Category Archives: Globalization

Global Warming, or Global Alarming?

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Tim O'Reilly's looking forward to the upcoming film by Al Gore about Global Warming.
It's called "An Inconvenient Truth" and premiers very soon.

I respect Al Gore for many reasons, but I'm concerned by what appears to be a "propagandistic" rather than "scientific" lean to this film (this is based on clips and comments by those who have seen the film). I do not think Gore is a clear thinker on this topic and sees himself more as a "prophet".

If we focus on addressing the many global problems like health and economies of the developing world we can get a spectacular return on the investment of mental and monetary capital. Collateral advantages will be reductions in terrorism and a huge boost in good will and personal satisfaction.

Investing in alleviating human causes of global warming has no clear path to success, yet the costs are simply staggering.

Tim replied to my concerns, which I posted over at his blog. I love the internet for letting little old me, and thousands of others, actively engage with some of the world's best and brightest. Whatever one's views on the *most* pressing problems, certainly the collective application of innovation has the power to bring us the solutions.

Joe —
I see you've read The Skeptical Environmentalist. And I certainly agree with Bjorn Lomborg that there are other pressing problems where there is a great return on investment. But it also seems to me that many of the things that would be required to help with global warming could have enormous payoff. Critics talk about enormous costs, but it seems to me that the costs of the current way of doing things are always hidden.

A great example of this is railroads vs. automobiles. There's always been a huge debate about rail from the north bay down to San Francisco, with critics talking about the $150 million projected cost as a subsidy. But no one talks about the tens of billions of dollars of subsidy represented by the creation and maintenance of the highway system. Railroads are expected to carry their costs and described as uneconomic because they need subsidies, but the automobile industry managed to get much larger subsidies baked into the economy and hidden so that they no longer even appear as subsidies.

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I agree with Tim that some hidden economic subsidies are not always identified in discussions, but Economists do talk about and study these relationships. Unfortunately these observations are almost always buried in the politically/emotionally motivated budgeting processes. Political budgeting is not rational budgeting.

He's also right that greenhouse alleviation *might* have a big payoff, especially from things like alternative energy innovations that we might not explore unless we tackle global warming more aggressively. Still, the benefits seem so very unclear that I'd rather have the government spend my money on alleviating the abundant clear, present, and (most importantly) CHEAP-to-fix dangers like global health and poor education. (I'm against much of the excessive military and security spending as well as potential global warming big spending.)

I'd even suggest that the positive technology spinoffs from $250,000,000,000 towards global health and development would simply dwarf those from that investment in Greenhouse gas alleviation (or military or first world health care, etc, etc).

Death on Everest. Would YOU have stopped climbing to save the guy?

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News Item:
David Sharp, 34, died apparently of oxygen deficiency while descending from the summit during a solo climb last week.
More than 40 climbers are thought to have seen him as he lay dying, and almost all continued to the summit without offering assistance.

Our first reaction is to be appalled at the lack of concern and I'm anxious to hear from those who passed him by to hear their rationalizations. A Semper Fi sensibility hardly seems to apply to the new Everest hiking crowd. Sir Edmund Hillary observed this in his harsh criticism of the decision to put the summit above saving a life.

YET don't we ALL do this every day when we choose to distance ourselves from far more pressing global concerns where saving lives requires nothing like the efforts needed in this case? The key difference is proximity rather than ability to help. A modest Unicef contribution is more likely to save a life than attending to an oxygen deprived climber at 27000 feet in 80 below zero weather. Yet we don't have to look the malnourished kid in the face and thus we condemn and abhor the feelings of those who passed by the climber but absolve ourselves of what are probably more justified feelings of guilt for doing little in the face of great need.

It's a cruel world, right?

Update 

Book ’em!

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I just read that we Americans have 1 in 136 people locked up. Right now. Incredibly, about 1 in 37 Americans have served time.  Among industrialized nations (and most others) we are the world's leading incarcerator. This is not a statistic to be proud of by any means and is an alarming indicator of an unhealthy society.

The Sentencing Project tried to answer the question "why?". This from a 2003 study comparing incarceration rates around the world:

The high rate of imprisonment in the United States can be explained by several
factors:
· A higher rate of violent crime than other industrialized nations.
· Harsher sentencing practices than in other nations, particularly for property and drug
offenses.
· Sentencing policy changes over a period of three decades, particularly the shift
toward mandatory and determinate sentencing, restrictions on judicial discretion, and
a greater emphasis on imprisonment as a preferred sanction.
· Policy changes adopted as part of the “war on drugs,” leading to a vastly increased
use of the criminal justice system as a means of responding to drug problems.

The Elegance of Efficiency. More Mediocrity NOW!

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I'm smashing up some concrete steps so I can repair them by pouring fresh concrete, and noting that the previous fellow (or hardy concrete pouring gal c1911-1950) did not have the benefit of Quickrete premixed bags to which I just add water, mix in wheelbarrow, and pour.  

They probably had limited concrete expertise as I'm finding big chunks of rock, no rebar material (metal to help strengthen the hardened concrete), and even a glass bottle buried in the steps.  Even I wouldn't toss in a bottle…but….

But the point is that that hardy concoction worked well for many, many decades.   It was a mediocre job but it was the RIGHT job.   Probably close to the same project lifespan as if they'd had the world's BEST concrete people working on the project – and even if the BEST concrete people's job would have lasted forever, it's likely somebody might have come in to remodel or otherwise destroy the "perfect" job.

The moral of the story is that in most cases the "perfect" job is NOT THE BEST THING TO DO!  In almost all endeavors it's better to have much higher levels of mediocre production than a modest level of high class production. 

"But would you want a doctor who is removing your spleen to believe in your principle of mediocrity?"  You ask, expecting me to say …. "that is an exception".

 It's not an exception and neither is national defense spending, which is absurdly expensive partly for political reasons but mostly because mediocrity is not valued highly enough in this venue either. 

I say we need MORE mediocrity in almost ALL things, especially those where risk aversion is most expensive such as national defense and offense, health care, and social security – our triple threat national budget breakers.  

Most of the world lives (and dies) with very modest levels of health care.  Here in the luxury world we can live a few years longer thanks to super advanced medical procedures, though most of  us squander those benefits with lifestyle decisions like smoking, overeating, and poor excersize habits.

The case for the massive interventions and high level expensive healthcare options we insist on in the first world is not only questionable from a practical standpoint due to very low ROI for high level interventions – it's questionable from a moral one – at least until the majority of people in the world have *basic* health care.

Web comes full circle, developers doing better stuff but making less money?

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Pardon my somewhate randomized ramblings……

Significant changes keep swirling online as the internet becomes the key mainstream content vehicle, oceans of content continue to flow online, and mashups empower developers to flesh out even the most extravagant ideas with powerful tools reaching far into the rich data stores all over the web. Even market makers like Google, Yahoo, MSN don’t know how it’ll all shake out, and they are supporting many excellent mashups and APIs and developers to make sure bases are covered as the “real” battles for all that online spending heat up.

Where content was king it’s now just a pawn, and creating (large) communities in addition to a large content collection seems the best way to keep a web based company afloat in the stormy and rising online sea of sea changes.

*Unlike the gravy days of soaking up adsense revenues with auto-generated content, it appears online content providers need something “extra” es that will distinguish them from the other sites doing similar things.

The Internet in many ways, has done a partial circle back to quality stuff.

In early days it was non-competitive and fun and info focused.

Then came powerful commercial focus and info bias and heavy SEO for profitable terms.

I think the “new” transition is focusing on people/information, and rewarding those who create communities and bring *people* into contact with *people*. (e.g. Flickr, Myspace, Facebook, etc, etc). Increasingly, NON commerical sites like Wikipedia and DMOZ are taking on the roles that for a few years were provided by a plethora of auto generated, information poor – category rich sites that provided obscure topic details in a bland format.

People and/or/for/non Profit?

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Time Magazine:

Last month Gates-funded scientists announced that they had created the technology to manufacture artemisinic acid synthetically. Within five years, the cost of a lifesaving supply is expected to drop from $2.40 to 25 cents. Lead researcher Jay Keasling says it would not have been possible without a $43 million Gates grant. "I had companies call me and say, 'This is great, but we can't give you any money. We can't make a profit on this,'" he says.

I tend to be in the crowd that says profit is a great motivator to get companies to do bigger and better things, in turn raising the standards for most people and societies that intersect with those businesses.    At first glance the quote above indicates that in this case profit was getting in the way of optimizing development of new drugs where it will do the most good – in the developing world fighting easy-to-cure diseases or conditions like dehydration that kill millions every year.   But why didn't the Govts of those nations pony up for this effort?    Since the pharmaceutical industry was NOT the beneficiary of this was it reasonable to expect them to bear the entire financial burden?

Since the $43 million from the Gates foundation basically started out as profits distributed from Microsoft to Bill Gates, who in turn funded this life saving effort, we need to be cautious about saying profits are the problem here since they were the solution here as well.   Thus one could argue, and I think I would, that without a capitalistic infrastructure to create this wealth it's unlikely we'd see this development at all.

But most important is this question – how do we find the MOST effective mechanisms to create innovations on this scale?   I think the new breed of corporate foundations are part of the answer because they apply many of the successful principles of business to development projects.  Combine this growing force with tax and other incentives for companies that use their brainpower and expertise innovating for the broad social good.

And as for us everyday folks?  What can we do?  We can stop looking so narrowly at our own little niches, and instead look to the low hanging fruit solutions such as increased support for global health care.  We can broaden our perspective to a global one and recognize that we have to make small sacrifices in an effort to save entire generations who are threatened with disease and starvation but for the lack of simple remedies.   Even the most selfish person should realize that the satisfaction that comes from helping those in need is generally a much more profound experience than almost any other.

Darfur and the media

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George Clooney deserves a lot of credit for bringing the media back on track about developments in what is arguably the world's most newsworthy and troubled place – Darfur, Sudan.    Unlike Rwanda the media has not ignored Darfur, but as with Rwanda the dangers, complexities, and lack of interest in USA have led to under-reporting which in turn sends politicians a signal that they don't have to act.

However it does not reflect well on the media or on us as media consumers that all it took was a bit of Clooney star power to snap this tragic story back to the top of the news where it should be.

Today's development is encouraging.  The Government of Sudan has accepted the peace agreement that could bring an end to horrible violence between Government sponsored militias and rebel forces.    As with many conflicts there are millions of regular people trapped in violence between bad Governments and groups of fighters with questionable agendas.

Darfur Conflict at Wikipedia

News about Darfur

Nuclear Power – More Needed ASAP

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Even Senator Kennedy of Mass was on the radio a few days ago saying how we needed to take a new look at expanding the USA's nuclear power framework. 

Wow – when Kennedy starts talking nuclear power I think it should be the long needed wakeup call for the "head in the sand" crowd that continues to insist the dangers outweigh the benefits.  

They don't.  It's not even close.  Europe's electricity is mostly from nuclear plants, and they – tightly packed into small areas –  have a LOT more to worry about in terms of a meltdown than we well-dispersed Americans.   

Of course there is risk as there is with all power technologies, but it's been exaggerated by irrationality and "fear of the unknown".    China's consumption is rising and exploding.   This demand is unlikely to be met with even the most innovative alternative energy programs.

Ironically I think some of the same folks who are lobbying for greenhouse gas reductions are lobbying against more nuclear power.    They are letting politics and (largely faulty) ideas about the economy of capitalism prejudice good science and analysis of risk and reward.

Liberal Agendas + Republican Politicians = innovation?

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It'll be very interesting to see if Gov Romney (Republican of Massachusetts) has come up with a solution to some of the biggest challenges in US health care. Clinton likes it and I think we'll see that the MA approach, which blends fiscal responsibility and quality care for all, may be just the shot in the arm our ailing health care system desparately needs.

Meanwhile Gov Schwartzenegger (Republican of Caleeeforneea) is coming up with some innovative ideas and a strong environmental agenda (his Humvee fetish excepted?).

And then there is presidential hopeful, in many ways the Republican "front runner", John McCain who is anything but a traditional conservative.

It would sure be nice to see a new breed of politician cut in the mold of progressive, penny pinching reformers. Americans are tired of the old, tired, wasteful, and ineffective ideas of both traditional liberals who are stuck in the anti-business big-government mode and traditional conservatives who are stuck fighting for military imperialism and cultural norms that are no longer relevant to the changing and growing American experience.