Under the terms of the treaty, it would be ratified once countries representing 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions had signed it. That point was reach when Russia ratified the treaty in November 2004.

The United States has rejected the treaty arguing that it would be too expensive too implement controls on greenhouse gases, and that it would put the U.S. at an unfair economic disadvantage to make such changes given that China, India and other countries will not be forced to make the same cuts.

President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1999, but the Senate has refused to ratify it ever since, and is unlikely to do so in the forseeable future.

Even among those countries which did ratify the treaty, reducing emissions is likely to turn into an accounting game with high-emissions countries trading emissions rights with low-emissions countries without making much of a dent in emissions. This is one of the reasons Russia changed course and finally ratified the treaty since it will likely benefit economically from such emissions trading. As the Washington Post summed it up,

Moreover, they [the United States and Australia] say, many countries, including Japan and several in the European Union, are unlikely to meet their emission-control targets and will have to buy “credits” — most likely from Russia, which will have plenty to sell because many of its industrial plants shut down during the economic meltdown in the 1990s.

“They are going to take credit for sagging economies and flat populations,” said James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Bush’s proposals for voluntary emission controls and incentives to develop clean technologies would have as much impact on American emissions as Europe would achieve under Kyoto, he said.

Critics counter that binding emissions quotas are needed to create the changes necessary to reduce the threat of global warming, but its difficult to see how a shell game in which major CO2 producers are exempt altogether will accomplish anything beyond symbolic.

Source:

Kyoto Treaty Takes Effect Today. Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, February 16, 2005.

Kyoto Protocol comes into force. The BBC, February 16, 2005.

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How pathetic. The developed world should eliminate their ridiculous trade barriers with developing nations permanently. Such barriers have done far more long-term damage to the developing world than the tragic — but one-time — horrors created by the December 2004 tsunami.

Along with further worsening poverty in those countries, trade barriers directly contribute to corruption and other problems in developing nations by making it difficult for enterprising individuals to succeed in the market.

Anti-free traders shouldn’t worry, however — special interest groups here in the United States were quick to defend their particular fiefdoms from liberalization.

Deborah Long, the hack in charge of speaking for the Southern Shrimp Alliance, argued that suspending duties on Asian shrimp imports would be unfair. Lloyd Woods, who serves the same role with the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, argued that the best way to help Sri Lanka, Thailand and India wasn’t to eliminate textile tariffs against those country, but rather impose import quotes on Chinese textiles!

Straight from the land of the tariff and the home of the scared s–tless by the prospect of truly free trade.

Source:

Rich nations are urged to ease trade with affected countries. Elizabeth Becker, The New York Times, January 15, 2005.

Developed Countries Should Lower Trade Barriers, Period is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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The goal is to eradicate polio from India by the end of 2005.

So far this year, India has reported 85 cases of polio, the lowest number ever since polio statistics have been recorded. In 1994, when efforts to eradicate polio from India began in earnest, there were 4,791 cases reported.

Deepak Kapoor, chairman of Rotary International in India which has played an important role in polio eradication in India and other parts of the world, told New Kerala,

If polio can be completely wiped off by next year, it would be a great victory, not just for India, but for the international community as a whole. It would induce a renewed confidence in our efforts against other diseases such as malaria and AIDS.

Unfortunately, eradicating polio in Africa might prove a bigger challenge. Planned vaccinations in Ivory Coast, for example, had to be canceled due to the unstable political and military situation in that country.

Sources:

India starts ‘final’ anti-polio push. Ania Lichtarowicz, The BBC, November 21, 2004.

India inches closer to eradicating polio. New Kerala, November 21, 2004.

UN giving kids in India polio shots. United Press International, November 21, 2004.

More than 170 Million Indian Children Receive Polio Vaccination is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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In India, only 7 percent of the population has a telephone. But that has increased from 1 percent compared to a decade ago, thanks in large measure to cellular service that is cheaper and easier to obtain than India’s state-run landline system.

The BBC reports that usage costs for mobile phones in India hovers at around 1 cent a minute, making it much more affordable than traditional telephone services, and that as many as 1.5 million Indians sign up for mobile phone service every month.

Meanwhile the BBC reports that Africa has the world’s fastest growing mobile phone market, expanding at an annual rate of 65 percent. About 6 percent of people in Africa use mobile phones and that number is expected to expand to as much as 20 percent by the end of the decade.

Source:

A mobile vision for Africa. The BBC, July 5, 2004.

Mobiles outstrip India landlines. The BBC, July 2, 2004.

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According to figures produced for the United Nations World Population Day, which falls today, China is currently the world’s most puoplous country with 1,289 million, followed by India with 1,069 million, and the US third a long way behind with 292 million.

The main reason is that India has never followed China’s Draconian “one child” policy. At the height of the birth control campaign by the Chinese communist government couples who stopped at one child were given preferences in education, healthcare, housing, and jobs. Couples who produced an “out-of-quote” child could be fined or lose access to education or other privileges.

Though the policy has been softened, the impact of the period when it was applied most harshly is now being felt.

“Between the 1960s and the 1980s, China experienced one of the most rapid declines ever recorded in a national population. In just 15 years, the number of children a woman would expect to have fell from about six to just over two,” says Professor Nancy E. Riley, an expert on population and social change in China at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.

As a democracy India has not been able or willing to use coercion, though it has tried persuasion. A study called India Project by a team of experts from the London School of Economics, led by Professor Tim Dyson, estimates that on current trends India’s population will touch 1.4 billion by 2026, 1.5 billion by 2036 and could approach 1.6 billion by 2051.

It’s truly amazing that a newspaper can produce such pathetic reporting.

First, the reporter emphasizes that China’s total fertility rate has fallen, supposedly due to coercion there, and gives the impression that India has not see comparable gains because it is unwilling to adopt a one-child policy. But in the same period, without any coercion, India’s total fertility rate fell 42 percent. The current rate is 3.1 and falling. That was a very impressive feat, but one you would never know about from reading The Scotsman.

Second, The Scotsman attributes the large decline in fertility from the 1960s to the 1980s to the one-child policy. But since the one-child policy wasn’t instituted until 1979, it’s ridiculous to attribute all of the drop to the one-child efforts. In fact, the bulk of the large drop in fertility in China occurred before the one-child policy was instituted. The TFR in China fell from 6 in 1970 to 2.8 in 1979, all without the draconian policies that The Scotsman asserts is singularly responsible for the decline.

Third, The Scotsman sets up a classic false dichotomy that just won’t go away. In this world, countries have only two choices — dictatorship and declines in population growth or democracy and increases in population growth. But the countries with the lowest total fertility rates in the world are democracies — countries like Italy and Spain.

Reporters might actually want to look at the data instead of simply inserting every population story into the same erroneous molds.

Source:

India to overtake China as most populous nation. Ian Mather, The Scotsman, July 11, 2004.

India On Pace to Become Most Populous Country is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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This is a traditional method that was commonly used before the introduction of DDT in the 1950s and is once again being looked at as part of the solution to malaria.

The idea is to stock ponds, rivers and wells with fish like guppies that feed on the mosquito larvae. Dr. VP Sharma of the COuncil for Medical Research said that while the technique could not be used everywhere, in places where it was appropriate to use it had virtually eliminated a subspecies of malaria-carrying mosquito in some districts where mosquito-eating fish were introduced.

According to the BBC, Sharma credited the fish introduction program for India’s falling malaria rate which declined by about 200,000 cases per year after the program’s introduction. Sharma did add that, “It will take another five years before the real impact would be known” from the numerous fish introduction programs that the World Bank is underwriting.

Source:

Fish eat away at malaria in India. Richard Black, BBC, January 5, 2004.

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The agreement calls on the most developed of these countries — Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka — to virtually eliminate tariffs with the other countries by 2013, but gives the other countries until 2016 to lower their tariffs. There is, however, a provision that allows countries to maintain a list of “sensitive” products on which tariffs can be maintained.

Beyond advancing the cause of free trade, the real importance of this pat is the shot in the arm it could give to trade between Pakistan and India. Currently, trade between the two rivals is estimated at about $1.5 billion. That could double under the free trade regimen. And, of course, the more the two countries become economically intertwined, the higher the cost (and hence, the lower the risk) of war between them.

According to the BBC, there are now more than 200 regional free trade agreements.

Sources:

South Asia ‘agrees to free trade’. The BBC, January 2, 2004.

South Asia signs free trade pact. Reuters, January 6, 2004.

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The children died after being administer shots containing vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency is a major problem in India.

UNICEF maintains that the medicine it delivered were perfectly safe, but that poorly trained health care workers in the Indian state of Assam gave some children unsafe doses of the medication leading to the deaths.

The judge hearing the case did find that health care workers in Assam were partially responsible, but also cited UNICEF for changing the method of delivering the vitamin A from a traditional two-milliliter spoon dosage to a five milliliter dosage taken by cup.

UNICEF said that it brief the Assam government on the changes and the proper way to administer the vitamin A.

No word on whether or not UNICEF plans to appeal the judgment.

Sources:

India child deaths blamed on UNICEF. Subir Bhaumik, The BBC, September 3, 2003.

India: 14 children dead after UNICEF vitamin programme. Pravda, November 19, 2001.

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The BBC reports that researchers at the Epidemiological Research Center in Madras, India, calculated that as many as half of the tuberculosis deaths among men in that country would not have occurred if it were not for smoking, and that as many as 75 percent of tuberculosis cases in the country can be traced directly to smoking.

Tuberculosis can apparently lie dormant and inactive in the lungs, but smoking reduces the lung’s natural defenses against tuberculosis.

The researchers compared 43,000 men who died in the late 1990s with 35,000 men who were still living. Of the 43,000 deaths, 4,000 were from tuberculosis and researchers estimated that only about 2,000 of those would have occurred if it hadn’t been for smoking.

The BBC quoted Indian researcher Vendhan Gajalakshmi as saying,

Almost 200,000 people a year in India die from TB because they smoked — and half of these are still only in their 30s, 40s or early 50s when they die. Our study indicates that in rural India about 12% of smokers, but only 3% of non-smokers, die prematurely from TB.

Sources:

Smoking and mortality from tuberculosis and other diseases in India: retrospective study of 43000 adult male deaths and 35000 controls.
Vendhan Gajalakshmi, Richard Petob, Thanjavur Santhanakrishna Kanakaa and Prabhat Jhac, The Lancet, Vol. 362, Issue 9383, 16 August 2003, Pages 507-515.

Smoking feeds India TB scourge. The BBC, August 15, 2003.

Study links men’s smoking, tuberculosis deaths in India. Associated Press, August 15, 2003.

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AIDS is spreading rapidly in India. In 2001, the number of AIDS sufferers in the country was under 4 million. A report released in July by India’s National AIDS Control Organization estimated that at the end of 2002 there were 4.5 million people infected with HIV in India. According to NACO director Meenakshi Datta Ghosh,

HIV/AIDS in India is not only confined to high-risk groups and in cities, but is gradually spreading into rural areas and the general population.

Like other countries, however, educating people about AIDS has faced opposition from conservative and religious elements in India. India’s current government is strongly Hindu-nationalist and members of the government have spoken out against AIDS education efforts. For example, Indian Health minister Sushma Swaraj has gone on record as saying that AIDS education ads should not feature condoms. Instead, Swaraj prefers an program of abstinence-oriented education.

India also faces the same sort of problems that other developing nations have run into — its people are so poor they can’t afford anti-AIDS drugs. Indian pharmaceutical firms openly produce generic versions of anti-retroviral drugs, but even the locally produced drugs are still too expensive for the vast majority of Indian HIV sufferers.

Sources:

Vajpayee calls for more political courage against AIDS epidemic. Elizabeth Roche, Daily Times (Pakistan), July 27, 2003.

Aids threat alarms Indian PM. The BBC, July 26, 2003.

Indian Prime Minister Says Country Needs to Pay More Attention to HIV Crisis is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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