April 22 - America's Middle Class and Poor Slip Below Other Advanced Nations; The State of the Earth on the 44th Earth Day; Losing the Car and Going Green

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the latest study of data on family incomes in advanced democracies that indicates the once envy of the world, the American middle class, is slipping below Canada and that America’s poor make considerably less than similar families in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands, the reverse of what was true 35 years ago. Branko Milanovic, formerly a lead economist in the World Bank Research Group and the author of “The Haves and the Have-nots: A Brief Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality” joins us to discuss the price American families are paying for income inequality that is featured in the new website The Upshot launched today by The New York Times.

Part 2

Then on this 44^th Earth Day we speak with Paul Ehrlich, the President of the Center for Conservation Biology and a Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University. We discuss the state of a planet beset by a record level of CO2 in the atmospheres, the worst in over a million years, and one that is facing projections that the earth’s current population of over seven billion will reach 9 billion by 2050, placing unsustainable pressure on food supplies already threatened by environmental degradation and global warming.  

Part 3

Then finally, we explore the possibilities of going green before it is too late with Eric Sanderson, a senior conservationist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and author of “Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars and Suburbs”. We discuss his article at CNN, “Want Green Cities? Lose the Cars” and look into the Earth Day theme of green cities and how biking, walking and light rail could do away with the need for cars.