… that Germany’s “feed-in tariff” has created more than a quarter of a million jobs in just a decade and given rise to a $50-billion renewable energy business.
—The Leap: How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy by Chris Turner

Excerpt from The Leap:
In 2000, after several years of sporadic, incremental change by half-measures and test runs, the German government passed a wholesale revision of its energy policy. It was a deceptively simple piece of legislation known as a “feed-in tariff,” which obliged grid operators (the companies that transmit electricity from power plants to customers) to buy power from renewable sources at rates far above the standard rate for electricity. Disguised as an effort to introduce a little green power to the German grid, the feed-in tariff has fundamentally changed the way the entire nation approaches the energy and climate crises and laid the foundations for the second industrial revolution.

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… illnesses in developing countries account for 90% of global disease, yet, only 10% of global spending on health research focuses on these afflictions?

—The Grandest Challenge: Taking Life-Saving Science from Lab to Village by Abdallah Daar and Peter A. Singer

Excerpt from The Grandest Challenge:
In 1990, one study revealed that only 10 percent of global spending on health research was used to study conditions in developing countries, even though people there suffered 90 percent of the global disease burden. This became known as the 10/90 gap. Citizens in the United States, Canada and Western Europe were getting the lion’s share of health research dollars even though their people suffered only a small fraction of the world’s diseases. In other words, if you were an impotent, depressed, rich adult man living in the West, science delivered for you, in the form of Viagra and Prozac and a host of other remedies. If you were a poor person in Tanzania, you likely died long before you had to worry about the onset of midlife health concerns.

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… that in 1874, while still a fugitive with a $5,000 bounty on his head, Louis Riel won the federal seat for Provencher, Manitoba, and snuck into Ottawa to sign the members’ register?

—Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times by Richard J. Gwyn

Excerpt from Nation Maker:
In one vital matter, Mackenzie’s performance was a good deal more than just creditable. He found a way to settle the longstanding issue of an amnesty for Louis Riel. And he did it by employing the same skills that the Conservatives had perfected: “the fine arts of double-talk, put-it-off, dodge-the-issue, and fool the voters.” As magnified the accomplishment even more, Mackenzie had been a member of the Liberal government in Ontario that had escalated sectarian hostilities by offering a five thousand-dollar reward for Riel’s capture.

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… that Mother Teresa’s rules for sisters forbid friendships, emotional attachment, and any physical contact — even as slight as a tap on the shoulder?
—An Unquenchable Thirst: One Woman’s Extraordinary Journey of Faith, Hope, and Clarity by Mary Johnson

Excerpt from An Unquenchable Thirst:
I was sometimes confused by the myriad references to the Rule, the rule, the Rules, or the rules — singular or plural, capitalized or not, without any apparent change in meaning. Though Sister Carmeline referred to both the Constitutions and a seemingly endless number of unwritten customs and traditions as Rules, only the Constitutions carried what she called “the Church’s stamp of approval”; the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious had authorized the Constitutions as an infallible path to holiness. Failure to observe the Constitutions could be sinful, especially in matters connected with the vows. All religious (it felt strange to think of that word not as an adjective but as a noun referring to vowed sisters and brothers and some priests) took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Missionaries of Charity were privileged to take an additional vow of wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor. We aspirants wouldn’t make these vows until we had completed three years of training, but we were to practice them already.

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… at the Bali climate talks, in the vote on which countries did the most to hurt the potential for progress in fighting climate change, Canada “won” first, second and third place?
—This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge by Tzeporah Berman

Excerpt from This Crazy Time:
It was the oddest thing to watch as one after another, the scientists and UN officials and all my environmental colleagues from around the world made statements condemning Canada.

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…for hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike, Israel was meant to be a country founded on the best modes of social, political and economic organization?
—The Moral Lives of Israelis: Reinventing the Dream State by David Berlin

Excerpt from The Moral Lives of Israelis:
I came to Israel because I thought the new state was all about getting it right: Zionist thinkers and political leaders were brimming with cosmic ambition. They seemed intent on showing the world what it means to create a country that is at once a secure state and a refuge, a welcoming new home for strangers. To my adolescent eyes it seemed clear that such an experiment would necessarily entail establishing the best modes of social, political and economic organization. Secular Jews in Israel would insist on such things, driven by the prevailing idea that Jewish morality itself needed to find secular expression. The concept that drew me in, along with hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike, was the possibility that we could show the world what it means to found a country upon this morality, which Judaism had long ago introduced to the world.

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…birth rates around the world have dropped faster when literacy has risen? In fact, any form of mass media, including TV, seems to have the same effect on the birth rate.
—Crawling from the Wreckage by Gwynne Dyer

Excerpt from Crawling from the Wreckage:
In 1950, there was not a single country where the population was not growing rapidly, the average woman had more than five children in her lifetime, and the birth rate was not dropping significantly anywhere. Then came the new birth-control technologies and the rise of women’s liberation ideologies, and in many Western countries the birth rate dropped by half in ten years. As recently as 1974, however, the median birth rate worldwide was still 5.4 children per woman, so the pessimists were still winning the arguments.

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…that kids involved with preparing their food are more likely to eat it?
—Good Food to Go: Healthy Lunches Your Kids Will Love
by Brenda Bradshaw and Cheryl Mutch

Excerpt from Good Food To Go:
No matter how beautifully packaged and healthy your child’s lunch may be, if it comes home uneaten or, worse yet, winds up in the garbage, all your hard work is wasted. Research tells us that children who are involved in preparing their food are more likely to eat it. Therefore, it’s important to get your kids involved from the outset. After all, we know kids won’t eat what they don’t like, especially if you are not there.

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… that 90 minutes from Toronto there is a slice of Ontario where OPP officers — unless in fresh pursuit of a case of murder or sexual assault — never go?
—From Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us by Christie Blatchford

Excerpt from Helpless:
“We’ll address that,” he said. “This is actually news to me that this was still an issue. There is obviously a communication issue.” Then Lewis delivered a bombshell: “Short of somebody having a kid kidnapped and running onto the DCE, we’re not going to go onto that property. It’s just a recipe for disaster, and it will set things back there.”

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