"The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria

After its publication last month, it immediately shot to the top of the bestseller lists. It became downright trendy after Barack Obama was photographed carrying a copy while travelling on the campaign trail; maybe, the pundits speculated, this book will be a major influence on the next president’s thinking.

Seems an interesting read... but also seem quite controversial too, esp on overplaying the global impact of growth in BRIC economies.

By ‘post-American world’, Zakaria refers to the erosion of US pre-eminence as the sole superpower. The end of the Cold War and the ‘bipolar duopoly’ of the US and the Soviet Union led to an ‘American imperium, a unique unipolar world’. However, with the recent emergence of China, India and others – what Zakaria calls ‘the rise of the rest’ – the situation is now changing: ‘At the politico-military level, we remain in a single-superpower world. But in every other dimension – industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural – the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.’

A sign of declining American influence, he writes, is how the rising countries pay less attention to the US: ‘The world is moving from anger to indifference, from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.’

...his central point: that a focus on conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere has meant we have missed the real story – the economic rise of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and other emerging markets. These countries now account for more than half of the world’s economic growth since 1990, and represent over 40 per cent of the world economy (measured at purchasing power parity). In 2006 and 2007, 124 countries grew at a rate of four per cent or more, including more than 30 countries in Africa.

...he goes on to claim that this is the third of ‘three tectonic power shifts’ over the past 500 years. According to Zakaria, the first was the rise of the Western world, from the fifteenth century to the late eighteenth century; the second was the rise of the US, from the late nineteenth century until about 1990; and the third is the ‘rise of the rest’ over the past two decades.

Zakaria points out that economic prosperity has brought real benefits. For example, in China alone growth has lifted more than 400 million people out of poverty. But he is quick to point out that this growth is also problematic. One expression is how increased demand from China and India has increased oil prices generally. This price rise has also filled the coffers of America’s oil-state foes, such as Iran and Venezuela. But, as Zakaria notes, ‘the most acute problem of plenty is the impact of global growth on natural resources and the environment’. He cites water shortages and climate change, among other issues.

In viewing growth as problematic and potentially destructive, Zakaria raises a common theme of our time, the longer-term consequences of economic growth upon geopolitical stability and environment.

Till the time you get a chance to read, enjoy some of video & print reviews posted below

Author's Interview Washington Post Spiked Review

What is the most likely future diet for a more-crowded planet ?

Here are some excerpts from an interesting article, on the impacts of changing diets on food scarcity.

A growing world population has more buying power. The newly affluent eat more meat. A rising share of the world’s agricultural output goes to animals. While grain supplies are more than adequate to feed everyone now, say experts, the current price spike shows that even an adequate supply doesn’t preclude hunger for the world’s poor. And in the future, a day may come when there isn’t enough grain for both humans and livestock – at least not at the US consumption rate. Add to this the environmental impacts of modern industrial-scale meat production, and many wonder: With a predicted world population of 9.5 billion by midcentury, are we all destined to be vegetarians?

Most of us are not aware of the inefficiency of converting grain to meat. A pound of beef takes 7 pounds of feed to produce. For pork, the ratio is 1 to 3; and for chicken, 1 to 2. (Cold-blooded fish, which don’t need energy to maintain body temperature, are farmed more efficiently.)

So, let's look what will happen to the way if the world start doing what we in America does :

An average American consumes about 275 pounds of meat per year, which translates to 1,765 pounds of grain. So If everyone consumed grain at this rate..... today’s 2 billion-ton world grain harvest would feed only 2.5 billion people – only 40% of the world population.

If the world ate the way Italians do – 882 pounds of grain per person yearly – we’d feed 5 billion people.

And if we all ate the way largely vegetarian India does (11-1/2 pounds of meat per person yearly, or 440 pounds of grain), our grain supply could feed 10 billion...

not sure what will happen to McDonald's ... may be Maharaja Veggie Burgers !

Check the full article here :
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/07/18/diet-for-a-more-crowded-planet-plants/

Economic Development over Environmental Protection -

Another developing nation, Brazil's struggle to keep the growth initiatives going while balancing the impact on Amazon Rain Forests.

Top 10 needs of Humanity over next 50 years

Found something interesting on CNBC's Mad Money show with Jim Cramer, who by the way does lot of non-sense with his booh yah theatrics. But what caught my eye was that he was using today a theme of "Top 10 needs of Humanity for the next 50 years" to identify stocks/sectors that will do well for the future by creating new technology products/services...which led me to do some more digging to find the source from where this list came from.

"Top 10 needs of Humanity" for next 50 years

1. Energy
2. Food
3. Water
4. Environment
5. Poverty
6. Terrorism/War
7. Disease
8. Education
9. Democracy
10. Population

This was originally published by Dr. Richard.E.Smalley, Rice University at MIT Enterprise Forum. If you have time, you should take time to read this excellent presentation to understand the dynamics of energy crisis (will we ever get back to $2 gas ?), and in general the longterm implication of the current world growth.

Transcript Presentation slides

“WITH grain in our hands there is no need to panic,”

Costco and Sam's clubs across the country are limiting the bags of flour and rice that you could buy ! Unbelievable, but harsh truth !!

In the current modern world, we would never think we would live to see a famine.. so where did this sudden shortage of food come from ? Some really interesting articles on the net

The silent sunami, economist.. some excerpts below !!

.. Roughly a billion people live on $1 a day. If, on a conservative estimate, the cost of their food rises 20% (and in some places, it has risen a lot more), 100m people could be forced back to this level, the common measure of absolute poverty. In some countries, that would undo all the gains in poverty reduction they have made during the past decade of growth. ...

some interesting comments on root causes and analysis of this mess (not my own, but publicised feedback to this article)
1. For years, the US and some EU countries, in an attempt to maintain food self-sufficiency, supported the cost of farming through various subsidies. Because of this, food was dumped on the world market for less than it cost to grow. This destroyed the livelihood of farmers all over the world, from Canada to Brazil, Africa to, well, everywhere. The last few rounds of World Trade talks were beset by farmers protesting against these subsidies.
2. It seems obvious that the problem is simply and solely -- too many people.....Malthus reminds us that this is a self-correcting problem, via famine, disease and wars. It would be preferable to manage a reduction in numbers of people ourselves, but society hardly seems likely to embrace this as a direction we are likely to take.
3. Perhaps this is the issue that will test the merits and demerits (and/or phoniness) of globalization which did, and does, benefit considerably the WEST commercially. It could also test the West's ability, and will, to rein in the avarice and plain heartlessness of the so called (but predominantly Western) multinationals who, inter alia, favor and amply recompense, the plantation of coffee beans in Africa for export over corn and wheat for daily sustenance). That, reining in the multinationals and whatever is done by the rich and over abundantly endowed WEST, if substantial at all would be , however , NO act or acts of charity. It could turn out to be the historically preordained due repayment for resources past plundered from the non WEST!
4. There is no shortage of food, at least not yet. The problem is that there are too many poor people that can't afford to buy it. Farmers grow enough food, but they can't afford to sell it for less than it costs to grow. The US and Europe used to subsidise food production and this forced down the price for all farmers while, inadvertently, making food affordable to the world's poor. Now, with ethanol, those subsidies are gone; food is being sold for what it costs to produce. That's a good thing, except that now a lot of people can't afford to buy it.

Finally... this comment nails it " Capitalism doesn't work when 1/6th of the world doesn't have enough capital to participate. That's the problem, and there's no easy solution".