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The second summit

Although corporations and governments have long made the case that the global economy is helping to bring peace and prosperity to the world’s poorest nations, the African leaders at the UN Global Earth Summit made it clear that they are not nece

Although corporations and governments have long made the case that the global economy is helping to bring peace and prosperity to the world’s poorest nations, the African leaders at the UN Global Earth Summit made it clear that they are not necessarily in favour of the Western model of economic development.

At the opening of the Earth Summit, South African president Thabo Mbeki told more than 100 world leaders assembled in Johannesburg that it was time to change the current world order, based on what he called the "savage principle of the survival of the fittest."

Mbeki compared the apartheid that once existed in that country with the current economic apartheid between rich countries and poor countries. The environment, he said, is suffering because of this world order.

Not much has changed since the first Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a decade ago. Except for the tone.

The last meeting was heralded as a breakthrough, encouraging countries to work together to find solutions to the world’s environmental problems. This year, frustrated by the lack of progress, the language being used is stronger.

"A global society based on poverty for many and prosperity for a few, characterized by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable," said Mbeki. "This is a world in which a rich minority enjoys unprecedented levels of consumption, comfort and prosperity while a poor majority enjoys daily hardship, suffering, dehumanization."

Whether or not the 2002 Earth Summit is capable of reaching solutions that would result in a more equitable sharing of the world’s wealth without depriving the planet of its capacity to produce it – especially with notable absence of the American president – is doubtful. The African solution would require the west to give more aid and open up its markets to Third World products, and the west just isn’t ready to share.

In a nutshell, our whole western way of life is based on our ability to buy goods and resources from poor countries at prices well below the market value, keeping things cheap for consumers and margins fat for manufacturers. To allow African nations, with their low wages, free access to those consumers would put the western manufacturers at more of a disadvantage than they are already.

The only solution to this issue that could help the environment is for the west is to meet the Third World in the middle – reduce our own consumption, trade fairly, and stop putting the global economy ahead of the global environment.

Aside from poverty, issues discussed at the 10-day Earth Summit include HIV and AIDS, gender equality, health, food security, habitat, foreign investment, sustainable finance, global public goods, tourism, freshwater, climate change, the Conventions signed at the previous Rio Summit, and the status of the world’s oceans.

Whether you believe in the summit or not, the discussions and resolutions to come out of the various meetings and planning sessions will be talked about for the next decade. Maybe by then, there will be some progress to report.

To follow the daily goings on at the Earth Summit, visit the official Web site at www.earthsummit2002.org .

The site includes links to articles that are written about the summit, as well as reports on summit events and background materials. There are copies of speeches, summaries of summit agendas, links to related sites, and even some interactive components like online polls.

You can check out the Global Peoples Forum, read a preview of a political declaration from the summit, review a draft plan for implementation, and check out the various special exhibits and features taking place around the event. There are virtual exhibits, a sustainable project showcase, and more in depth looks at the various issues being discussed.

With Africa suffering from a drought and a famine threatening to kill millions, the Earth Summit takes on added significance, and the issues discussed an additional urgency.

If nothing else, this summit will paint a clearer picture of who cares, who doesn’t, and who is willing to put their money where their mouth is. One hopes Canada comes through this time.

Processors break new ground

Last week Intel Corp. set the bar higher with the release of four new Pentium 4 processors from 2.5 GigaHertz to 2.8 GHz. The fastest chip, released just six months ago, was Intel’s 2.53 GHz chip.

In addition, the 2.8 GHz chip comes with a 533 MegaHertz front-side bus that increases the bandwidth between the processor and the rest of the PC, allowing data in and out faster than ever before. The other chips, by way of comparison, only offer a 400 MHz front-side bus.

The week before, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) announced its new line of chips with speeds up to 2.133 GHz.

Intel seems to be winning the race, although the AMD chips are widely hailed by many users for their performance and reliability.

The big question now is how fast can we go? When do we hit the wall?

For a long time the wall was 1 GHz. When they came out with 1 GHz processors, the wall was pushed back to 2 GHz.

The speed of the processor is not the only limiting factor in the overall speed of your computer. Every component also has to be maximized – from your memory to your cache to your hard drive to your motherboard to your power supply to your cooling system to the wires and connectors between your components and peripheries – to enjoy the full benefits of a faster processor. Anything in your system that is a little slower quickly becomes a bottleneck.

If the technology continues to evolve at its current rate, Intel should be launching its first 3 GHz-plus processor in the next six months.

There’s no wall in sight, but that’s hardly surprising. After being proven wrong so many times, tech experts are understandably reluctant to build them.