concludes that on face it is an obvious contradiction, but that fiscally responsible businesses routinely borrow to invest, and until recently, so did most governments. Except lately, fears about growing public debt have caused wholesale cuts in American public investment. While the Germans, who hate indebtedness. But they also understand the distinction between consumption and investment. By borrowing, they've made investments whose future benefits will far outweigh repayment costs. There's nothing foolhardy about that. The German experience suggests how we might move past our own stalled debate about economic stimulus policy. In the aftermath of the economic crisis, the policy discussion began with economists in broad agreement that unemployment remained high because total spending was too low. Keynesian stimulus proponents argued that temporary tax cuts and additional government spending would bolster hiring. Austerity advocates countered that additional government spending would merely displace private spending and that we already had too much debt in any event. And the debate has EFTA00717852 languished there. A preponderance of evidence suggests that Keynes was right. But as the German experience illustrates, progress is possible without settling that question. The Germans are investing in infrastructure not to provide short-term economic stimulus, but because those investments promise high returns. Yet their undeniable side effect has been to bolster employment substantially in the short run. Not all German public investments have met expectations. Berlin's new consolidated airport, for example, has suffered multiple delays and cost overruns, and parts of the city's recently constructed central rail station are to have major repairs. But private investment projects suffer occasional setbacks, too, and no one argues that businesses should stop investing on that account. The Germans didn't become bogged down in debate over stimulus policy, and they didn't explicitly portray their infrastructure push as stimulus. But that didn't hamper their strategy's remarkable effectiveness at putting people to work. The unemployment rate in Germany, at 5.3 percent and falling, is now substantially lower than in the United States, where it ticked up to 7.6 percent last month. (By contrast, in March 2007, before thefinancial crisis, the rate in Germany was 9.2 percent, aboutfive percentage points higher than in the United States.) A prudent investment is one whose future returns exceed its costs — including interest cost if the money is borrowed. Opportunities meeting that standard abound in the infrastructure domain. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the nation has a backlog of some $3.6 trillion in overdue infrastructure maintenance. No one in Congress seriously proposes that we just abandon our crumbling roads and bridges, and everyone agrees that the repair cost will grow sharply the longer we wait. The case for accelerated infrastructure investment becomes more compelling with our economy still in the doldrums. That's because many of the needed workers and machines are now idle. If we wait, we'll need to bid them away from other tasks. Also because of the sluggish economy, the materials required for the work are now relatively cheap. If we wait, they will become more expensive. And long-term interest rates for the money to pay for the work continue to hover near record lows. They, too, will be higher if we wait. Austerity advocates object that more deficit spending now will burden our grandchildren with crushing debt. That might be true if the proposal were to build bigger houses and stage more lavish parties with borrowed money — as Americans, in fact, were doing in the first half of the last decade. But the objection makes no sense when applied to long-overdue infrastructure repairs. A failure to undertake that spending will gratuitously burden our grandchildren. In 2009, austerity proponents argued against stimulus, predicting that the economy would recover quickly and spontaneously. It didn't Later, they said we tried stimulus and it didn't work. But in the face of a projected $2 trillion shortfall in the spending needed for full employment, Congress enacted a stimulus bill totaling only $787 billion, spread over three years. And much of that injection was offset by cuts in state and local government spending. Now austerity backers urge — preposterously — that infrastructure repairs be postponed until government budgets are in balance. But would they also tell an indebted family to postpone fixing a leaky roof until it paid off all its debts? Not only would the repair grow more costly with the delay, but the w