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The Future Page 59

by Al Gore


  80 especially in developing countries—do so to earn higher incomes

  David Satterthwaite et al., “Urbanization and Its Implications for Food and Farming,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, no. 1554 (2010): 2809–20.

  81 and into the middle class—particularly in Asia

  European Strategy and Policy Analysis System, Global Trends 2030—Citizens in an Interconnected and Polycentric World, http://​www.​iss.​europa.​eu/​uploads/​media/​ESPAS_​report_​01.​pdf.

  82 growing global middle class will live in cities

  Ibid., p. 19.

  83 more than 80 percent of global production takes place in cities

  Richard Dobbs, Jaana Remes, and Charles Roxburgh, “Boomtown 2025: A Special Report,” Foreign Policy, March 24, 2011.

  84 significantly higher than in rural areas

  David Owen, Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability (New York: Riverhead Trade, 2010); Qi Jingmei, “Urbanization Helps Consumption,” China Daily, December 15, 2009.

  85 per capita consumption of meat

  United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock in the Balance,” The State of Food and Agriculture 2009.

  86 nine kilograms of plant protein are consumed

  “Mankind Benefits from Eating Less Meat,” PhysOrg, April 6, 2006, http://​phys.​org/​news​63547941.​html.

  87 even as more than 900 million people

  United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2011.

  88 by approximately twenty pounds in the last forty years

  Claudia Dreifus, “A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity,” New York Times, May 14, 2012.

  89 half the adult population of the United States will be obese by 2030, with one quarter of them “severely obese”

  Eric Finkelstein et al., “Obesity and Severe Obesity Forecasts Through 2030,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, June 2012; “Most Americans May Be Obese by 2030, Report Warns,” ABC News, September 18, 2012; “Fat and Getting Fatter: U.S. Obesity Rates to Soar by 2030,” Reuters, September 18, 2012.

  90 steadily decreasing the number of people suffering from chronic hunger

  United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2011.

  91 obesity has more than doubled in the last thirty years

  World Health Organization Media Centre, “Obesity and Overweight,” May 2012, http://​www.​who.​int/​mediacentre/​factsheets/​fs311/​en/​index.​html.

  92 more than a third of them are classified as obese

  Ibid.

  93 obese and overweight than from conditions related to being underweight

  Ibid.

  94 suffering from diabetes die from either stroke or heart disease

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Diabetes Statistics, 2011, http://​diabetes.​niddk.​nih.​gov/​dm/​pubs/​statistics/.

  95 almost 17 percent of U.S. children are obese today

  Tara Parker-Pope, “Obesity Rates Stall, but No Decline,” New York Times, Well blog, January 17, 2012, http://​well.​blogs.​nytimes.​com/​2012/​01/​17/​obesity-​rates-​stall-​but-​no-​decline/.

  96 almost 7 percent of all children in the world

  ProCor, “Global: Childhood Obesity Rate Higher Than 20 Years Ago,” September 28, 2010, http://​www.​procor.​org/​prevention/​prevention_​show.​htm?doc_​id=​1367793.

  97 will continue to grow in the future, both in the U.S. and globally

  Parker-Pope, “Obesity Rates Stall, but No Decline.”

  98 trigger brain systems that increase the desire to eat more

  Tara Parker-Pope, “How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains,” New York Times, June 23, 2009.

  99 “salt and sugars but low in vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients”

  World Health Organization Media Centre, “Obesity and Overweight.”

  100 separated more people from reliable sources of fresh fruit and vegetables

  “If You Build It, They May Not Come,” Economist, July 7, 2011.

  101 calories per gram in sweets and foods abundant in starch

  David Bornstein, “Time to Revisit Food Deserts,” New York Times, Opinionator blog, April 25, 2012, http://​opinionator.​blogs.​nytimes.​com/​2012/​04/​25/​time-​to-​revisit-​food-​deserts/.

  102 while prices of fats declined by 15 percent and sugared soft drinks by 25 percent

  Ibid.

  103 knowledge necessary for food preparation both also play a role

  Ibid.

  104 threw the healthier food away

  Vivian Yee, “No Appetite for Good-for-You School Lunches,” New York Times, October 5, 2012.

  105 introduction of American fast food outlets and climbing obesity rates

  Jeannine Stein, “Wealthy Nations with a Lot of Fast Food: Destined to Be Obese?,” Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2011.

  106 Consequently, food prices went down significantly

  Charles Kenny, “The Global Obesity Bomb,” BloombergBusinessweek, June 4, 2012.

  107 precisely with the large average weight gains and increased obesity

  Dreifus, “A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity.”

  108 skimpily clad sex symbol washing a car

  Eric Noe, “How Well Does Paris Sell Burgers?,” ABC News, June 29, 2005, http://​abcnews.​go.​com/​Business/​story?​id=​893867​&​page=​1#.​UGMP​QI40jdk.

  109 equivalent of adding an extra one billion people

  Matt McGrath, “Global Weight Gain More Damaging Than Rising Numbers,” BBC, June 20, 2012.

  110 first national circulation magazines and the first silent films

  Johannes Malkmes, American Consumer Culture and Its Society: From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s Modernism to Bret Easton Ellis’ 1980s Blank Fiction (Hamburg: Diplomica, 2011), p. 44.

  111 new products like automobiles and radios

  Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work (New York: Putnam, 1995), p. 22.

  112 70 percent of U.S. homes by the end of the 1920s

  Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon, “The Greatest Century That Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years,” Cato Policy Analysis No. 364, Cato Institute, December 15, 1999, http://​www.​cato.​org/​pubs/​pas/​pa364.pdf, p. 20.

  113 manufacturers and merchants in the emerging science of mass marketing

  Rifkin, The End of Work, pp. 20–22.

  114 industry entered a new and distinctly different role

  Daniel Pope, “Making Sense of Advertisements,” History Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web, http://​history​matters.​gmu.​edu/​mse/​ads/​ads.​pdf.

  115 many of the other most prominent intellectuals in America

  Russell Jacoby, “Freud’s Visit to Clark U,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 2009.

  116 American Psychoanalytic Society was founded two years after Freud’s visit

  Leon Hoffman, “Freud’s Adirondack Vacation,” New York Times, August 29, 2009.

  117 Committee on Public Information

  Woodrow Wilson: Executive Order 2594—Creating Committee on Public Information, April 13, 1917, American Presidency Project, http://​www.presidency.ucsb.​edu/ws/?​pid=75409.

  118 set out to introduce the techniques into mass marketing

  Institute for Studies in Happiness, Economy, and Society, Alternatives and Complements to GDP-Measured Growth as a Framing Concept for Social Progress, 2012.

  119 in order to avoid using the word “propaganda”

  I explain the history of the word “propaganda”—and its meaning in the United States—in a previous book. See The Assault on Reason (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), pp. 93–96.

  120 by Germany to describe its mass communications strategy

  Sam Pocker, Retail Anarchy: A Radical Shopper’s Adventures in Consumption (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2009), p. 122.

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nbsp; 121 in their subconscious minds that might be relevant

  Larry Tye, “The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of P.R.,” PR Watch, 1999, http://​www.​prwatch.​org/​prwissues/​1999Q2/​bernays.​html.

  122 “Man’s desires must overshadow his needs”

  Paul Mazur, as quoted in Century of the Self, BBC Four, April–May 2002.

  123 “It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind”

  Edward Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Horace Liveright, 1928), p. 38.

  124 sinister association of smoking with women’s rights

  William E. Geist, “Selling Soap to Children and Hairnets to Women,” New York Times, March 27, 1985.

  125 “new economic gospel of consumption”

  Robert LaJeunesse, Work Time Regulation as Sustainable Full Employment Strategy: The Social Effort Bargain (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 37–38.

  126 “part of the greater work of regeneration and redemption”

  James B. Twitchell, Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

  127 “it would seem that we can go on with increasing activity”

  Benjamin Hunnicutt, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), p. 44.

  128 “needs and wants of people have to be continuously stirred up”

  “Retail Therapy,” Economist, December 17, 2011.

  129 use of Bernays’s book Propaganda in organizing Hitler’s genocide

  Dennis W. Johnson, Routledge Handbook of Political Management (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 314 n. 3; see Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965).

  130 “infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power”

  Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922), p. 248.

  131 reinvigorated the use of subconscious analysis in the field of neuromarketing

  Natasha Singer, “Making Ads That Whisper to the Brain,” New York Times, November 14, 2010.

  132 an average of 2,000 commercial messages per day thirty-five years ago

  Louise Story, “Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad,” New York Times, January 15, 2007.

  133 the average city dweller now sees 5,000 commercial messages per day

  Ibid.

  134 the total volume is projected to increase by 70 percent in a dozen years

  Daniel Hoornweg and Perinaz Bhada-Tata, World Bank, “What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management,” March 2012.

  135 $375 billion per year—with most of the increase in developing countries

  Ibid.

  136 a .69 percent increase in municipal solid waste in developed countries

  Antonis Mavropoulos, “Waste Management 2030+,” http://www.waste-management-world.com.

  137 produced each day is more than the body weight of all seven billion people

  Alexandra Sifferlin, “Weight of the World: Globally, Adults Are 16.5 Million Tons Overweight,” Time, June 18, 2012; Paul Hawken, “Resource Waste,” Mother Jones, March/April 1997; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Municipal Solid Waste,” http://​www.​epa.​gov/​epawaste/​nonhaz/​municipal/​index.​htm.

  138 increased by more than 250 percent in the last decade

  Mavropoulos, “Waste Management 2030+.”

  139 much larger volumes are on land in millions of waste dumps

  EPA, “Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2010,” November 2011, http://​www.​epa.​gov/​epawaste/​nonhaz/​municipal/​pubs/​msw_2010_rev_factsheet.​pdf; NOAA Marine Debris Program, “De-mystifying the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch,’ ” http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html.

  140 decomposes to produce 4 percent of all the global warming pollution

  Ian Williams, University of Southampton, “Future of Waste: Initial Perspectives,” in Tim Jones and Caroline Dewing, eds., Future Agenda: Initial Perspectives (Newbury, UK: Vodafone Group, 2009), pp. 84–89.

  141 including pesticides, arsenic, cadmium, and flame retardants

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, 2009, http://​www.​cdc.​gov/​exposurereport/​pdf/​FourthReport.​pdf.

  142 smokers who fall asleep and drop their lit cigarettes

  Michael Hawthorne, “Testing Shows Treated Foam Offers No Safety Benefit,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 2012.

  143 enough influence to require the addition of dangerous chemicals

  Nicholas D. Kristof, “Are You Safe on That Sofa?,” New York Times, May 19, 2012.

  144 exposure with evidence of cancer, reproductive disorders, and damage to fetuses

  Hawthorne, “Testing Shows Treated Foam Offers No Safety Benefit.”

  145 added to the foam in the furniture didn’t work

  Ibid.

  146 Toxic Substances Control Act, has never been truly implemented

  Bryan Walsh, “The Perils of Plastic,” Time, April 1, 2010.

  147 relevant information about these chemicals from regulators

  Ibid.

  148 was also the inventor of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer

  Diarmuid Jeffreys, Hell’s Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008).

  149 South Asia, Africa, and portions of the Middle East

  John Cameron, Paul Hunter, Paul Jagals, and Katherine Pond, eds., Valuing Water, Valuing Livelihoods, World Health Organization, http://​whq​libdoc.​who.​int/​publications/​2011/​9781843​393108_eng.​pdf.

  150 “one-half of the world’s major rivers”

  World Water Council, “Water and Nature,” http://​www.​world​water​council.​org/​index.​php?​id=21.

  151 “This is asymmetric accounting”

  Jorgen Randers, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2012), p. 75.

  152 “Of course from the government’s point of view”

  Keith Bradsher, “A Chinese City Moves to Limit Cars,” New York Times, September 4, 2012.

  153 exposed to chemical waste or other health threats in their drinking water

  Charles Duhigg, “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering,” New York Times, September 13, 2009.

  154 “and 2.5 billion lack improved sanitation”

  World Health Organization, “Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2012 Update,” http://​www.​wssinfo.​org/​fileadmin/​user_​upload/​resources/​JMP-​report-​2012-​en.​pdf.

  155 “2.4 billion people will lack access to improved sanitation facilities”

  Ibid.

  156 ill each year due to their drinking water, and tens of thousands die

  Jane Qiu, “China to Spend Billions Cleaning Up Groundwater,” Science, November 2011, p. 745.

  157 growing craze for deep shale gas

  Chesapeake Energy, “Water Use in Deep Shale Gas Exploration,” 2012, http://​www.​chk.​com/​Media/​Educational-​Library/​Fact-​Sheets/​Corporate/​Water_​Use_​Fact_​Sheet.​pdf; Jack Healy, “Struggle for Water in Colorado with Rise in Fracking,” New York Times, September 5, 2012.

  158 supplies in regions that were already experiencing shortages

  Chesapeake Energy, “Water Use in Deep Shale Gas Exploration”; Healy, “Struggle for Water in Colorado with Rise in Fracking.”

  159 water for energy production is projected to grow

  International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2012 (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2012).

  160 opening new fissures and modifying underground flow patterns

  Abrahm Lustgarten, “Are Fracking Wastewater Wells Poisoning the Ground beneath Our Feet?,” Scientific American, June 21, 2012.
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br />   161 leaked waste upward into regions containing drinking water aquifers

  Ibid.

  162 one percent represented by all of the surface freshwater

  “Groundwater Depletion Rate Accelerating Worldwide,” ScienceDaily, September 23, 2010, http://​www.​sciencedaily.​com/​releases/​2010/​09/​100923​142503.​htm.

  163 rate of shrinkage in groundwater aquifers has doubled

  Ibid.

  164 increases have proceeded at a much faster pace

  Ibid.

  165 have been drilled by the 100 million Indian farmers

  Lester Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: Norton, 2009), http://​www.​earth-​policy.​org/​images/​uploads/​book_​files/​pb4book.​pdf.

  166 farmers must rely on increasingly unpredictable rainfall

  Ibid.

  167 Australia, the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China, and the Elbe

  Geoffrey Lean, “Rivers: A Drying Shame,” Independent, March 12, 2006.

  168 estimated at between 10 and 15 billion

  United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Population to Reach 10 Billion by 2100 If Fertility in All Countries Converges to Replacement Level,” May 3, 2011, http://​esa.​un.​org/​wpp/​Other-​Information/​Press_​Release_​WPP2010.​pdf.

  169 that the most likely range is slightly above 10 billion

  Ibid.; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision,” 2011, http://​esa.​un.​org/​unpd/​wpp/​Analytical-​Figures/​htm/​fig_1.​htm.

  170 at least the balance of the century as the most populous

  United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision,” 2011, http://​esa.​un.​org/​unpd/​wpp/​unpp/​panel_​population.​htm.

  171 end of the century is projected to have more people than both combined

  Ibid.

  172 to an astonishing 3.6 billion, by the end of this century

  David E. Bloom, “Africa’s Daunting Challenges,” New York Times, May 5, 2011.

  173 fertility rate in scores of less developed countries—the majority of them in Africa

  United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Population to Reach 10 Billion by 2100 If Fertility in All Countries Converges to Replacement Level.”

 

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