Word: oil
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Caracas in the 1950s and 1960s was a modernist boomtown. Croesan oil wealth and a powerful military dictatorship together created massive urban planning projects, built in the modernist style both by renowned American architects, like Philip Johnson, and South American practitioners of the style. The city was once called “pedacito del cielo”—a little piece of heaven. This is not just a nickname, but also seems to refer to the unfulfilled dream of a modernist utopia. Now, slums surround many of the geometric concrete surfaces and glass curtain walls...
...especially lopsided focus on religious fundamentalism; she calls the Iraq War, for example, a “foolishly optimistic effort to bring ‘enlightened’ democracy to a nation in darkness” but completely overlooks the country’s ties to Middle Eastern oil. For someone who takes painstaking steps to convey her well-read background and advocates greater intellectual discourse within the nation, Jacoby is woefully ignorant about political science. She omits arguments that seem intrinsic to her claims, most notably Tocqueville’s “tragedy of the commons?...
...beyond climate change. Biofuels tend to produce less local pollution than fossil fuels, one reason why Brazil - which gets 30% of its automobile fuel from sugar-cane ethanol - has managed to reduce once stifling air pollution. In the U.S., switching to domestically produced biofuels helps cut dependence on foreign oil, and boosts income for farmers. But in all of these cases, the benefits now seem to pale next to the climate change deficits. Fargione points out that if the U.S. managed to use 15 billion gallons of ethanol by 2015 - as is mandated in last year's energy bill...
...fanned out to the suburbs. The comparison is not exact, of course, but it's compelling enough. The effects of China's suburbanization are just beginning to ripple across Chinese society and the global economy. It's easy to understand the persistent strength in commodity prices - steel, copper, lumber, oil - when you realize that in Emerald Riverside construction crews used more than three tons of steel in the houses and nearly a quarter of a ton of copper wiring. There are 35 housing developments either just finished or still under construction in New Songjiang alone, a town in which...
That's no easy thing. How do you tune out all the chatter and ink on recession, housing, subprime woes, the credit crunch, rogue traders, insolvent bond insurers, $100 oil and nukes in Iran? It's enough to make you sit on your thumbs and wait before making any big moves. But what, exactly, are you waiting...