The western addiction to meat products is spreading to Asia with unsustainable consequences for the world’s water supply. With the population booming, we have to reduce our consumption of water-intensive livestock, or billions of mouths will go hungry by 2050.
What is the global energy situation today? Is our energy future one of falling prices and plentiful supply or should we prepare for declining supply and sky-high prices? To give readers a real understanding of where we are, Oilprice.com was fortunate enough to speak with the world’s leading energy economist, Professor James Hamilton.
Experts claim that social media has become the main media source for hundreds of millions of people all over the world. From Facebook to Twitter, SOPA to ACTA, millions of engaged online citizens have had their voices aired on the Internet that if the Internet were a nation, it would exceed the Americas, Europe and the Middle East in combined population.
Higher oil prices may be a drag on oil importing economies, but exceedingly low oil prices can also be a signal of recession. If oil prices and the rate of oil supply growth keeps ratcheting downward, another global depression could occur, one that may be even more severe to 2008-2009.
Are lower oil prices good news? Not really, if it means the world is sinking into recession.
A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council has found that Americans throw away nearly half of their food each year with the waste worth approximately $165 billion annually – equivalent the size of Ukraine’s GDP.
In the report, the NRDC estimates that Americans squander 40 percent of the food supply every year, and the average American family of four ends up throwing away an equivalent of up to $2,275 annually in food.
Collectively, the Council says it is equivalent to throwing out $165 billion each year.
Thanks to strong demand for pop gadgets such as the iPad, lithium has become one of the fastest growing markets. In fact, a recent report suggests the lithium market is worth almost $1 billion annually.
Lithium ion batteries are already widely used in most mobile and power gadgets, and are poised to power the future of green technology. By that extension, critical components of lithium-ion batteries such as graphite are expected to see a similar boost in demand.
Green growth has been touted as the economic and environmentally sustainable way forward. However inclusive green growth is, according to the World Bank, the only way to reconcile rapid growth and the needs of more than 1 billion people still living in poverty.
America is home to some of the world’s best hospitals and doctors, but it also has one of the most unaffordable healthcare systems. In fact, medical bankruptcies are on the rise and America desperately needs to fix its healthcare problems.
The cost of healthcare is rising, making it one of the fastest growing markets in the United States. But is that necessarily a good thing? To put things in perspective, Americans spend an average of $8,233 on healthcare annually, almost twice the amount its Canadian neighbours pay in a year. Is this acceptable? You decide.
Fast food chains in Chile will no longer be allowed to sell children meals that come packaged with toys and other goodies, reported the Associated Press on Wednesday, after Chilean health authorities introduced a new law on June 7, which targeted companies that marketed unhealthy food to kids.
The World Bank is ready to help governments cope with global food price volatility, said its President Jim Yong Kim on Monday, after grain prices had rose dramatically in June following adverse weather conditions around the globe.
According to the bank, global wheat prices were now 50 percent higher than they were in mid-June, while the price of corn and soybeans had also increased by 45 percent and 30 percent respectively.
