My friend percussionist Larry Mahlis sent me a link to a wonderful site that I think has the potential to change lives, and, perhaps, even the world. The Story of Stuff is the brainchild of Annie Leonard, and I must say, I like her brain.
Here’s a description from the site:
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
One of the things I enjoyed most about the presentation is the way it call attention to the fact that even if we decide to move our dirty, stinking, toxic polluting factories overseas, it does not make us any less culpable for the damage thus caused. It’s all too easy for the media to get up in arms about lead paint in toys from China, yet neglect to comment at all about the toxic damage done to the workers and the environment in “the factory of the world.” Christine Lu has some good comments on the subject.
Please stop what you are doing and watch this video, and then tell all of your family and friends about it!
After the short break for New Years (solar - the big break for the lunar new year is coming up) Ellie came home from school very excited and brandishing a honglingjin 红领巾 (red neckerchief) that she was awarded that day. For most Chinese kids, this is probably not that big a deal, because most Chinese kids are good students by anyone’s standards, but it is a big deal for Ellie. The honglingjin is awarded to kids who show exemplary behavior in school, and those who wear it are considered to be model students, even model junior citizens. I’m pretty sure not too many foreign kids have been given one.
It turns out that in Ellie’s class, most of the other kids had already been given a honglingjin, so the ceremony rather singled her out. Ellie and the others who were to receive a honglingjin lined up in front of the whole school, and some older kids came up and tied it around their necks. (To Ellie’s dismay, it was a boy who tied hers!) Now only one kid in her class is without one, and he is generally considered by all to be a “bad apple”.
Makes a daddy proud!!
Ladies and gentlemen, may I draw your attention to the curtain over here, to where the beautiful Miss Wong is standing … Now watch carefully… I am now going to make US$4 trillion magically disappear!!
OK, while it may not have been that dramatic in the execution, that is in effect what the World Bank recently did when they published updated statistics on the economic output of 146 countries, utilizing a method called “Purchasing Power Parity” (PPP) leading to a revised estimate of China’s GDP to $6 trillion. This is down from previous statistics which had it pegged at $10 trillion.
From the World Bank website:
In a report ranking the world’s economies for 2005, the World Bank said its updated survey using ‘purchasing power parity’ (PPP) shows a much smaller value for China than earlier estimates…The [International Comparison Program] study carried out by the World Bank and other partners was ‘the most extensive and thorough effort to measure the relative size of 146 economies using the PPP method which strips out the effect of exchange rates…
So, what impact can be expected by such an evaporation of trillions of dollars? Well, China is still the number two economy in the world, but the point at which it can be expected to overtake that of the US would certainly appear to be pushed back a few years. And the domestic problems it faces due to widespread poverty may begin to seem a bit heavier a burden.
In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Walter Russell Mead summed it up like this:
For Americans, the new numbers from the World Bank bring good news and bad. On the plus side, U.S. leadership in the global system seems more secure and more likely to endure through the next generation. On the other hand, the world we are called on to lead is poorer and more troubled than we anticipated.
While its true that China is one of the largest investors in the house of cards that is the US economy, it may very well turn out that as this century progresses, the rest of the world might start investing more and more in China, and Chinese currency, and less and less in the US dollar. The Chinese yuan may even become the preferred currency in the world. Still, $4 trillion vanishing into thin air must certainly be having a chilling effect in Beijing this New Year’s, beyond that which the cold Siberian wind blowing down from the north brings .
