It seems we didn’t take many pictures in January. There aren’t any pictures from our visit with friends and the friends visiting us. But there are a few picture from the funeral of one of our friends, also a few pictures how things in the garden have grown.

One of the church windows.
It was an extremely hot day. Still a lot of people turned up for the Mass.

Peter always works hard to keep down the tree growth around our house.

This picture is taken from our front door.

It seems this elephant is guarding our front door.

Luscious growth in our little backyard garden.

Today, I will talk about China.

(original broadcast can be found at BlogTalkRadio and Podbean)

People’s Republic of China

For centuries China lead the world in arts and sciences. In the 19th and early 20th centuries that changed as the country encountered civil unrest, famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. After WWII, Mao Zedong rose to power as a communist establishing an autocratic socialist system – this ensured China’s sovereignty, but imposed strict controls over everyday life and ended up costing tens of millions of lives. After 1978, Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping and other leaders focused on a more market-oriented economy and by the year 2000 economic output had quadrupled. This resulted in much of the population seeing much improved living standards, along with relaxed governmental controls over personal choice – as a note, even though more freedoms exist, political controls are still very tight today. Since the early…

It seems to me….

“A more robust approach to global warming is needed if we are to avoid catastrophe. Unlike the recent financial crisis, there is no bailout option for the earth’s climate.” ~ Jose Angel Gurria[1].

A global warming of just 3 degrees Celsius could render much of the world unrecognizable and vulnerable to mass starvation (a number of studies predict yield declines of up to 70 percent for produce if the world warms beyond 2 degrees Celsius). The probability of environmental catastrophes – global warming, deforestation, ocean acidification, biodiversity extinction… – is rapidly increasing. While any single weather-event cannot conclusively be considered a harbinger of climate change, the planet is experiencing an increasing cascade of non-normal weather and climate incidents. 16 of the 17 warmest years in the 136 years of recorded weather data have all occurred since 2001 with 1998 being the only…