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Theme : globalchange
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Solutions after Stern
Since the Brundtland report, now coming up on its 20th anniversary, we’ve had a international framework for sustainable development: environmental problems needed action from both the north and the south. Now we are faced with Stern’s latest economic modeling, and the point is the essentially the same: we’re in this together. Especially developed nations need to invest now to reduce our impact on the planet. We get it. Climate change is the most colossal market failure...
from : mollywebb
3rd November 2006
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We've got global challenges - can Europe deal?
An impressive list of speakers joined the LSE event The Global Age: Europe, India, China last night where Tony Giddens was launching two books, both on the challenges to (and strengths of) the European social model. Europe's welfare states are in need of reform, but the European approach of 'social investment' is the only way forward. The major challenges facing the world today are global - climate change was often mentioned. And though the US, India and China are important powers, it is...
from : mollywebb
10th October 2006
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The cold war in Asia | In dangerous waters
Economist article on the delicate political relations between China, Japan and South Korea
from : mollywebb
10th October 2006
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The world economy | Surprise! | Economist.com
The world economy | Surprise! | Economist.com
from : mollywebb
18th September 2006
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YIMBY (yes in my back yard)
Yes, I'll take a power plant in my back yard, but certainly not a nuclear one. How?s that? Let's review...Phase I - My economic textbook defined utilities as a 'natural monopoly' - I'm sure you remember the lesson. One producer would be most efficient and therefore ensure the lowest prices. (That textbook also assumed that people make 'rational' choices based on perfect information.) Phase II - Governments usher in an era of privatisation, because actually it is competing producers who ensure...
from : mollywebb
18th May 2006
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Friday Rant
Imperialism - It's still here and it?s more rational than ever?I picked up yesterday on the verbal fracas between George Monbiot and Jenny Tonge regarding her comments in the House of Lords on Botswanan Bushmen. Today saw Lady Tonge in the Guardian attempting to repudiate the suggestion that her views about these people being in the ?Stone Age? might have been a touch, um, crude.Her piece included this remark on the ?Stone Age? comparison:?A more accurate description would have been...
from : petebradwell
24th March 2006
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Korean wave culture craze
Che Jiu is Japanese, but was raised in Korea by a Korean mobster after he killed her father in a terrorist attack. Her love interest is a Korean man who was raised in Japan (who somehow is connected to the whole gangster episode, but I couldn't figure out exactly how.) The drama takes place in Japan today. Nuclear data is stolen. Che Jiu is a computer programmer. She's just found out her father isn't her father. You get the idea. I spent a long lunch with former colleagues yesterday, one of...
from : mollywebb
22nd March 2006
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Peaking interest
More and more people seem to be talking about 'peak oil'. It's the idea that we may be near, or even already at, the peak of oil production and that from here on in the economics of our carbon based economy will change very drastically. As disruptive changes go, it would be pretty dramatic and affect highly industrialised nations very profoundly. Certainly an issue to watch.See Wired for more info.
from : paulmiller
2nd June 2005
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Knowing your unknowns
Intriguing piece in Scientific American by three RAND bods about a new approach they've developed to thinking about the future. It concentrates not on prediction of the future but working out the implications of actions taken today on the long term future by testing them against a load of scenarios to see which one is most 'robust'. More here.[via Future Now]
from : paulmiller
11th April 2005
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Clouds gathering in the green movement?
Last year, prominent environmentalist and originator of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock caused a storm in the green movement by suggesting that nuclear power may be a necessary technology to avert climate change.Now Stewart Brand has written a piece called Environmental Heresies in the current Techology Review arguing, again, that it's a debate the environmental movement needs to have. It's interesting for me because of what Brand describes as the two influences on the green movement -...
from : paulmiller
8th April 2005
