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“Last year the combined output of emerging economies reached an important milestone: it accounted for more than half of total world GDP (measured at purchasing-power parity). This means that the rich countries no longer dominate the global economy. The developing countries also have a far greater influence on the performance of the rich economies than is generally realized. Emerging economies are driving global growth and having a big impact on developed countries’ inflation, interest rates, wages and profits. As these newcomers become more integrated into the global economy and their incomes catch up with the rich countries, they will provide the biggest boost to the world economy since the industrial revolution…

…“Perhaps some of these countries should be called re-emerging economies, because they are regaining their former eminence. Until the late 19th century, China and India were the world’s two biggest economies. Before the steam engine and the power loom gave Britain its industrial lead, today’s emerging economies dominated world output. Estimates by Angus Maddison, an economic historian, suggest that in the 18 centuries up to 1820 these economies produced, on average, 80% of world GDP…But they were left behind by Europe’s technological revolution and the first wave of globalisation. By 1950 their share had fallen to 40%.

“Now they are on the rebound. In the past five years, their annual growth has averaged almost 7%, its fastest pace in recorded history and well above the 2.3% growth in rich economies. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that in the next five years emerging economies will grow at an average of 6.8% a year, whereas the developed economies will notch up only 2.7%. If both groups continued in this way, in 20 years’ time emerging economies would account for two-thirds of global output (at purchasing-power parity). Extrapolation is always risky, but there seems every chance that the relative weight of the new pretenders will rise.

“Faster growth spreading more widely across the globe makes a huge difference to global growth rates. Since 2000, world GDP per head has grown by an average of 3.2% a year, thanks to the acceleration in the emerging economies. That would beat the 2.9% annual growth during the golden age of 1950-73, when Europe and Japan were rebuilding their economies after the war; and it would certainly exceed growth during the industrial revolution. That growth, too, was driven by technological change and an explosion in trade and capital flows, but by today’s standards it was a glacial affair. Between 1870 and 1913 world GDP per head increased by an average of only 1.3% a year. This means that the first decade of the 21st century could see the fastest growth in average world income in the whole of history…

“Emerging economies as a group have been growing faster than developed economies for several decades. So why are they now making so much more of a difference to the rich old world? The first reason is that the gap in growth rates between the old and the new world has widened… But more important, emerging economies have become more integrated into the global system of production, with trade and capital flows accelerating relative to GDP in the past ten years…

“What is also new is that the internet has made it possible radically to reorganize production across borders. Thanks to information technology, many once non-tradable services, such as accounting, can be provided afar, exposing more sectors in the developed world to competition from India and elsewhere…

“…Central bankers like to take credit for the defeat of inflation, but emerging economies have give them a big helping hand, both by pushing down the prices of many goods and by restraining wages in developed countries…

“But regardless of how the developed world responds to the emerging giants, their economic power will go on growing. The rich world has yet to feel the full heat from this new revolution.”

To read the complete five-page article, click on http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7877959

“ICE FOILED ANCIENT SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN SEVEN TIMES”

Quotes are from a 09/18/06 article in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS:

“If at first you don’t succeed, then try, try again. This appears to be have been the motto of ancient humans trying to inhabit the British Isles. These settlers were beaten back by ice sheets at least seven times before managing to permanently establish themselves, researchers say…

“Those researchers have unearthed a wealth of new findings. Humans, it appears, came to the British Isles at least 700,000 years ago, 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, but began to establish permanent residence only about 12,000 years ago…

“There were eight waves of migration from continental Europe to the British Isles, the scientists say. Each migration attempt occurred when ice sheets retreated northward and the climate became warmer. The ancient humans ventured to Britain during periods of low sea level (when much of the water was locked up in ice sheets), strolling across land bridges that now lie underneath the English Channel and parts of the North Sea.

“But during harsh glacial periods, ice sheets traveled as far south as London, defeating the first seven invasions…’Either [the ancient humans] went extinct, or they traveled south and hunkered down in warmer areas such as Spain,’ said Mark White of England’s Durham University, one of the project archaeologists…

“The earliest evidence for human occupation in the British Isles has been discovered at Pakefield, a site dated to 700,000 years ago and located near Lowestoft on Britain’s east coast…

“Around 20,000 years ago the world experienced its most recent glacial period. The ice gradually retreated, and by around 12,000 years ago the modern British population began to arrive…”

To read the complete article, click on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/

“WILDFIRE FORECAST: MORE DEVASTATING SEASONS TO COME FOR U.S.”

Our quotes are from 09/19/06 article in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS:

“Since January, when early wildfires swept across Texas and Oklahoma, more than 8.8 million acres (3.5 million hectares) of forest and grasslands have been scorched in the western United States, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). That’s an area twice the size of New Jersey. The amount of acreage burned tops any since 1960, when officials started collecting reliable tallies of fire damage, and is far higher than the ten-year average of 4.9 million acres (19 million hectares) a year…

“At one point, firefighting resources were stretched so thin that U.S. officials enlisted the help of nearly a hundred firefighters from Australia and New Zealand. Canadian firefighters also helped along the U.S.-Canada border, where planes dropped fire-retardant slurry on the flames…

“‘The western United States is getting warmer,’ said Thomas Swetnam, professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the author of a study published last month in the journal Science. ‘With this continued trend of warming, we are going to see more big fires.’ Swetnam’s study concludes that climate change has lengthened the average wildfire season by 78 days and the average duration of large fires from 7.5 to 37.1 days…

“According to Donald McKenzie of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Wildland Fire Science Lab, the area burned by wildfires in 11 Western states could double by 2100 if summer temperatures climb by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degree Celsius)…Two years ago, for instance, the forest atop Mount Graham near Safford, Arizona, caught fire and nearly wiped out habitat containing 18 species found nowhere else in the world”…

To read the complete article, click on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060919-wildfires_2.html

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