This week’s stories have no unifying theme other than they kind of capture the end of term mood, a certain grumpiness on the part of the writer (Bjorn Lomborg’s tsk tsking of clean energy advocates, Paul Collier’s screed against immigration) or not altogether pleasant images (an elephant run amok in a wedding, modern conflict with bows and arrows). Happy grading! Or dissertating! Or turning in those final papers! Enjoy. (My wife pointed out a hopeful Iranian “Yes We Can” video of Rouhani so all is not bleak!).
Get off My Lawn: The Written Version
- Bjorn Lomborg, the skeptical “environmentalist” lambastes the renewables do-gooders with an inconvenient truth (that is kind of true but he still comes across as an a-hole) in his call to let the masses have their coal:
THERE’S a lot of hand-wringing about our warming planet, but billions of people face a more immediate problem: They are desperately poor, and many cook and heat their homes using open fires or leaky stoves that burn dirty fuels like wood, dung, crop waste and coal.
- Paul Collier bemoans those damn migrants who just want a better life but are making it so hard for their home countries with their brain drain, if only all those talented Haitians stayed put. He kind of has a point but maybe we should be trying to develop people rather than places (I’m kind of with Lant Pritchett on labor mobility):
Many on the left, for their part, don’t like to recognize that we’re taking away fairy godmothers. They prefer to believe that they’re helping poor people flee difficult situations at home. But we might be feeding a vicious circle, in which home gets worse precisely because the fairy godmothers leave.
Get off My Lawn: The Photographic Version
Big problem: Wedding goes really wrong in #Zimbabwe pic.twitter.com/d1n0VL6yBa via @Miganphyl29
— Calestous Juma (@calestous) December 1, 2013
Astonishing photographs of a modern battle using bows & arrows, somewhere in Kenya https://t.co/zYblzlvi5i via @TheatrumBelli
— Emma Redfern (@rememberthegoat) November 29, 2013
This Week in Conservation Bad News
- We may lose the monarch butterfly
In a paper last year, he [Lincoln Brower] cited three major factors: Deforestation in Mexico, recent bouts of severe weather, and the growth of herbicide-based agriculture destroying crucial milkweed flora in the Midwest.
Source: Washington Post – The total annual area occupied by overwintering monarch butterflies from 1994 through 2013 has declined significantly, with the all-time smallest area reported during the 2012–13 overwintering season. (Source: Brower et. al 2012 updated with data from the author for the past two years)
Hopeful Video: Yes We Can – Iranian Edition
- Some Iranian artists inspired by the Obama campaign made a music video of the new Iranian President Rouhani and Rouhani’s unofficial twitter feeds retweeted links to the video
That Paul Collier logic is really flawed, it’s not like if the “brains” stay in their homw countries they will have any productive venues. This is the magic entrepreneur assumption and ignores the role of institutional settings and technological frontiers in allowing productive growth. Migrants probably contribute way more in aggregate when they leave to economies where they get ten times higher salaries.
His logic isnt really flawed. Im pro immigration for a number of reasons but ‘brain drain’ is a problem for some, very specific, usually small and poor countries
https://econweb.umd.edu/~Lafortune/puc-readings/Beine_Docquier_Rapoport_2008.pdf
Some countries that are landlocked, poor, wracked by violence and bad governance may have limited chances of dramatically improving the living standards of their citizens any time soon. Some countries vulnerable to climate change may be come uninhabitable. In such situations, focusing on territorial-based development of a location rather than improving the conditions of the people, wherever they may be.
wherever they may be, may be the wrong strategy. Certainly, if you were an individual in one of those countries, it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to stay. Are people morally obligated to their national fortunes if they can make a better life for themselves elsewhere? There are certainly ethical implications of elites being able to opt out of their countries, and I can see an argument for states wanting to have their educated, talented folks return home, but there has to be an environment that attracts them home so they can put their skills to good use. Maybe modest curbs on unmitigated brain drain are okay, but coercive efforts to tamp down on exit options suggest that a country isn’t really a positive place for people to come back to. I think the diaspora will come back in droves when the timing is right but that often requires a cohort change in local leadership.