Tag Archives: poverty
Fossil-Fuel Subsidies of Rich Nations Five Times Climate Aid
Bloomberg
Dec. 3, 2012
By Alex Morales
Rich countries spend five times more on fossil-fuel subsidies than on aid to help developing nations cut their emissions and protect against the effects of climate change, the Oil Change International campaign group said.
In 2011, 22 industrialized nations paid $58.7 billion in subsidies to the oil, coal and gas industries and to consumers of the fuels, compared with climate-aid flows of $11.2 billion, according to calculations by the Washington-based group.
The data underline the steps developed nations may be able to take to cut their emissions as ministers from 190 nations meet in Doha to discuss measures to curb global warming. Eliminating the subsidies would reduce incentives to pollute and help rich nations meet their pledge to provide $100 billion a year in climate aid by 2020, said Stephen Kretzmann, the founder of Oil Change International.
Inequality ‘highest for 20 years’ – Save The Children
BBC News
Oct. 31, 2012
Global inequalities in wealth are at their highest level for 20 years and are growing, according to a new report by Save The Children.
While the charity acknowledges progress has been made in goals such as reducing child mortality, the report says this has been uneven across income groups.
Continuing inequality could hinder further progress in improving living standards, the charity says.
The report comes ahead of a meeting of a high-level UN panel on poverty.
“In recent decades the world has made dramatic progress in cutting child deaths and improving opportunities for children; we are now reaching a tipping point where preventable child deaths could be eradicated in our lifetime,” Save the Children’s chief executive, Justin Forsyth, said.
US corn ethanol cost poor nations $6.6 bln – study
Alertnet
Oct. 11, 2012
By Megan Rowling
LONDON (AlertNet) – Growing use of U.S.-produced corn for biofuel has added $6.6 billion to the food import bills of developing countries over the past six years, highlighting the need to rethink energy policies that are making food more expensive for poor people, says new research.
The amount of U.S. maize that goes into ethanol equals around 15 percent of global corn production, and in recent years this has contributed to rising food prices around the world, says the study from Tufts University in Massachusetts.
“Higher corn prices have had a direct impact on the food-import bills of developing countries, many of which have become heavily dependent on outside sources of basic food commodities in the last 25 years,” the paper explains.
Top 1% Got 93% of Income Growth as Rich-Poor Gap Widened
Bloomberg
Oct. 2, 2012
By Peter Robison
While the U.S. economy was recovering from the Great Recession, Reyes, 52, a casino dealer from Minneapolis, was dining on $1.67 cans of soup and searching for a way to keep her house, which was foreclosed on last October.
“I went backwards,” Reyes said. “Two years ago, three years ago, I didn’t know I’d be looking at being homeless.”
Stephen Hemsley’s salary has been frozen too. His income hasn’t.
The chief executive officer of Minnetonka, Minnesota-based health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) earned $1.3 million in salary every year since 2007. Still, as the economic recovery took hold from 2009 to 2011, Hemsley, 60, exercised stock options worth more than $170 million and made at least $51 million from share sales, making him the object of an “Occupy Lake Minnetonka” protest on the ice outside his lakeside home each winter.
