Dueling Markets: Can Food Fight Oil?

A new United Nations report finds that 6.4 billion people will live in cities by 2050, up from 3.4 billion today. The rise will happen fastest in Asia, with China leading the pack. A look at the future of world urbanization:

50: Percentage of world population living in cities today. Megacities hold nine out of every 100 urban dwellers.

70: Projected percentage of world population living in cities, 2050. Midlevel and small cities will grow more quickly.

86: Projected percentage rise in number of urban dwellers, 2050, when seven out of 10 Chinese will live in cities.

18: Projected percentage decrease in number of rural dwellers, 2050. The decline will ease land-use demands.

Cutting Carbon: It ' s Not Easy Being Green
If not quite holier-than-thou, many Europeans like to think of themselves as at least holier-than-Americans when it comes to the environment. Three years ago, Europe embraced the Kyoto Protocol, which Washington refuses to sign, and recently set the stage for post-Kyoto talks by pledging to slash greenhouse-gas emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The European Commission has become a factory of green regulation—proposing pollution caps for cars, emissions credits for aviation, you name it. But just how well is Europe doing? So far, only three countries—Germany, Sweden and the U.K.—are on track to meet their 2012 Kyoto goals, according to a Friends of the Earth analysis. Furthest behind are Austria, Italy and Spain, and emissions are actually projected to rise in some Eastern European states, including Lithuania and Slovenia. Only by taking drastic measures—and by buying themselves free through an emissions-credit trade scheme—can they hope to meet their obligations. The upshot is that nearly half of the 27 EU nations are lagging behind their Kyoto goals, with more to follow unless they ramp up fast. Fortunately, they've got motivation: not just the threat of climate change but their own greenish self-regard.
—Karin Rives

Books In Review: Adrift In America
In the first half of the 20th century, as Europe succumbed to war and fascism, the continent's top talents fled to the U.S. This forced emigration brought Old World musicians, actors, choreographers and cameramen into contact with the puzzle of America, where egalitarianism and celebrity were worshiped in equal degree. Some of the transplants— George Balanchine, Kurt Weill—thrived in the new environment and readily adapted to Hollywood and Broadway. Others (almost all of Germany's elite composers) suffered badly in a country they saw driven by dollars and "childlike" audiences.

The various fates of these cultural giants are the subject of "Artists in Exile," a new book by former New York Times music critic Joseph Horowitz. The author's exhaustive research, plus a talent for sizing up character, make for a comprehensive view of some formidable personalities.

Emigrés who achieved the most tended to be irreverent magpies, blending Old World plots with American innovation to create entirely new artistic forms. But the most fascinating figures in Horowitz's story are the artists who never quite left the Old World behind. Stravinsky, Dietrich, Schönberg—all continued to pine for the motherland. Their denatured art suffered over time. In this age of Internet—when "home" is just a click away—their stories are poignant reminders of the delicate symbiosis between creativity and cultural identity.
—Katie Baker

End Of Days: Preserving Life As We Know It
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault—which can hold up to 1.5 million crop samples as a fail-safe against global catastrophe—opens this week on Norway's remotest island. It's the latest in a growing number of projects aimed at saving animals, plants and even human languages from extinction or disaster.

Britain and Australia are creating "Frozen Arks" to chill and conserve genetic material from thousands of endangered fauna—starting with the black rhino.

With half of the Earth's 7,000 languages slated to disappear this century, the National Geographic Society is recording dying tongues from Yawuru to Yuchi Coral 'banks' are conserving the sensitive marine organisms—which grow more slowly than forest trees—in hopes of one day re-starting ocean reefs.

The Alliance to Rescue Civilization and the European Space Agency have envisioned a lunar colony where scientists would stash human DNA to revive the species.

© 2008