Stories written by Mark Sommer
Mark Sommer directs the U.S.-based Mainstream Media Project and hosts an award-winning syndicated radio programme, ''A World of Possibilities'' (www.aworldofpossibilities.com).

THE SHALE GAS RUN SPREADS WORLDWIDE

Nine thousand feet beneath the surface of 34 U.S. states lie vast deposits of shale impregnated with natural gas. Unlike the concentrated reservoirs of earlier eras, most of which have now been tapped out, this gas is trapped in hairline cracks in the shale itself. It can only be tapped through an energy- and water-intensive process called hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") recently developed by American geologists and mining engineers. Toxic chemicals are injected two miles deep and another mile in all directions to break up shale rock and release the gas.

COULD A PRIMEVAL PLANT BECOME A FUTURE FUEL, FOOD, AND BIO-PLASTIC?

At a time when most conventional fuels cast ever longer shadows of unintended consequences, algae ­that lowly pond scum-- offers a pleasant surprise: a near-term, low-tech alternative with apparently few of the hidden costs of more elaborate, expensive and exploitive energy sources.

 - Fabricio Vanden Broeck

Algae: Could a Primeval Plant Become a Future Fuel, Food, and Bio-Plastic?

Algae are rapidly gaining traction in the private sector and academia as their potential becomes clear.

THE UNEXPECTED POTENTIAL OF THE COCOA BEAN

As a commodity of almost irresistible attraction, chocolate has always played contradictory roles in human life. For those consuming it, chocolate has been an exquisite experience. For those growing the cacao from which itÂ's made, itÂ's more often been excruciating. For those of us savoring its flavor, itÂ's the ultimate indulgence. For those struggling to survive on the pittance paid for cacao beans, it has been the ultimate indignity. Many of those who grow cacao have never even tasted chocolate.

GLOBAL RECESSION ACCELERATES MOVEMENT TO SLOW DOWN

"Speed Kills: Slow Down and Live". So say American road signs urging drivers to lighten their foot on the gas pedal. But little else has slowed down in the U.S. or elsewhere in the 36 years since traffic planners instituted a 55 mile-per-hour national highway speed limit (and later, in haste, repealed it). In a global culture dominated by the impatience of youth, counted in nanoseconds and fueled by just-in-time supply chains, everything needs to be done yesterday since today is no longer soon enough.

THE RISE OF RETRO POPULISM

The twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall reminded Americans of just how heady it felt when a triumphant America stood astride a collapsing Soviet empire. Two decades later, Americans find themselves bewildered and resentful. Many are now asking, Where did it all go?

AMERICAN WORKERS FACE UNCERTAIN RETIREMENT

For the first postwar generation of American workers, putting in a faithful forty years 'working for The Man' may have sometimes felt like a jail sentence, but it offered a handsome reward. Corporate and state employee pensions bolstered the federal government's Social Security system to provide a secure if not always lavish retirement for a substantial majority of Americans. But recent and long-term trends have eroded that assurance. Their children and grandchildren will likely inherit a far less ample retirement, if indeed they receive any at all.

OVERUSE OF ANTIBIOTICS IN MEAT PRODUCTION THREATENS PUBLIC HEALTH

We Americans like our meat. In the course of a year, on average we eat more than 220 pounds of chicken, beef, and pork. But some are starting to pause at the meat counter as they hear about incidents of contamination and compromised food safety, the breeding of drug-resistant super-bugs and the inhumane conditions endured by animals raised in extreme confinement.

CALIFORNIA DREAMS TURN TO NIGHTMARES

Forty years ago I drove across the United States traversing mid-winter blizzards before entering the blissful warmth and light of California, a state blessed not only with stunning topography but also a diverse and hugely talented population, a top-tier educational system, and a culture of freewheeling, sky's-the-limit innovation. We cruised the sinuous curves of Highway 1 on the spectacular Big Sur coastline crooning, 'California Dreamin''.

PANDEMIC THREATS SPUR DEVELOPMENT OF GLOBAL HEALTH COMMONS

The specter of a swine flu pandemic has driven home the urgent need for more rapid and effective responses to a wide range of public health threats. But in order to respond more effectively, we need to create a more open system for the exchange of vital health information and research across sectors, disciplines, geographic, economic and cultural boundaries. In a world of increasingly global emergencies, we need all hands on deck, including the patients and publics most affected.

GROWING A GREEN COLLAR ECONOMY

In an economic downturn long on loss and short on solutions, few buzzwords have travelled more rapidly from the margins to the mainstream than the term "green jobs".

FROM THE JAWS OF CRISIS, BOLD EXPERIMENTATION

In May 1932, with the United States and Europe mired in a devastating depression, then-presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt counselled his countrymen not to cower in fear but to rekindle the animating myth of "the American experiment": "The country needs and demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

ECONOMIC CRISIS MAY HASTEN ESSENTIAL TRANSFORMATIONS

The current financial market collapse represents an unparalleled opportunity to rethink and restructure a uniquely American model of capitalism that in recent decades has become increasingly unsustainable and inequitable as it has proliferated worldwide, writes Mark Sommer, host of A World of Possibilities, an award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme. In this article, Sommer writes that now as never before we need fresh ideas and approaches, new ways of organizing our work, our production processes, our energy generation and consumption patterns, the entire way we do business with one another. We are about to experience a systemic transformation of both global economics and culture. Whether the outcome will prove positive or negative will depend on whether we approach the future with fear or confidence. If, seized by panic, we fight for more than our share of finite and diminishing resources, the economy we create will be riven by chronic instability, inequity, and conflict. If, on the other hand, we take this defining moment as a challenge rather than solely a threat, we can transform it into a singular opportunity to reassert balance, equity, and sustainability as the organizing principles of a new global economy.

RESILIENCE ECOLOGISTS LOOK TO NATURE FOR STRATEGIES TO STAY AFLOAT IN TURBULENT TIMES

Between floods, droughts, epidemics, food shortages and rising prices, the world seems about to spin off its axis. For all the drama of the past half century, historians and natural scientists tell us that the postwar era has actually been something of an anomaly, a period of relative calm in nature and human events in a world that history has shown to be reliably unpredictable. That hiatus may now be ending. Moreover, they say, we are approaching a threshold moment, a change of phase that will throw every long-held habit and assumption into question. War and revolution are just such moments, but never before have we endured simultaneous transformations of politics, culture and nature, writes Mark Sommer, hosts of A World of Possibilities, an award-winning, internationally syndicated radio program ( www.aworldofpossibilities.com). This transformation is driven in large part by nature's blowback against human misbehavior. And it is to nature that a new school of ecologists say we must now turn for clues about how to survive and thrive in the turbulent times to come. They invoke the term “resilience” to describe the capacity to absorb shocks to the system without losing our ability to function. We're used to seeing resilience in nature and healthy human personalities. But can whole societies become resilient in the face of traumatic transition?

U.S. LAGS BEHIND WORLD OPINION IN LINGERING SUPPORT FOR DEATH PENALTY

It's not easy to explain why, virtually alone among advanced industrial democracies, the United States holds on to the practice of capital punishment. The United Nations General Assembly recently passed a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment and most advanced industrial democracies have outlawed the death penalty. Capital punishment is coming to be seen in much of the world as an ultimate abuse of human rights. In continuing to embrace the practice, the United States finds itself aligned with nations whose human rights records it routinely condemns -China, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Why it persists in this globally unpopular policy and why the American public continues to support it by two-thirds majorities- is a source of puzzlement., writes Mark Sommer, host of A World of Possibilities, an award-winning, internationally syndicated radio program. Today, 35 states have capital punishment laws on their books but just ten maintain active execution programs. A number of Midwestern and Northeastern states have abolished capital punishment. About 3,350 people languish today on \"death row,\" and keeping them there is an immensely expensive proposition. The great majority are poor and a significant number are mentally disturbed. More than 40 percent are African American (four times their proportion in the general population), and disproportionate numbers are Native American, Latino, and Asian. Most experts on the death penalty decline to speculate as to why the United States hold so firmly to capital punishment. It's not enough to say that it's a tenet of conservatism in an era of conservative ascendancy since recent surveys reveal that even Barack Obama, an unapologetic liberal, finds it necessary to support the death penalty in cases in which “the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage.\"

DECLINING DIVERSITY OF CULTURES AND ECOSYSTEMS ARE CLOSELY RELATED

We humans speak some seven thousand languages. The great majority are spoken by a vanishingly small number of people in isolated jungles and mountains while a few are spoken by billions. Languages, and with them cultures, are disappearing at an alarming rate; we may lose half in just the next generation. At the same time, plant and animal species are vanishing at an equally rapid pace. These two trends are closely related, writes Mark Sommer, host of A World of Possibilities, an award-winning, internationally syndicated radio program. Both anthropologists and biologists are finding that the diversity of plant and animal life is central to the richness of a culture ­ and to its long-term survival. Monocultures, be they in culture or agriculture, may be more efficient in good times but they are more vulnerable if and when attacked by disease and pestilence. In diversity lies resilience, the capacity to remain vital and viable even one some components are lost. Just as the smart investor diversifies her portfolio, a wise steward cultivates a diversity of flora, fauna and cultures so that if some are lost others will take their place. But as a species we've been remarkably heedless of this axiom. “Nature no longer trusts us,” says Vyacheslav Shadrin, head of the Yukaghir Elders Council in the Russian Far North. It's a haunting commentary on modernity's betrayal of ancient ways. Like thousands of other isolated peoples, his is under threat of being swallowed by the larger empire that surrounds them.

IRAQ IMPASSE AND ECONOMIC SLUMP MARK DEMISE OF AMERICAN DOMINANCE

Less than a decade after neo-conservatives gained ascendancy in the White House and announced a \'new American century\', that unrivalled supremacy has been challenged by a titanic haemorrhaging of American economic dominance, military readiness, and political influence, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'A World of Possibilities.\'. In this article, Sommer writes that the fact that the \'family jewels\' of American capitalism are being sold off to \'sovereign wealth funds\' controlled by national governments is an ominous development for a nation that until now has seldom had to worry about its solvency or sovereignty. US decline is neither inevitable or irreversible. The emergence of an African American and a woman as viable candidates for president has energised not only American voters but observers from around the world who despite its egregious recent record still yearn for re-inspired American leadership.

SUBSIDIES DRIVE US CORN ETHANOL BOOM DESPITE MAJOR DRAWBACKS

The fuel source the US has chosen to start replacing petroleum, corn-based ethanol, is expensive, inefficient, and both environmentally and economically destructive, writes Mark Sommer, who hosts the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In recent years, giant agricultural commodity distributors like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland have successfully pressured both the White House and Congress to extend lavish, long-standing corn subsidies largely benefiting their corporate farming partners. But corn-based ethanol turns out to be a bad bargain: it causes just 13 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum, and a recent OECD report found that \'\'the overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biofuel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel\'\'. The pressure on corn supplies exerted by ethanol demand has contributed to a 50 percent rise in the price of tortillas in Mexico in the past year, sending this staple food beyond the reach of the poor. China and India are starting to suffer from food price inflation rippling out from rising corn and soybean prices. Food is fundamentally a human right, not a mere commodity to be traded like any other at the expense of those who can\'t afford it. Not until we acknowledge this fact will we design both a fuel and a food system driven more by human values than shareholder value.

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF CHEAP FOOD

The industrial agriculture system that supplies Americans their cheap food is predicated on cheap labour, lax enforcement of already weak labour regulations, often hazardous working conditions, and physical and sexual abuse, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In this article, Sommer writes that this is not just an American problem. In an increasingly integrated global food system, affluent consumers in North America, Europe, and elsewhere have come to expect low prices for food from far away and far out of season, much of which is grown and harvested by marginal farmers in distant places who receive a tiny portion of what we pay for it. Driven from the land by impossibly low commodity prices, they crowd the cities of the developing world in search of work. Failing to find it, their desperation becomes a breeding ground for extremist movements. Our abundance must not be built on their indigence. How much are we willing to pay for the food we eat to assure that those whose labour brings it to our tables are paid enough to eat it too?

KILLING ME SOFTLY: THE UNCERTAIN EFFECTS OF UNTESTED CHEMICALS

\"Better living through chemistry.\" That was the tag-line used by Dow Chemical in the 1950s at the outset of an era when industrial chemicals were introduced on a massive scale into consumer goods, agriculture, and virtually every other sector of modern life, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-winning, internationally syndicated radio programme, \"A World of Possibilities\". Sommer writes in this article that the phrase has become hauntingly ironic as, tens of thousands of chemicals later, environmental health researchers discover more and more evidence of negative long-term impacts from some of what we had long thought to be a purely benign technology. In the advanced industrial world all of us are unavoidably immersed in a brew of synthetic chemicals most of whose ingredients have never been tested for their long-term impacts on human health. The costs of testing such a vast reservoir of synthetic chemicals would be huge and one way or another those costs would be passed on to consumers. But the costs of continuing to ignore the impacts would undoubtedly be far greater. Given the choice, would you rather find out now and act accordingly or risk being surprised at a later date by maladies that could have been avoided?

ENERGY CHOICE: CHANGE YOUR HABITS OR CHANGE PLANETS

With temperatures and oil prices rising, energy-hungry industrial nations are seeking alternatives to a petroleum economy, and many find themselves turning back to coal, writes Mark Sommer, who hosts the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In this article, Sommer writes that although coal remains plentiful, strip-mining and mountaintop removal remain standard industry practices, and greenhouse gases released by the burning of coal are a prime contributor to global warming. As advanced industrial nations start instituting cap-and-trade systems and carbon taxes, the rising costs of investing in such a carbon-clogging energy source are becoming apparent even to Wall Street. Renewables are on the way, though many say not soon enough to fill the gap. How much sooner might they come on line if instead of investing in more coal-fired plants we invested today in wind, solar, biomass, methane and wave power? And how much more might we squeeze out of the energy we now use if we applied ourselves to greater efficiency and conservation?

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