Though we take it as a given, economic expansion in human history is just a few centuries old.

“In fact it has only been two generations, from the 1950s, that economic growth has been an instrument of public policy.”

The arrow reads: The use of fossil fuels beginning in the 19th century allowed the expansive growth of the human enterprise.

From a fabulously interesting speech by one of Canada’s most eminent environmental scientists, William E. Rees: The Vulnerability and Resilience of Cities.

Why do some people only like to exercise alone, while others only like to exercise with a group class?

I asked that question to the Trainer at my club. He said he didn’t know?

I don’t either. But I always exercise alone and my wife ONLY exercises with a group.

So I Googled it but didn’t get much. Just this from About.com — exercise which is far from statistically valid. Even so, it surprises me: I thought most would opt for the group.

Time Magazine’s “Hero of the Environment” President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives believes in climate change. This belief has caused him to put together the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting, and deliver the following speech to the UN, and pledge to make the Maldives carbon neutral.

“Our country will not exist.”

Perhaps there might be more action from Harper in Canada if 24 Sussex Drive were threatened by climate catastrophe like Male, the capital of the Maldives. What would have been the Bush legacy on climate change if Dubya had waterfront property in Louisiana and not a ranch in Crawford?

President Nasheed understands the urgency of climate change, his government sees it as an existential threat to their survival. Perhaps by understanding the risks that people of the Maldives and other threatened countries face, we can quantify the risks that climate change pose, and give it the attention it deserves.

It is imperative to understand how cities will work in the adaptation and mitigation of climate change.

This will give those over-weight, rich, white TV guys (and Dotty) something to talk about while they’re following millionaires around Edens nourished by a dwindling water supply: the nerve of Hugo Chavez criticizing our game.

In 2006, a former mayor of Caracas tried but failed to seize control of the 18-hole course at the Caracas Country Club to build thousands of homes for the poor.

Going to be great. Watching Johnny and Arnold and Jack and all the rest defend why deserts should be made into parks for a few fat cats in carts.

Can’t wait. Oh, the indignity. Course, I’m a bit of a Hugo fan, and we aren’t talking Boss.

Incredibly, while every other country on the face of the earth negotiates its drug prices with pharmaceuticals, the US signed away its rights to do so in law, then negotiated a deal with them which was tacked onto health care reform.

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming years.

Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform, from the New York Times.

If you like pulling for the underdog, you’ll love backing Detroit.

In big need of a major renaissance, the city is megaphoning a call-out to the artistically creative, aka the impoverished artist. Move here: it’s cheap! it’s cheap! it’s cheap!

Time Inc. asked five of the biggest advertising agencies with Detroit offices to convey their view of the opportunity ahead here. Their ads address this question: “If I’m young, talented and creative, and open to all kinds of opportunities, why Detroit?”

Here are their submissions.

Be great if it works.

GM will start repaying it’s $6.7 billion loan from the US taxpayer with a payment of $1.2 billion to US coffers in December, thanks to the carmaker’s ’solid foundation.’

That ’solid foundation?’ Announced debt of $1.2 from July 10 to September 30.

There is a lot that is confusing about auto manufacturing and high finance. In the good old days that kind of debt might have been thought of as … well, troubling. But not today. It’s a ’solid foundation.’

Of course, in the good old days GM shareholders owned GM. Now it is owned 61% by US tax payers.

And to US taxpayers, a lousy $6.7 billion is chump change.

The BBC story is here.

The Harper government is pathologically tone deaf.

The most recent example is with the headlines about the UK child migrant program, a draconian initiative that moved upwards of 140,000 impoverished children out of England to countries like Canada and Australia where they were installed as servants in homes and institutions. Some of the children were as young as 3, many were physically and sexually abused.

It seems a version of the English penal colony that populated Australia after North America stopped their convict exports.

The UK is now apologizing for the program, so is Australia. But Canada? No way. Even though Canada got over 100,000 of the child exports, it will accept no shame, instead, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s Conservatives will introduce a motion in the House that will make 2010 The Year of the British Home Child.

Catchy, isn’t it?

Looking for a clue for why Canada is bucking the trend of mia culpas? It’s here:

“It goes without saying that the treatment of these individuals, their experience in Australia, was different to that in Canada.” That is Alykhan Velshi, spokesman for Immigration Minister Kenney.

The Aussies have a lot to apologize for, so do the Brits, but Canadians? “There has not been a widespread call among Canadian descendants of British home children for an apology.” Velshi again.

The poor, impoverished three-year-olds must have really liked being servants of unknown people in a foreign land.

The Globe and Mail story is Canada won’t apologize to British home children.

It was called Chimerica, the uniting of China and America to make up a third of the world’s economy on 13% of the planet’s land.

It was the sweet confluence of production and consumption: China made, America bought:

Thanks to the Chimerican symbiosis, reports Niall Ferguson in the NY Times, China was able to quadruple its gross domestic product from 2000 to 2008, raise exports by a factor of five, import Western technology and create tens of millions of manufacturing jobs for the rural poor.

For America, Chimerica meant being able to consume more and save less even while maintaining low interest rates and a stable rate of investment. Overconsumption meant that from 2000 to 2008 the United States consistently outspent its national income. Goods imported from China accounted for about a third of that overconsumption.

The financial crisis since 2007 has put the marriage on the rocks. Correcting the economic imbalance between the United States and China — the dissolution of Chimerica — is now indispensable if equilibrium is to be restored to the world economy.

In essence, Chimerica constituted a credit line from the People’s Republic to the United States that allowed Americans to save nothing and bet the house on … well, the house.

It appears the day of reckoning is at hand. The full story is here.