A new national report on the escalating risk of obesity in American has one region squarely in focus for having a “big” problem:  the American South.  As outlined in last year’s Briefing Book on the South by Better South, the region has among the highest rates of obesity in the nation.

The report, “Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation,” highlights how obesity erodes productivity and causes millions of Americans to suffer from potentially deadly chronic diseases.

Offered by the national Institute of Medicine, the report outlines five major goals to prevent obesity:

1. Integrating physical activity into people’s lives;

2. Making healthy food and beverage options available everywhere so it’s easy –and preferable — to make good food choices;

3.  Transforming marketing and messages about nutrition and activity;

4.  Making schools become a gateway to healthy weights, such as making sure there is 60 minutes of physical education at schools; and

5.  Encouraging employers and health care professionals to support healthy lifestyles.

For more, see the infographic below.

• Read a news release about the report.
• Visit the report’s main Web page, where you can download a copy for free.
• See a PBS story on the “Weight of the Nation”
• Look up health stats for your state at Better South’s 2011 Briefing Book.

Infographic from the Institute of Medicine

A March conference in Charlotte, N.C, touted the possibilities of using wind off Southern coasts for a significant producer of electricity.

“The Southeast is primed and ready for the wind industry,” said Brian O’Hara, co-chair of the Southeastern Coastal Wind Conference and president of the NC Offshore Wind Coalition.  “The Southeast contains a low cost and highly capable supply chain for the wind industry, the largest offshore wind resource, and some of the largest and fastest-growing electricity markets.  The Southeast is truly the East Coast wind energy supply chain solution.”

The South’s energy potential is a lot more realistic than many think, according to a March 9 article in The State newspaper.  Wind power also could create more than 3,000 full-time jobs by 2030 if it is developed.

It noted wind farms were being looked at as ways to provide renewable energy to supplement traditional generators, such as coal or nuclear.  A significant wind farm offshore could come in the next 10 years, the story said.

“South Atlantic states contain 63 percent of the East Coast’s shallow wind resources, according to the research presented at Thursday’s conference.  That’s improtant because it is cheaper to produce power from wind if farms can be developed in shallow water, closer to the shore.”

The Center for a Better South highlighted benefits of renewable power sources in its 2007 book, “Getting Greener.”  Click here for more.

Schools in Mooresville, N.C., are in the news for being tops in the country for infusing computer learning with the classroom.

According to a Monday story in The New York Times that highlighted elementary schools, the Mooresville school district about 20 miles north of Charlotte is emerging as the national model for digital education.

“This is not about the technology,” Mark Edwards, superintendent of Mooresville Graded School District, would tell the visitors later over lunch. “It’s not about the box. It’s about changing the culture of instruction — preparing students for their future, not our past.”

The district’s investment in personal computers for elementary children is paying off, according to the story.

The district’s graduation rate was 91 percent in 2011, up from 80 percent in 2008. On state tests in reading, math and science, an average of 88 percent of students across grades and subjects met proficiency standards, compared with 73 percent three years ago. Attendance is up, dropouts are down. Mooresville ranks 100th out of 115 districts in North Carolina in terms of dollars spent per student — $7,415.89 a year — but it is now third in test scores and second in graduation rates.

More on digital education

• Grading the Digital School, a series by The New York Times 
• Education Week magazine’s Digital Education blog
• Center for Digital Education

Unemployment rates were down in December in almost 90 percent of major cities across the country compared to the previous year, according to a new report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The story was much the same in the South, where only Mississippi and North Carolina has a slight 0.1 percent uptick in joblessness in December 2011 compared to a year earlier.  A good summary of the statistics for Southern cities can be found here in The New York Times.

Last month, the U.S. Conference of Mayors released an analysis that showed how the nation’s metropolitan cities were the drivers of the American economy by generating more than 90 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.  Noted Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, president of the mayor’s group:

At the close of 2011, 125 cities and their metro areas had not seen any net job growth. By the end of last year, the economy as a whole had regained only 30 percent of jobs lost from the Great Recession.

 

The outlook for 2012 is better. By the end of this year, the report forecasts that almost every one of our 363 metro economies will see job gains and the nation will have gained back 48 percent of its lost jobs. But despite this progress, one thing remains clear: the recovery is slow and it’s uneven. For almost 80 of our metro areas, it will take more than five years to get back to pre-recession levels of employment.

Among Southern states, here’s what unemployment looked like in December 2011 versus December 2010:

State ……………….Dec. 2011………………Dec. 2010

Alabama…………..7.5 percent…………….8.8 percent

Arkansas………….7.4 percent …………….7.8 percent

Florida…………….9.7 percent…………….11.7 percent

Georgia……………9.4 percent…………….10.2 percent

Kentucky…………8.6 percent……………..9.9 percent

Louisiana…………6.4 percent…………….7.2 percent

Mississippi……….9.9 percent…………….9.8 percent

North Carolina……9.8 percent……………9.7 percent

South Carolina……9.5 percent……………10.9 percent

Tennessee…………8.1 percent……………9.1 percent

Virginia…………….6.1 percent……………6.4 percent

More reading

• You can check out the unemployment rates for specific Southern metro areas by viewing the BLS report (detailed) or the New York Times story.
• Click here to look at how the recovery is slow in South Carolina in a commentary by Better South’s Andy Brack

Better South President Andy Brack offered this commentary today as the nation celebrated the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

JAN. 16, 2012 — Today when you hear mention of the name “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” it will be easy to recall the sound, captured on black and white film, of his powerful, mellifluous voice in August 1963 urging freedom to ring on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. His “I Have a Dream” speech cemented his place as one of the greatest orators of all time

Interestingly, this speech that touched America’s soul evolved right up until the time King delivered it on that warm day in August. As Seattle lawyer Drew D. Hansen described in his 2003 book, “The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech that Inspired a Nation,” King started working on the speech four days before delivering it. A few aides offered themes. King worked on the speech and made revisions through Tuesday, when he traveled to Washington. But when he checked into his hotel, he didn’t have a final draft and wasn’t satisfied with what he had.

Hansen wrote, “A side-by-side comparison of the speech he prepared with the speech he actually gave illustrates how King improvised minor alterations throughout his prepared text before finally deciding to abandon it completely.”

Surprisingly, King’s prepared draft didn’t include its most famous repetitive phrase, “I have a dream” Hansen noted. That now-famous phrase was just one of many repetitive, rhetorical Biblical verses, past sermons, stories and quotes from others that King the pastor had used successfully in his hundreds of past sermons and speeches.

At the end of the prepared text, King was expected to say:

“And so today, let us go back to our communities as members of the international association for the advancement of creative dissatisfaction. Let us go back and work with all the strength we can muster to get strong civil rights legislation in this session of Congress. Let us go down from this place to ascent other peaks of purpose. Let us descend from this mountaintop to climb other hills of hope.”

But he delivered something else – something quite remarkable – when he outlined his dream to the 250,000 people in the Mall in Washington. He quoted from “My County ’tis of Thee.” And he shouted for freedom to ring. Instead of asking people to return to their communities as members of “the international association for the advancement of creative dissatisfaction,” a phrase that is easy to forget, listen to the ring of power in the words he roared:

“Go back to Mississippi; go back to Alabama; go back to South Carolina; go back to Georgia; go back to Louisiana; go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

 

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …

 

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”

* * *

In both the prepared and delivered versions, King ended with, as he said, words from the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

But what a difference in how he got to that ending.

In the prepared text, he had just one sentence that preceded the quote — “Let us work and march and love and stand tall together until that day has come when we can join hands and sing …”

Compare that to the magnitude of vision and repetitive power of his oratory in an excerpt of the 12 sentences he delivered on the fly to whip the crowd into a frenzy:

“With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day …

 

“And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. … Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and ever city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children — black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics — will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro spiritual …”

Today, more than 48 years after King’s challenging and uplifting speech, let us ponder how each of us can work to make freedom shine stronger every day.

Andy Brack, president of the Center for a Better South, offered this commentary today in CharlestonCurrents.com, which he publishes weekly.  Brack can be reached at: publisher@charlestoncurrents.com.

Two studies released this week highlight the size of the 2010 Gulf oil disaster and how nature played a key part in its cleanup.

Size of the disaster.  Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this week that detailed chemical measurements showed 11,130 tons of oil and gas chemicals spilled in the disaster, which confirmed “the official average leak rate estimate of about 11,350 tons of gas and oil per day (equal to about 59,200 barrels of liquid oil per day). “  Learn more.

“This study uses the available chemical data to give a better understanding of what went where, and why,” said Thomas Ryerson, Ph.D., a NOAA research chemist and lead author of the study. “The surface and subsurface measurements and analysis provided by our university colleagues were key to this unprecedented approach to understanding an oil spill.”

Nature’s part. A new study funded by the National Science Foundation showed that underwater topography, ocean currents and bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico played key roles in causing methane and other chemicals from the spill to be cleaned up.  Learn more.

“As scientists continue to peel apart the layers of the Deepwater Horizon microbial story,” said Don Rice, director of NSF’s chemical oceanography program, “we’re learning a great deal about how the ocean’s biogeochemical system interacts with petroleum–every day, everywhere, twenty-four/seven. “

According to a computer model developed by scientist David Valentine and others, the physical structure of the Gulf — kind of an underwater box canyon — was important to microbial scrubbing of millions of metric tons of spewed material. According to a news release:

“As a result, it’s not a river down there; it’s more of a bay. And the spill happened in a fairly enclosed area, particularly at the depths where hydrocarbons were dissolving.”

When the hydrocarbons were released from the well, bacteria bloomed. In other locations outside the gulf, those blooms would be swept away by prevailing ocean currents.  But in the Gulf of Mexico, they swirled around as if they were in a washing machine, and often circled back over the leaking well, sometimes two or three times.

“What we see is that some of the water that already had been exposed to hydrocarbons at the well and had experienced bacterial blooms, then came back over the well,” Valentine said.  “So these waters already had a bacterial community in them, then they got a second input of hydrocarbons.”

As the water came back over, he explained, the organisms that had already bloomed and eaten their preferred hydrocarbons immediately attacked and went after certain compounds.  Then they were fed a new influx of hydrocarbons.

“But a recent statistical review by the Center for a Better South highlights how Southerners continue to suffer big gaps compared to the nation’s other states. Although today’s South is a diverse economic engine, it still has educational, environmental, poverty, health and other challenges brought on, in large part, by a long period of neglect following the Civil War.

 

“Think about it this way. Hold your left hand, palm-side up, at waist level. Then hold your right hand, palm-side up, at chest level. Now, slowly raise both hands at the same speed. Soon, the left hand will get to same level as the right hand, but the right hand will be next to your head.

 

“The example highlights how other states improved as Mississippi and Dixie were doing so too. Just as Southerners worked hard to get on par with the rest of America by investing to get better schools, roads, medical care and more, other states also invested.

 

“As a result, Southerners generally still remain on lists in the spots where they don’t want to be — at the bottom. In other words, we’re still playing catch-up. Some 150 years after the shots fired onto Fort Sumter in Charleston, the states of the American South still have a statistical hangover — a Civil War hangover — compared to the rest of the country.“

The impact of the recession continues to be felt by America’s children, according to a new  Brookings study.  In two of three indicators — people on food stamps and child poverty — children’s economic well-being has deteriorated.

“One positive trend is that the number of children with an unemployed parent is lower than a year ago,” according to the study’s executive summary.  “However, SNAP [food stamp] caseloads continue to rise, and, according to the predictions presented here, child poverty also continues to rise….

 

“As policy makers engage in debates about government spending, it is important to recognize that many families with children have not yet recovered from the recession and are in greater need of government assistance than in normal economic times.”

A look at the three indicators for Southern states:

Children with an unemployed parent.  Kids in Florida are among states with the highest number of unemployed parents, particularly those unemployed for six months or more.  According to the report, eight of 11 Southern states had a higher percentage of children with one unemployed parent than the national average:

Alabama:  107,500 children — 10 percent
Arkansas:  55,000 children — 8 percent
Florida:  368,000 children — 10 percent
Georgia:  244,800 children — 10 percent
Kentucky: 90,800 children — 10 percent
Louisiana:  81,600 children — 8 percent
Mississippi:  74,200 children — 10 percent
North Carolina:  218,000 children — 10 percent
South Carolina: 99,000 children — 10 percent
Tennessee: 142,600 children — 10 percent
Virginia: 119,000 children — 7 percent
National average — 9 percent

Individuals receiving SNAP benefits.  From 2007 to 2011, the number of people receiving help through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), which used to be called food stamps, rose 70 percent nationally.  Rates in the South, which already had a significant number of children receiving aid due to endemic poverty, rose lower than the national rate in seven of 11 states:

Alabama:  871,000 recipients in 2011 — 61 percent higher in 2011 than 2007
Arkansas:  483,000 recipients — 28 percent higher
Florida:  3.1 million recipients — 153 percent higher
Georgia:  1.8 million recipients — 88 percent higher
Kentucky: 822,000 recipients — 37 percent higher
Louisiana:  879,000 recipients — 36 percent higher
Mississippi:  617,000 recipients — 46 percent higher
North Carolina:  1.6 million recipients — 80 percent higher
South Carolina: 841,000 recipients — 56 percent higher
Tennessee: 1.3 million recipients — 48 percent higher
Virginia: 855,000 recipients — 67 percent higher

Child poverty.  Child poverty grew in every Southern state when the rates before and after the recession are compared. Before the recession, Virginia, Georgia and Florida were the only states not in high poverty status, but in 2009, Georgia and Florida fell into high poverty status.  Take a look at the report for more information on increasing child poverty across the South.

• More:  “The Recession’s Ongoing Impact on America’s Children:  Indicators of Children’s Economic Well-being through 2011,” Julia B. Isaacs, Brookings, Dec. 2011.

We’re hearing more and more about interest in greener schools.  Just today, StatehouseReport.com outlined how some South Carolina legislators — and others across the country — recently traveled to a school in Warren County, Ky., to learn how it got built as the nation’s first net-zero energy school.

The “trick”  to it?  The school was built around the gym and cafeteria, which are two of the biggest energy users in schools.  The school also used photovoltaic panels on top of the school to generate power, some of which was sold back to the local power company.

We first wrote about green schools in our “Better Buildings” chapter in the 2007 “Getting Greener” book.  Take a look at what we wrote then and you’ll see a lot of the same things starting to happen more and more now — daylighting, solar power generation, composting, use of gray water, better recycling, smart switches and more.

Southern school districts and colleges can be leaders in the green movement by constructing more school buildings with an eye to saving energy — a smart cost savings that should appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike.

A new report, “Restoring the Gulf Coast: New Markets for Established Firms,” by the Duke Center of Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness, highlights how restoration of the region would directly create and save jobs.

The Mississippi River Delta, the report begins, is a priceless resource that is under threat as land is vanishing underwater.  Loss of coastal wetlands impacts the environmental health of the region and her jobs.  The Gulf generates a third of the nation’s seafood harvest, $34 billion in tourism, 90 percent of offshore oil and national gas production and includes 10 of the nation’s largest 15 ports by cargo volume.

Restoring the Mississippi River Delta, as well as wetlands throughout the Gulf Coast region, will require substantial public funding — an investment that will recover billions of dollars’ worth of lost economic benefits.  In addition, the restoration work itself will directly create and save jobs.  Restoration projects activate a full supply chain linking … traditional oil and gas industry [providers to] … apply the same skills and equipment to coastal restoration.

Among the findings of the report:

1.  Coastal restoration provides job opportunities in 391 employee locations across the country, including 261 in the five Gulf states.

2.  Coastal restoration comprises a small but growing share of work for marine construction firms, most of which are small and medium-sized.

3.  Restoration allows opportunities for well-established firms to use underutilized resources.

4. More equipment manufacturers are focusing on exports.

5. Building a restoration industry will require steady work and a higher volume of work.

To view more on the report, visit this link.

The Center for a Better South last year offered a dozen “Ideas for a Better Gulf.“