72 million people and the "good life"

What’s Your Consumption Factor?

By JARED DIAMOND

     

  TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

  To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.

  If most of the world’s 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per capita consumption rate.

  The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

    The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.

   People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption, although most of them couldn’t specify that it’s by a factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.

  People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle. Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants don’t succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.

   Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world’s fastest growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United States population. The world is already running out of resources, and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets.

   Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level. Let’s also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China’s) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.

   If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).

 Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.

  We Americans may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.

   The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?

No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.

     Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.

    Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world’s fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already collapsed or fallen to low yields — even though we know how to manage them in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply. If we were to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish from the oceans at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.

    The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them sustainably, and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber to meet the world’s wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed non-sustainably, with decreasing yields.

     Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.

   Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs. Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen. Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.

Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of “Collapse” and “Guns, Germs and Steel.”

Link to Original article

The Ganges River and Its Mysterious Factor X

Hindus have always believed that water from India's Ganges River has extraordinary powers. The Indian emperor Akbar called it the "water of immortality" and always traveled with a supply. The British East India Co. used only Ganges water on its ships during the three-month journey back to England, because it stayed "sweet and fresh."

Indians have always claimed it prevents diseases, but are the claims wives' tales or do they have scientific substance?

In the fourth installment of a six-part series ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), independent producer Julian Crandall Hollick searched for the "mysterious X factor" that gives Ganges water its mythical reputation.

He starts his investigation looking for the water's special properties at the river's source in the Himalayas. There, wild plants, radioactive rocks, and unusually cold, fast-running water combine to form the river. But since 1854, almost all of the Ganges' water has been siphoned off for irrigation as it leaves the Himalayas.

Hollick speaks with DS Bhargava, a retired professor of hydrology, who has spent a lifetime performing experiments up and down Ganges in the plains of India. In most rivers, Bhargava says, organic material usually exhausts a river's available oxygen and starts putrefying. But in the Ganges, an unknown substance, or "X factor" that Indians refer to as a "disinfectant," acts on organic materials and bacteria and kills them. Bhargava says that the Ganges' self-purifying quality leads to oxygen levels 25 times higher than any other river in the world.

Hollick's search for a scientific explanation for the X factor leads him to a spiritual leader at an ashram and a biologist in Kanpur. But his best answer for the Ganges' mysterious substance comes from Jay Ramachandran, a molecular biologist and entrepreneur in Bangalore.

In a short science lesson, Ramachandran explains why the Ganges doesn't spread disease among the millions of Indians who bathe in it. But he can't explain why the river alone has this extraordinary ability to retain oxygen.

excerpt from soundbyte;


Mr. D.S. BHARGAVA (Retired Hydrology Professor): Right from very ancient times people have been thinking that the Ganga have got some special properties, which other rivers do not have. One such special property is that when you store Ganga water in a close container, it doesn't putrefying.

     

HOLLICK: In other words, there's oxygen in the water, a lot of oxygen. So organic materials such as human waste or vegetable(ph) matter.

Mr. BHARGAVA: Then they were put in the Ganges, it is assimilated by the Ganges in a very short time compared to other rivers. I'm not saying that it immediately vanishes, but what I'm trying to say is that it's assimilated(ph) ability is about 15 to 25 times more than any other river. These are some of the very important special properties of the Ganga, which any of the river doesn't have.

HOLLICK: D.S. Bhargava spent a lifetime doing experiments up and down Ganga in the plains. Organic material usually exhausts the available oxygen. It outlives it and then starts putrefying, but not in Ganga.

Mr. BHARGAVA: There are some material present in the Ganga water, which prevent their survival.

HOLLICK: To prove this, Bhargava did a simple experiment.

Mr. BHARGAVA: We took two beakers. In one, Ganga water as it is, other one we boiled the Ganga water, then cooled it and then refilled it. In bottles because we record(ph) it as evidence.

HOLLICK: In the bottled water, the pathogens survived. In the un-boiled Ganga water, they died.

Mr. BHARGAVA: There is some material, which is acting up on the bacteria and not letting them survive. So this material will be there for have disinfecting.

HOLLICK: Bhargava have conducted the simple experiment at Varanasi and the plains.

Mr. BHARGAVA: So this shows that a material which is responsible for preventing the pathogens to survive, they're not coming from the Himalayas. This material is picked up on the bed. It is picked up on the bed.

HOLLICK: Bhargava claims that Yamana, which flows less than 100 miles away and will eventually merge with Ganga to Allahabad, simply doesn't have this property. What it is, he doesn't know. He's never been able to isolate it.

Mr. BHARGAVA: And it is a mysterious material; sometimes I call it a magic kind of material.

HOLLICK: And there's little matter of the river's extraordinary ability to retain oxygen, by Bhargava's calculations, 25 times higher than Yamana or any other river in the world.

The question is, why does it have such a high rate of oxygen?

Mr. BHARGAVA: Right. How does the river purify itself? And why does it have such as high rate of self-purification? That means a high rate of natural purification compared to any other river.

Water Facts and Figures

1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe water, roughly one-sixth of the world’s population. 2.4 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, about two-fifths of the world’s population. 2.2 million people in developing countries, most of them children, die every year from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. Some 6,000 children die every day from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene – equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing every day. At any one time it is estimated that half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases. 200 million people in the world are infected with schistosomiasis, of whom 20 million suffer severe consequences. The disease is still found in 74 countries of the world. Scientific studies show that a 77% reduction of incidence from the disease was achieved through well designed water and sanitation interventions. The average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is 6 km. The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is the equivalent of your airport luggage allowance (20kg). The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water a day. The average person in the United Kingdom uses 135 litres of water every day. One flush of your toilet uses as much water as the average person in the developing world uses for a whole day’s washing, cleaning, cooking and drinking. Comparative costs: In Europe $11 billion is spent each year on ice cream; in USA and Europe, $17 billion is spent on pet food; in Europe $105 billion is spent annually on alcoholic drinks, ten times the amount required to ensure water, sanitation and hygiene for all. In the past 10 years diarrhoea has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II. In China, India and Indonesia twice as many people are dying from diarrhoeal diseases as from HIV/AIDS. In 1998, 308,000 people died from war in Africa, but more than two million (six times as many) died of diarrhoeal disease. The population of the Kibeira slum in Nairobi, Kenya pay up to five times the price for a litre of water than the average American citizen. An estimated 25% of people in developing country cities use water vendors purchasing their water at significantly higher prices than piped water. Projections for 2025 indicate that the number of people living in water-stressed countries will increase to 3 billion – a six-fold increase. Today, 470 million people live in regions where severe shortages exist. The simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal disease by one-third. Following the introduction of the Guatemalan Handwashing Initiative in 1998, there were 322,000 fewer cases of diarrhoea each year amongst the 1.5 million children under 5 nationwide in the country's lowest income groups. In Zambia, one in five children die before their fifth birthday. In contrast in the UK fewer than 1% of children die before they reach the age of five. A study in Karachi found that people living in areas without adequate sanitation who had no hygiene education spend six times more on medical treatments than those with sanitation facilities. Waterborne diseases (the consequence of a combination of lack of clean water supply and inadequate sanitation) cost the Indian economy 73 million working days a year. And a cholera outbreak in Peru in the early 1990s cost the economy US$1 billion in lost tourism and agricultural exports in just 10 weeks. Improved water quality reduces childhood diarrhoea by 15-20% BUT better hygiene through handwashing and safe food handling reduces it by 35% AND safe disposal of children’s faeces leads to a reduction of nearly 40%. At any time, 1.5 billion people suffer from parasitic worm infections stemming from human excreta and solid wastes in the environment. Intestinal worms can be controlled through better sanitation, hygiene and water. These parasites can lead to malnutrition, anaemia and retarded growth, depending upon the severity of the infection. It is estimated that pneumonia, diarrhoea, tuberculosis and malaria, which account for 20% of global disease burden, receive less than 1% of total public and private funds devoted to health research. Ecological sanitation is one option being practised in some communities in China, Mexico, Vietnam, etc. Excreta contains valuable nutrients. We produce 4.56 kg nitrogen, 0.55 kg phosphorous, and 1.28 kg potassium per person per year from faeces and urine. This is enough to produce wheat and maize for one person every year. One gramme of faeces can contains:10,000,000 Viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs. For more information, check http://www.wsscc.org/ Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council c/o WHO (CCW), 20 Avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland. Tel. +41 22 791 3544, fax +41 22 791 4847, e-mail: wsscc@who.ch Sources 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25: WaterAid 6, 25: WELL Technical Brief (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/) 16: Water for African Cities presentation, Stockholm Water Symposium, August 2001 12: Vision 21 – Water For People, March 2000, WSSCC 1, 2, 3, 4, 19: WHO/UNICEF/WSSCC Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000 Report 17: WELL Planned Work studies 163 and 164. 20: Saadé et al (2001) The Story of a Successful Public-Private Partnership in Central America: Handwashing for Diarroheal Disease Prevention. BASICS, EHP, UNICEF, USAID and The World Bank 27: (Esrey and Andersson (1999), Environmental Sanitation from an Ecological Systems Approach. See:www.wsscc.org) 26: (10/90 Report on Health Research, 2000. Global Forum for Health Research) 18: (IHE Newsletter, January 2001) 28: (Advocating Sanitation - how, why and when? Sanitation Connection:http://www.sanicon.net/titles/topicintro.php3/topicId=1)

  

From Plant to Plate

Written by Nimailila Das

Rice is the second highest grown crop all over the world and is the highest consumed grain by humans. Anually over 700 million tons of rice is produced all over with Asia alone producing 92% of the total rice. India today produces about 130 million tons of rice per annum and its famous Basmati variety is considered the best rice variety world over. But little do people know that once upon a time India had a staggering 1,25,000 varieties of rice, with a new variety found in every 2-3 KM. Rice, which is the staple diet of India, was more than just food. Various locally grown varities of rice would have medicinal benifits, thus eliminating the need for any dietary suppliments. Unfortunatly due to commercial interests, most farmers in India today grow only a few varities, leading to mass extinction of this rare gift of nature. 


In an attempt to preserve these rare varieites, last season the GEV agriculture team set out into the interiors of Maharashtra, hunting for native seeds of rare rice. Their first destination was to Saguna bagh, an organic farm in Karjat. Mr Chandrasekhar Bhadsavle set up this farm to fulfil his father dream of inspiring people to turn back to farming profession and learn to live off the land. There the GEV team found a very special variety of rice - Govinda Bhoga! Popular in West Bengal, this traditional variety of rice comes with a very fragrant scent and with many medicinal properties. It is rich in vitamin B and its fiberous nature makes it healthy for the body. It also contains antioxidants that naturally keep the body healthy and helps fight diseases. Govinda Bhoga rice was used in many traditional Indian recipies, but it is popularly used in making Kheer or Sweet rice(see inset for recipe). Its natural purple color adds a royal look to the preperation.

Rice is best when comsumed unpolished, for it retains all the nutrients deposited in it naturally. When grown organically, the nutrient content increases and it keeps it free from any chemical residues. Organic rice is rich in fatty acids and are a natural health food for the body. So the next time you eat rice, eat organic eat wise.

Last Updated (Sunday, 20 February 2011 10:54)

New Medical Tourism Service in India

Hello.

Healthy in India

We are going to be starting a service which will facilitate "medical tourism" in India. Medical Tourism?

Since medical treatment in America and other "western" countries (at least the ones that do not provide universal health insurance) is outrageously expensive. We will facilitate foreigners' travels to and from India, arrange for their medical treatment and take them to various tourist or pilgrimage places throughout India at prices that will be a fraction of the medical care in the West.  We have connected with some of the best doctors in all of India from various fields of medicine. We also have a team of experienced "India travelers" who can guide you throughout the exciting land of India. Our web site will be up soon but if you are anxious to start right away you can email us at healthyinindia@gmail.com. We have also been posting interesting facts and news about health in India here at Healthy in India.

Turmeric, Madness and India

BBC News (UK) [1] on 13 Jun 2009

Eating a curry once or twice a week could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementia, a US researcher suggests.
The key ingredient is curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric.
Curcumin appears to prevent the spread of amyloid protein plaques - thought to cause dementia - in the brain.
But the theory, presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual meeting, has been given a lukewarm reception by UK experts.
Amyloid plaques, along with tangles of nerve fibres, are thought to contribute to the degradation of the wiring in brain cells, eventually leading to symptoms of dementia.
Professor Murali Doraiswamy, of Duke University in North Carolina, said there was evidence that people who eat a curry meal two or three times a week have a lower risk of dementia.
He said researchers were testing the impact of higher doses - the equivalent of going on a curry spree for a week - to see if they could maximise the effect.
Animal studies
Professor Doraiswamy told the meeting: "There is very solid evidence that curcumin binds to plaques, and basic research on animals engineered to produce human amyloid plaques has shown benefits."
"You can modify a mouse so that at about 12 months its brain is riddled with plaques.
"If you feed this rat a curcumin-rich diet it dissolves these plaques. The same diet prevented younger mice from forming new plaques.
"The next step is to test curcumin on human amyloid plaque formation using newer brain scans and there are plans for that."
Professor Doraiswamy said a clinical trial was now underway at the University of California, Los Angeles, to test curcumin's effects in Alzheimer's patients.
He said research had also examined turmeric's therapeutic potential for treating conditions such as cancer and arthritis.
Good diet
He stressed that eating a curry could not counter-balance the increased risk of dementia associated with a poor diet.
However, he said: "If you have a good diet and take plenty of exercise, eating curry regularly could help prevent dementia."
Professor Doraiswamy predicted it might be possible to develop a curry pill which had the same therapeutic effect.
However, Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, stressed that people would need to eat a lot of curry - over 100g of turmeric curry powder - to get a clinical dose of curcumin.
She said: "Professor Doraiswamy's unpublished research applies only to animal models; his hypothesis has not been confirmed in human clinical trials.
"We look forward to the results of the human curcumin trial at UCLA."
Dr Susanne Sorensen, of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Indian communities that regularly eat curcumin have a surprisingly low incidence of Alzheimer's disease but we don't yet know why.
"Alzheimer's Society is keen to explore the potential benefits of curcumin in protecting the brain and we are conducting our own research into this area.
"A cheap, accessible and safe treatment could transform the quality of life of thousands of people with the condition."

Bacteria found in Cow Dung Can Make You Smarter.

Researchers from the Sage Colleges in Troy, NY, reported today their findings that specific bacteria common to our environment may increase learning behavior. Dorothy Matthews and Susan Jenks, who conducted the study, shared their findings with those in attendance at the meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

The bacteria, Mycobacteriumvaccae, is well known to scientists, as the dead bacteria is being tested as immunotherapy for asthma, cancer, depression, psoriasis, dermatitis, eczema and tuberculosis. M. vaccae, so named because it was first discovered in cow dung in Austria, is naturally found in soil, and it is inhaled when people spend time outdoors, especially where there are plants and trees.

It was found in previous research that heat-killed M. vaccae had anti-depressant effects on mice by stimulating the growth of neurons and levels of serotonin.  Mathews and Jenks, however, were curious about the effects of live M. vaccae, and fed live bacteria to an experimental group of mice to see how it would effect their navigation of a maze.

The mice that were fed the live M. vaccae learned the maze twice as fast as the control group, which had not received M. vaccae, and the experimental group exhibited less anxiety as well.

Some time later, the experimental group was taken off the bacteria and tested again against the control group.  This time, the experimental mice did not learn the maze as fast as when they were given the bacteria, but they were still faster than the control mice.

In yet a third maze learning experiment, conducted after the mice had rested for three weeks, the experimental mice ran faster than the controls, but not fast enough to make a statistically significant difference. This suggested to the researchers that the effects of M. vaccae are temporary.

“This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals,” says Matthews. “It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks.”

Take a walk outdoors when you take a break.  You’ll return more relaxed and smarter!