Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Patents Per Million Population - Europe and the Independent States
Thetable below gives the number of patents granted per million people for all countries
of Europe and the Confederation of Independent States.
Patents Granted Per Million Population, 1998 (1)
| Country | Patents |
|
Albania
|
-
|
|
Andorra
|
-
|
|
Armenia
|
8
|
|
Austria
|
165
|
|
Azerbaijan
|
-
|
|
Belarus
|
50
|
|
Belgium
|
72
|
|
Bosnia and Herzegovina
|
-
|
|
Bulgaria
|
23
|
|
Croatia
|
9
|
|
Cyprus
|
-
|
|
Czech Republic
|
28
|
|
Denmark
|
52
|
|
Estonia
|
1
|
|
Finland
|
187
|
|
France
|
205
|
|
Georgia
|
67
|
|
Germany
|
235
|
|
Greece
|
-
|
|
Hungary
|
26
|
|
Ireland
|
106
|
|
Italy
|
13
|
|
Kazakhstan
|
55
|
|
Kyrgyz Republic
|
14
|
|
Latvia
|
71
|
|
Lithuania
|
27
|
|
Luxembourg
|
202
|
|
Macedonia
|
19
|
|
Malta
|
18
|
|
Moldova
|
42
|
|
Netherlands
|
189
|
|
Norway
|
103
|
|
Poland
|
30
|
|
Portugal
|
6
|
|
Romania
|
71
|
|
Russia
|
131
|
|
Slovak Republic
|
24
|
|
Slovenia
|
105
|
|
Spain
|
42
|
|
Sweden
|
271
|
|
Switzerland
|
183
|
|
Tajikistan
|
2
|
|
Turkmenistan
|
10
|
|
Ukraine
|
84
|
|
United Kingdom
|
82
|
|
Uzbekistan
|
25
|
|
Yugoslavia
|
-
|
Footnotes:
1. United Nations. Human Development Report 2001.
pp.48-50.
Tags: Uncategorized
Earth Island Institute Typifies Patronizing Environmentalist Attitude Toward Developing World
During the World Summit on Sustainable Development, CNSNews.Com published and interview with Gar Smith, editor of the Earth Island Institute’s online journal The Edge. Smith typifies an often submerged but ever-present strand of Western environmentalism that romanticizes Third World poverty for its allegedly pro-environmental effects.
To Smith, for example, the big enemy is electricity. In this he echoes doomsayer Paul Ehrlich who once quipped that the worst thing in the world would be abundant, cheap energy. According to Smith,
I have been to villages in Africa that had a vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity. People who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing for their neighbors on foot-pedal sewing machines [now spend their time watching television].
Easy for some who edits an online newsletter to say. Perhaps Smith should be out making his own clothes instead of shoveling electrons around.
What is really sick is that Smith actually romanticizes the post-Soviet collapse of the Russian economy. According to Smith,
There is a solution to climate change and pollution. We saw it happen to Russia when their economy collapses. Their industrial plants closed down, the skies got clearer. Their air is a lot clearer now.
Of course mortality rates in Russia skyrocketed — it is one of the few places in the world where life expectancy declined in the 1990s. I guess if you can stomach thousands of additional dead babies, that might be a small price to pay for a little cleaner air.
Why is it that people who never have to worry about starving or not having access to safe water or medicine turn around and produce this poverty pornography which makes living in squalor and with high mortality rates seem like some lost golden age?
Source:
Lifestyles of the Poor and Obscure. Katherine Mangu-Ward, Weekly Standard, August 28, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
The Idiocy of a Global Wealth Tax
At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September, French president Jacques Chirac was on hand to support a variation of a global tax on wealth generated by globalization.
Reuters quoted an anonymous source as saying that this globalization tax,
It could be a tax on airplane tickets, on carbon dioxide, on health products sold in industrialized countries, and indeed on international financial transactions. . . . The idea of wanting to hold back a small share (of global wealth) to relieve poverty is not a mad idea at all.
The idea of a global wealth tax may not be mad but it is definitely stupid. When are these people going to realize that the problem is not that taxes are too low in the developed world, but rather are far to high in the developing world. Rampant corruption, undemocratic regimes, excessive militarism, lack of a free press — these are the factors that are currently taxing developing countries to death.
What the developing world needs is a way to repeal these taxes that are dragging down their economies. Do that, and the developing world won’t have to obsess over such bizarre schemes as a global wealth tax.
Source:
Chirac to back “globalization tax” talks. Reuters, September 2, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Worldwide Land Use Patterns: 1700-1990
NASA has produced a fascinating series of maps of the world illustrating changing land-use patterns from 1700 through 1990. NASA’s main reason for creating this series of maps is to advance a hypothesis about land use and global warming, but a quick look at the maps themselves reveals another interesting observation:
Land Use - 1700
Land Use - 1900
Land Use - 1990
Among environmentalists, it is a shibboleth that preservation of existing environments and ecosystems is a priori a good thing. But on this map the parts of the world that changed the least from 1700-1990 are among the poorest regions of the world.
Just take one long look at Africa — almost no land use change in 300 years, and nothing but vast tracts of unending poverty.
Source:
Landcover Changes May Rival Greenhouse Gases As Cause Of Climate Change. NASA, October 1, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Was British Group Negligent in Testing of Bangladesh Wells?
As part of a UNICEF program designed to create over a million wells for poor people in Bangladesh, Great Britain’s National Environment Research Council’s British Geological Survey was brought to Bangladesh to test the potability of water. The BGS tested the water and certified it was clean and safe for drinking. Unfortunately, they never tested the water for arsenic.
Over the next few years, people in the area began reporting skin diseases which are similar to arsenic poisoning. The BGS was called back in to test the water in 1998 and found high levels of arsenic in the water.
Now two British law firms are suing the NERC and the BGS arguing that it was negligent for not testing for arsenic in 1992.
The geologists argue, however, that at the time there was no good reason to test for arsenic. As the BGS put it in a press release on the lawsuit,
Arsenic only occurs in a water-soluble form in certain hydrogeological conditions. It is one of a large number of trace elements which are therefore not routinely tested for in groundwaters unless there is independent evidence to suggest its presence.
Since the area in Bangladesh did not meet those hydrological conditions, arsenic was not tested for. Several years later, however, researchers began to realize that arsenic could occur in the sort of aquifers present in Bangladesh.
The lawsuit against the BGS argues that since arsenic was found in groundwater in nearby West Bengal, that common sense dictates that the water in Bangladesh should have been tested for arsenic as well.
Sources:
Bangladeshis sue British geologists for ‘largest mass poisoning ever’. Andy Coghlant, New Scientist, Sept. 7, 2002.
Article on Arsenic Poisoning in Bangladesh. Martyn Day and Bozena Michalowska, April 2002.
Bangladesh claims against the British Geological Survey.
Tags: Uncategorized
Arab World Faces Major Long Term Problems
The World Economic Forum this month released a report highlighting the enormous difficulties that the Arab world currently faces and which are likely to get dramatically worse unless drastic change comes to the region.
While the developed world is rapidly aging, the Arab world still has a very youthful population — and a youthful population that is currently relegated to high levels of poverty and unemployment.
In the Arab world as a whole, 40 percent of the population is under the age of 14. Meanwhile, unemployment in the region hovers around 15 percent.
The Arab world’s population is projected to increase from 280 million today to over 400 million in 2020. The last thing the region needs is an abundance of young people without jobs and little future.
Of course things didn’t need to be this way — the Arab world is also one of the richest regions in the world thanks to large oil deposits and other mineral wealth. But that wealth has been squandered away and much of the focus of governments in the region has been on geopolitical issues such as the status of Israel.
The United Nations Development Programme also issued a report on the state of the Arab world, noting that the failure to grant women meaningful rights, endemic state corruption, and substandard educational systems all work to prevent the Arab world from lifting itself out of the dire straits it finds itself in.
Unfortunately, the Arab world appears unlikely to correct any of these problems in the near future.
Source:
Arab world ‘faces further stagnation’. The BBC, September 9, 2002.
First Arab World Competitiveness Report Launched by the World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum, September 9, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
The Importance of Decoding the Rice Genome
The BBC this month ran a story featuring University of Indiana professors Kevin Livingston and Loren Rieseberg arguing that the recent decoding of the genomes of two closely related rice species is the most important result of genetic research to date — more important, they argue, than the decoding of the human genome.
The genomes of indica, a subspecies of rice that dominates in China, and japonica, which is found in dryer parts of Asia such as Japan, were both recently decoded. Since rice is the most important source of food in the world, providing the staple diet for more than half the world’s population, Livingston and Rieseberg told the BBC that this will have enormous implications for the future of rice and other crops,
Because of the importance of rice and its status as a model for all grasses, these sequences will provide a basis for future genetic improvement of all cereal grains, our most important food resource.
Interestingly, the rice genome is huge, with estimates of more than 50,000 genes. That makes it much larger than the human genome.
The main difference between rice, maize and wheat is not that they have different genes, but rather that they have similar genes that are organized differently. This means that the things learned from the rice genome will also provide scientists with plenty of leads on improving wheat, maize and other crops.
The genomics revolution will almost certainly lead to changes and improvements in food crops that will likely dwarf the effects of past such events such as the Green Revolution.
Source:
Rice code is ‘greatest achievement’. David Whitehouse, The BBC, September 6, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Corruption Still Rampant in Most Countries
While the Sustainable Development Summit poured millions of dollars down the drain for speeches about ending poverty, Transparency International released its latest report outlining one of the major reasons why poverty endures in the developing world — corruption.
In its survey of 102 countries, more than two-thirds of the countries had ratings indicating that corruption is a major problem — including in the Sustainable Development Summit’s host country of South Africa.
As Transparency International’s chairman Peter Eigen said in a news conference, this ongoing endemic corruption in the developing world all but guarantees continuing poverty in these nations.
The 10 most corrupt nations in Transparency International’s 2002 rankings were.
1. Bangladesh
2. Nigeria
3. Paraguay
4. Madagascar
5. Angola
6. Kenya
7. Indonesia
8. Azerbaijan
9. Uganda
10. Moldova
The complete rankings are available at Transparency International’s web site at http://www.transparency.org/.
Sources:
Corruption ‘rampant’ in two-thirds of countries. Philip Blenkinsop, Reuters, August 28, 2002.
Transparency International
Corruption Perceptions Index 2002. Transparency International, August 28, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Living It Up at the Sustainable Development Summit
Despite efforts to prevent a World Food Summit style fiasco, the United Nations was unable to completely avoid criticism over the huge amount of money spent at its Sustainable Development Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
British tabloid the Sun published details on some of the food being served for VIP delegates at Johannesburg’s five-star Michelangelo Hotel. They included,
- 5,000 oysters
- 1,000 lbs. of lobster and shellfish
- 4,400 lbs. of fillet steak and chicken breasts
- 450 lbs. of salmon
- 1,000 lbs. of bacon and sausage
All of it, as The Sun noted, being paid for ultimately by the taxpayers of participating nations. The newspaper also noted inconvenient facts such as,
The 60,000 summit delegates from 182 countries are expected to drink 80,000 bottles of mineral water during the conference.
Yet each day 6,000 African children die from diseases caused by contaminated water.
Ah, priorities.
Source:
Lobsters, caviar and brandy for MPs at summit on starvation. Neil Syson, The Sun (UK), September 2, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Is Nature More Profitable Than Development?
A group of U.S. and U.K. researchers recently published a study in Science making claiming that conserving wild places is 100 times more profitable than developing them. How did they arrive at these conclusions? Easy — they made them up.
On the face of it, the claim is absurd. Humanity’s ability to manipulate and alter its environment has been responsible for all human progress. Those parts of the world that are the most developed are also the wealthiest and have the best measurable outcomes on factors such as life expectancy or infant mortality, while areas where development has been minimal suffer in poverty, disease and relatively horrific outcomes on life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures.
Here’s how the BBC describes how the researchers reached their odd conclusion that pristine nature is more valuable than human development (emphasis added),
The authors say an ecosystem’s economic value can be measured in terms of the goods and services it provides — climate regulation, for example, water filtration, soil formation, and sustainably harvested plants and animals.
Pricing them is difficult, since many of the goods and services are not bought and sold in the conventional economy.
So economists assign values to these “non-marketed services” in different ways, perhaps according to the cost of replacing them or assessing how much people would be willing to pay for them.
In other words, they make up the values. How much is climate regulation worth? Whatever you want it to be.
According to the study authors, half of the total value of an ecosystem is lost when it is developed, which begs the question as to why some of the most developed places in the world such as New York City or Hong Kong are not mired in poverty rather than among two of the wealthiest cities in world history.
Source:
Nature ‘pays biggest dividends’. The BBC, August 8, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized