Poverty Impeding Development

In the 1980s, the advent of some newly-industrializing countries (NICs) in east Asia, such as Taiwan and South Korea, was generating excitement around the world that the gap between the least developed countries (LDCs) and the developed countries (DCs) then had a viable bridge through foreign direct-investment; that is, what had been a dichotomy was becoming a spectrum. The hope that globally-circulating capital might raise even the LDCs out of poverty. Of course, there was scarce any thought that the combined pollution of an economically developing world would raise global air and sea temperatures above 1.5C. Human beings are too near-sighted for that, and, of course, there is the allure of profits and higher salaries and wages. Also, the sheer inexorability, or stubborn persistence, of poverty in scaring off rather than being lifted up from foreign-direct investment may have been minimized by the hope. Roughly forty years later, Oriana Bandiera of the London School of Economics spoke on the theory that economic opportunities are impacted by how much wealth a person has at the outset—the alternative theory being that the opportunities are just as good for the poor as for the rich because differences are due to exogenous (i.e., outside) factors. The micro-level condition of a country’s poor impacts the attractiveness of a country to foreign direct-investment.

 

The full essay is at "Poverty Impeding Development."

Carbon-Dioxide Emissions amid Global Warming: A Species’ Death-Wish

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning rose 5.9 percent in 2010, the largest amount on record, according to an analysis released in early December, 2011 by the Global Carbon Project. According to the analysis as reported by the New York Times, “the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.” 

The full essay is at "Carbon Emissions: A Species' Death-Wish."

Food Prices Rising: Will the Global Population Growth Outstrip Food Supply?

I contend that it is in our interest as a species to see that our population size is managed toward a steady state rather than as a maximizing variable (i.e., schizogenic). In fact, we have a right and obligation as one body to see that our various limbs are coordinated such that none engages in hypertrophy. That is to say, the whole has the right to protect its viability by arresting excessive growth in one of the parts. That much of the world's population growth takes place in the developing world does not mean that this right, or obligation, of the world is somehow a plot by the developed countries to oppress the poorer countries. In fact, much of the pain of the higher food prices is in the developing world rather than in the industrialized countries, so it is in the interest of the developing countries to accede to the world’s demand that their population growth be stopped.

The full essay is at "Food Prices and Global Population Growth."