Motorists pack a junction during rush hour in Taipei in 2009. Taiwan's capital is notorious for its traffic jams, even though many motorists choose motorcycles and scooters over cars. Last week, the world population ticked over to 7 Billion people, prompting more warnings from United Nations analysts that population growth increases pollution, deforestation, and climate change.

Photo via thebigpicture.com

What follows is an extract from an article by Matthew Herper from Forbes Magazine titled "With Vaccines, Bill Gates Changes The World Again".

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Bill’s dad had set up a dinner at Seattle’s posh Columbia Tower Club with the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). While the meeting started with birth control—among other efforts, PATH taught Chinese condom makers to test their products before shipping them—Gates began consuming data that startled him. In society after society, he saw, when the mortality rate falls—specifically, below 10 deaths per 1,000 people—the birth rate follows, and population growth stabilizes. “It goes against common sense,” Gates says. Most parents don’t choose to have eight children because they want to have big families, it turns out, but because they know many of their children will die.

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Read the whole thing here. It's interesting stuff and inspiring to see someone who has the financial capacity to make a positive difference actually doing it.

 

 

For the last few days I've been resisting weighing in with my opinion on the Australian Carbon Tax. For starters, I try to avoid overly political commentary on my website, which is sometimes difficult as I'm quite an avid follower of politics and and as those that know me personally will attest to, will happily wax lyrical about all manner of political subjects. However, regarding any controversial topics, I do believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so I do keep an open mind when discussing such things, and will always hear and examine different viewpoints before forming my own views on a subject. I should clarify a little more here actually, to emphasise the purpose of this blog/article/whatever the heck these things are: I think everyone is entitled to their own well-formed opinion.

So, getting to the point, I think the Australian Carbon Tax is a good thing. There, I said it. Cards are on the table. However, I came to this conclusion after studying the figures and weighing up the alternative, the ultimate conclusion of which seems to be a fairly grimy, polluted, and distinctly unpleasant atmosphere. The science is in on climate change and there's no point in denying it anymore. I have read both sides of the argument, and the side that states that climate change is not man made is built on extremely shaky and somewhat inconclusive theoretical evidence. I do, of course, encourage everyone to make up their own mind about the issue, but in order to do so I firmly suggest looking into it yourselves, doing your own research and not blindly following what anyone in TV or the media (or me) might suggest.

The amount of political vitriol and scare tactics that has been going on around this carbon tax is simply staggering in the ineptitude of its intelligence and logical vacuum. The Opposition's main argument to this carbon tax seems to actually not be based on the tax itself, but the fact that the Prime Minister lied about establishing one in the first place before the last election. Trust issues of the PM aside, when one actually looks at the tax, it doesn't shape up to be too bad. But that doesn't make it any easier to convince those who disagree otherwise, particularly when most mainstream media seems to have no love for this particular government at all.

In a nutshell, there are really only very few people and families that will be paying more (very slightly more, I might add) under this scheme, after all the compensation through tax cuts that the government is delivering as part of the package. It should also be stated that those who do end up paying a little bit more are those that can more than likely afford it (incomes over $150,000). Essentially, what is going on is that 'big polluters' are the ones actually paying the carbon tax (set initially at $23 per tonne from July 2012), and the government is trying to offset proposed increases in cost to the consumer from these 'big polluters'. Treasury estimates that the average increased cost per week to households will be (in a worst-case scenario) $9.90. The average offsetting benefits (through tax cuts, family payments etc) to the average household will be $10.10. These figures are also based on current average household expenses, and doesn't take into account potential cost saving measures that can be made through using electricity more sparingly, driving the car less and/or driving a more economical car, and buying products that have a lower carbon footprint (thus having no need to increase their price to offset their company's carbon tax bill). It's actually as much of a tax and welfare reform package than any kind of environmental policy, which is maybe why the conservative political spectrum seems to be so riled up about it.

But I'm not writing this to convince you about how the carbon tax is a good thing, and why I think so. There are plenty of other articles out there to do that. This one by Ben Eltham in New Matilda is particularly fair, ethical and gives a good account of the pros and cons of the scheme. There are other good ones here from the ABC's analysis, The Age, and Dennis Atkins in The Courier Mail. My aim is to point out what I see as an alarming amount of misinformation that only seems to be breeding more ignorance on this particular subject, but also any subject. I might risk sounding like a screaming lefty, but the rise of ignorance in our society is of great concern to me. You can argue that it all boils down to wider education and literacy, amongst other things, but the fact that so many are willing to base their very own opinion on what a single and possibly not so credible source informs them is downright scary. There is no doubt that there now seems to be very few completely unbiased journalism, news publications or channels out there, so it's becoming increasingly harder to form a reasonable and fair opinion on something, especially when every article one reads leans one political way or the other. Political commentary and editorial is absolutely a good thing, but when it starts to pass itself off as factual, or the actual 'news', then the amount of misinformation that is distributed to an increasingly less widely-read general public, and ultimately influences public opinion, is of great concern.

What I guess I'm urging the individual to do is to actually take the time to look into any particular political or socio-political and ethical arguments or viewpoints before arriving at a conclusion, or even worse, voicing that conclusion publicly and aggressively. Even more so, should someone not share your opinion, respect that, be willing to hear them out, and have an informed debate on the subject. Then maybe we wouldn't have all this hot air flying around about this particular tax that is, ironically, kind of a tax on hot air.

While green alternatives may now appear ubiquitous, they’re not actually as common as we think. Take electricity. In 2010, one-tenth of our electricity came from renewable sources. But most of that was hydroelectric power, not wind or solar—and hydroelectric output has actually dropped by almost a third since 1997. That fall has more than offset the rise of wind power, meaning we now generate less electricity from renewables than we did in 1997.

Nuclear generation has risen, making our electricity output slightly less carbon-intensive than back then. But whether it will continue to rise in the wake of Japan’s nuclear disaster remains to be seen.

- extract from "The Green Revolution Is Neither", by Megan McArdle, published in The Atlantic Magazine, July/August 2011 as part of "The 14 Biggest Ideas Of The Year".

Read the whole article here.