Where Do We Go from Here?

It's that time of year when we start looking at where we are and where we're going by doing a bit of calculating. Associated Press writer, Sara Kugler, reports that by the year 2030—about the point when today's college students are hitting their career and family strides and their children are starting to be concerned about which colleges they want to attend—New York City will have an additional one million residents. City planners estimate that the rails and roads will be "crammed beyond capacity," not able to move the masses of commuters. Housing, if nothing is done, will become a problem beyond our current ability to fathom. (Rents in the city already consume approximately one third of the average workers income.) And the air quality …

And now let's take a look at China. A friend, just returned from a business trip, sends us the photo at the top of today's entry to illustrate the current situation. It is Nanjing, taken from the top of "Blue Mountain" and illustrates the heavy smog that he says pervades the cities in China. According to our pal, Dave,

When you're flying over Beijing (for example), you can see scores of smokestacks spewing grey/blue/brown coal smoke. China's prime source for energy is coal; they don't have much oil or gas -- and they're not so concerned about pollution. The hotel I stayed in when I was in Beijing was one of the better known hotels in the city, and there were signs on the water faucets in every room saying "do not drink this water." One of the people I was traveling with showed me an article from the China Daily that stated that 50% of the reservoirs used to supply Beijing are polluted to the point that they don't even meet the standards for irrigation, much less drinking.

By the way, Beijing is just one city in China. There are 147 cities in that country with over one million in population, each. And 80 percent of China's population still live in the country side.

The prognosis for the war in Iraq—you can't win someone else's civil war, stupid—may be in dispute, but the horizon looks aflame for the rest of the world. Who's that I hear fiddling, Pogo?