Unit 13, Lesson 7 Notes

Cultural and Intellectual Integration

• Development of television, satellite, and computer technology has made it possible to spread info around the world easily and immediately since the 1980s.

• Satellites are used for communications, weather, navigation, and military purposes.

• Television spreads info and art to large numbers of people simultaneously. American and British programs are broadcast internationally, increasing the use of English as a principal world language.

• CNN’s broadcast of the Persian Gulf War was watched around the world and inspired international versions of the news network.

• Computers changed problem solving and processing capabilities and also provided artists of all types with new tools for film, photography, music, and writing

• Miniaturization made computers and many other electronic technologies available to huge numbers of people

• Internet allowed people to exchange info almost instantly, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the information revolution

• Internet has been embraced as a vehicle for business, dubbed "ecommerce,” and many companies, both global and local, use the internet for marketing, sales, and research

Global Economic and Political Connections

• Multinational corporations have been agents of tech change and global transfers of wealth.

• Companies in industrialized nations have the economic power to invest directly in mines and plantations in poorer countries. This is made even easier by international trade agreements and open markets

• Trade agreements also make it possible for companies to relocate to escape restrictions and regulations imposed by any one nation, especially those in the industrialized world

• Developing nations, desperate for foreign investment offer fewer regulations, usually resulting in lower wages and fewer environmental protections in these countries

• Countries around the world joined the United Nations together in 1945

• The UN's designed to maintain peace and security for member nations, and promote international cooperation culturally, politically, and economically. It is made up of a General Assembly in which each member nation has one vote and a Security Council with ten rotating member states and five permanent state members. These permanent members have veto power

• The UN administers several organizations that promote peaceful cooperation globally, for example, the World Health Organization to fight disease and the Food and Agricultural Organization to guard against food scarcity. UNICEF works to protect children around the world, and UNESCO coordinates international cooperation as it relates to education, science, and culture

• In 1951, Iran nationalized its oil industry to receive greater economic benefit from its oil reserves. A boycott of Iranian oil demonstrated, however, that individual countries had little power on the world oil market

• In 1960, oil countries in the Middle East and Latin America formed OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to promote their collective interests in the global oil market

• OPEC has proven to have considerable political as well as economic power. This was most clearly demonstrated in 1973 when, in response to support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War, OPEC cut off shipments of oil to the US and the Netherlands. This created high prices and an oil shortage in the US. Price hikes that followed in 1974 hurt many other countries, including Japan and its manufacturing industries that relied heavily on oil

• In 1995, over 100 nations joined together to create the World Trade Organization to facilitate free and reliable trade around the world

• The WTO's designed to reduce trade barriers and enforce trade agreements between nations. Free trade, however, was not universally beneficial

• The WTO put pressure on manufacturers and workers in developed countries who lost job security and put pressure for domestic social and political reforms on developing countries as conditions for financial support and investment

Treaties and Organizations

• Industrialization around the world plundered natural resources and polluted the environment and nations struggled to come together on solutions

• In 1984, a leak at a pesticide plant in India killed over 3,500 people. Meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia exposed 1000s to lethal levels of radiation

• The Kyoto Protocol adopted by over 100 nations at a meeting in 1997, as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, bound participating nations to meet certain emission reduction targets

• The Kyoto Protocol put a greater burden on developed countries as they were the ones primarily responsible for the high levels of greenhouse gases, but required action by all countries

• Though signed by US President Clinton, the Senate never ratified the agreement, and thus the US remained outside the Kyoto Protocol