9 "kicking away the ladder."

I had a very "interesting" guest lecturer yesterday in my International Development class who talked us through, or tried to at least, the idea of institutions, organizations, markets, hierarchies, accountability, comparative advantage, etc etc, the list goes on. His obvious frustration with people not having read the readings, or in my case not having understood a word of it, only pushed people to try to impress him which in the end worked in some cases, but in mine, failed. But! There was one idea that I rest on that had some meaning - the idea of developed nations "kicking away the ladder" of economic development. In the book so titled "Kicking Away the Ladder" by Ha-Joon Chang, we read the first two chapters which offered historical accounts of the NDCs (now-developed countries) on their road to initial development. The issue: presently, countries are claiming (or in some cases, are forcing) developing countries to begin/continue economic development with low tariffs, which the author describes as completely opposite to the way that which the NDCs became developed in the first place. Britain, the US (especially us!), and other countries that are now considered wealthy and industrialized, all started with high tariffs and infant industry protection ideals, something that they now preach to developing countries NOT to do. This historical look seems to claim that developed nations are essentially pulling away the ladder and increasing the gap between wealthy and poor nations. But WHY?

While we were only required to read the first two chapters (which I chugged right on through), the author never really answered the Why question. Maybe he does further on in the book, but I'd like to postulate a bit on the topic. Are "we" (I say we because I do belong to a developed nation) doing this on purpose? Is this a conscious effort by the world's superpowers to always stay superpowers? I'm not one to believe in conspiracy theories, so this may just be something that we do sub-consciously. (I hope.) Obviously major contenders are popping up here and there, China being one example, India being another. But poverty and hunger are still rampant in these countries, not to mention the millions upon millions of babies that are born every second (I exaggerate a tad).

So then the question becomes this: Which is more important - economic development/growth or human development/growth? I personally know my opinion, but what about the governments of these nations? And what about the advisors from NDCs giving false hope in low tariffs? This doesn't have to be a zero-sum world, in my opinion. There can be a win-win-win-win... situation. So why can't we look out for everyone? Why can't we look back into our own history, one with record high tariffs, and say, gee whiz. Maybe we're giving the wrong advice. We sure should rethink this. If only, right?

8 "i'm just trying to get people to think."

I apologize again for not being able to write an original post. Grad school has taken over my life! I promise that this is the last non-me post for a while. This story is a bit old, but very relevant to what I am studying. Some questions: how will this man's story influence the perception of environmental activists? Do you have any sympathy towards this man and his cause? Is my favorite book dead because of him?

Discovery Channel HQ hostages freed as gunman shot dead

BBC News

1 September 2010

"Police chief Thomas Manger: "There are other suspected devices in the building"

A gunman who took three hostages at the Discovery Communications headquarters in the US has been shot dead by police and his captives have been set free.

The man had canisters strapped to his chest and a handgun when he entered the building near Washington DC, police said.

Officers opened fire because they thought the gunman was about to detonate his explosives, they added.

The police had held several hours of talks with the man.

Discovery employees were evacuated from the building shortly after the incident began at about 1700 GMT.

The area around the building in Silver Spring, Maryland, was sealed off as police negotiated with the man. After several hours, police began to fear for the safety of the hostages, said Montgomery County Police Chief J Thomas Manger.

He said a man had entered the Discovery headquarters through the main entrance wearing what appeared to be "metallic canisters" on his clothes.

The man then pulled out a handgun and told everyone to remain still.

Unnamed police officials quoted by the US media named the gunman as James Jay Lee, a man in his 40s known for protesting outside the building.

The US broadcaster NBC reported that one of their producers had a brief telephone conversation with the gunman while he was holding the hostages.

The man came on the line unexpectedly when the journalist called the Discovery Communications building to find out what was going on.

NBC reported that the gunman identified himself as James J Lee and said: "I have a gun and I have a bomb. I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off."

Demands

A man called James Lee of San Diego, California, was arrested outside Discovery's headquarters in 2008 after throwing thousands of dollars into the air in protest against the network, according to The Gazette, a local newspaper.

Mr Lee said he threw the money because Discovery's programming had little to do with saving the planet.

He reportedly was also the author of the website savetheplanetprotest.com, where he demanded that the Discovery Channel broadcast programmes that would help "to save the planet".

A spokesman for Discovery Communications said the company had known the gunman before this incident but "not taken his threats or demands seriously".

Discovery Communications reaches 1.5bn subscribers in 180 countries through networks like Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and the Science Channel."

Author denies Discovery gunman James Lee's interpretation of 'My Ishmael'

Washington Post
Wednesday, September 1, 2010

"The gunman who took hostages at Discovery Communications' headquarters in Silver Spring was apparently inspired by the author of a popular series about a telepathic ape who tries to save humankind from problems such as overpopulation, but the writer said Wednesday that he is baffled by James J. Lee's interpretation of his book.

Daniel Quinn, 75, wrote a four-book series including "My Ishmael," the 1997 novel Lee mentioned as the first in his list of 11 demands. In an online manifesto, Lee said the Discovery Channel "must" run daily, prime-time shows "based on" a six-page passage of the novel in which Ishmael and his 12-year-old apprentice discuss the Industrial Revolution and why humans were so creative and resourceful during that period.

The shows, Lee wrote, would focus on "solutions to save the planet . . . done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution."

Quinn, who worked in publishing before a literary career that included more than a dozen books, sounded stunned as he spoke from his home in Houston. As calls from reporters came in, he re-read the pages of his book. He said he was in the middle of a physical therapy session when he heard of the hostage-taking and Lee's reference to "My Ishmael."

Quinn's books are extremely popular, if difficult to categorize. They have been translated into 25 languages and are taught in courses ranging from English to philosophy to anthropology. Quinn said the series aims to "teach" readers to question what they've been told about human history and human nature.

He criticized the typical school system that "sends children to a prison and isolates them from their parents, as though before that, children didn't have educations. They had perfect educations by . . . being with their parents all the time."

Hesitant to characterize his own goals, Quinn said, "I'm just trying to get people to think."

Although Quinn does write about the "race between food production and population growth," he said Lee "had become a fanatic" and warped his beliefs and words. Quinn said, "I've never said anything remotely like" what Lee said about preventing the birth of children.

"He's exaggerated what I've said," Quinn said. "I've seen many people take off in odd directions from things they've seen in my books, but nothing so catastrophic as someone arming himself with bombs and guns. . . . I know this will have a big effect on my books themselves. Sales might zoom up, but that doesn't mean approval of it will zoom up. It might zoom down."

In the passage Lee mentions, Ishmael explains to 12-year-old Julie how people can draw inspiration from the basic creativity that human beings have shown throughout history. Ishmael praises "the wealth of human inventiveness that was generated by the Industrial Revolution." "I'm not recommending its goals or its shameful features - its relentless materialism, its appalling wastefulness, its enormous appetite for irreplaceable resources," he says. "I'm recommending only its mode of operation, which released the greatest and most democratic outpouring of human creativity in human history."

The biggest obstacle to this explosion of creativity, the two agree, is "the government."

"That's what governments are there for, to keep good things from happening," Ishmael says. "But if you can't even manage to force your own presumably democratic governments to allow you to do good things for yourselves, then you probably deserve to become extinct."

Asked about the current status of the species, Quinn worried about the planet's growing population. "We're obviously in deep trouble," he said.

A minute later, someone came into the room in his house and fixed the author's television, just as the news announced that Lee had been shot. Quinn let out what sounded like a laugh of relief. "So it's all over?""

7 "how to feed the world."

Brazil's agricultural miracle

How to feed the world

The emerging conventional wisdom about world farming is gloomy. This is an alternative.

The Economist - Aug 26th 2010

"The world is planting a vigorous new crop: “agro-pessimism”, or fear that mankind will not be able to feed itself except by wrecking the environment. The current harvest of this variety of whine will be a bumper one. Natural disasters—fire in Russia and flood in Pakistan, which are the world’s fifth- and eighth-largest wheat producers respectively—have added a Biblical colouring to an unfolding fear of famine. By 2050 world grain output will have to rise by half and meat production must double to meet demand. And that cannot easily happen because growth in grain yields is flattening out, there is little extra farmland and renewable water is running short.

The world has been here before. In 1967 Paul Ehrlich, a Malthusian, wrote that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over… In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” Five years later, in “The Limits to Growth”, the Club of Rome (a group of business people and academics) argued that the world was running out of raw materials and that societies would probably collapse in the 21st century.

A year after “The Limits to Growth” appeared, however, and at a time when soaring oil prices seemed to confirm the Club of Rome’s worst fears, a country which was then a large net food importer decided to change the way it farmed. Driven partly by fear that it would not be able to import enough food, it decided to expand domestic production through scientific research, not subsidies. Instead of trying to protect farmers from international competition—as much of the world still does—it opened up to trade and let inefficient farms go to the wall. This was all the more remarkable because most of the country was then regarded as unfit for agricultural production.

Even more striking than the fact of its success has been the manner of it. Brazil has followed more or less the opposite of the agro-pessimists’ prescription. For them, sustainability is the greatest virtue and is best achieved by encouraging small farms and organic practices. They frown on monocultures and chemical fertilisers. They like agricultural research but loathe genetically modified (GM) plants. They think it is more important for food to be sold on local than on international markets. Brazil’s farms are sustainable, too, thanks to abundant land and water. But they are many times the size even of American ones. Farmers buy inputs and sell crops on a scale that makes sense only if there are world markets for them. And they depend critically on new technology. As the briefing explains, Brazil’s progress has been underpinned by the state agricultural-research company and pushed forward by GM crops. Brazil represents a clear alternative to the growing belief that, in farming, small and organic are beautiful.The country was Brazil. In the four decades since, it has become the first tropical agricultural giant and the first to challenge the dominance of the “big five” food exporters (America, Canada, Australia, Argentina and the European Union).

That alternative commands respect for three reasons. First, it is magnificently productive. It is not too much to talk about a miracle, and one that has been achieved without the huge state subsidies that prop up farmers in Europe and America. Second, the Brazilian way of farming is more likely to do good in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia. Brazil’s climate is tropical, like theirs. Its success was built partly on improving grasses from Africa and cattle from India. Of course there are myriad reasons why its way of farming will not translate easily, notably that its success was achieved at a time when the climate was relatively stable whereas now uncertainty looms. Still, the basic ingredients of Brazil’s success—agricultural research, capital-intensive large farms, openness to trade and to new farming techniques—should work elsewhere.

Plant the plains, save the forests

Third, Brazil shows a different way of striking a balance between farming and the environment. The country is accused of promoting agriculture by razing the Amazon forest. And it is true that there has been too much destructive farming there. But most of the revolution of the past 40 years has taken place in the cerrado, hundreds of miles away. Norman Borlaug, who is often called the father of the Green Revolution, said the best way to save the world’s imperilled ecosystems would be to grow so much food elsewhere that nobody would need to touch the natural wonders. Brazil shows that can be done.

It also shows that change will not come about by itself. Four decades ago, the country faced a farm crisis and responded with decisive boldness. The world is facing a slow-motion food crisis now. It should learn from Brazil."

Thanks to Dr. Patterson for the tip!

6 "why do we have to choose?"

Today, I finished my orientation for my graduate studies program. Other than worrying me immensely, I made friends, got to know the campus, and was introduced to some of my program's faculty members. One of these professors gave a presentation on world hunger, mostly focusing on things I already knew. However, I decided to introduce myself to him after the presentation, because, you know, I'm still a brown-nosing Park at heart. I explained to him what I was interested in and that I recently found myself in the debate (with myself) about whether it was more important to feed people or to save our planet from natural resource degradation. In my mind, feeding the hungry demands more resources for farming land, production facilities, etc etc. In a previous blog post I asked, "Are we willing to destroy our planet and get as much out of it as we can so that no one will go hungry?" So I posed this question to the professor, and his answer had a surprising and refreshing simplicity to it.

"Why do we have to choose?"

-stunned-

good question

Yes! WHY? Why has our society decided that we can't save people and save the world? Why does the success of one have to lead to the failure of the other? Not wanting to show any emotion on my face of his blowing my mind, I left the lecture room stunned that I hadn't thought of that myself. So simple, so stubborn to a degree, but I felt like those 6 words made me step back and really evaluate my pessimism concerning solving hunger. I felt terrible telling people that there has to be hunger in the world because without it population would go unchecked and we would be forced to ravage the planet and suck it dry. But why? Why does that have to be the trade-off?

People usually turn to technology in a situation like this, but instead I believe that this is pure policy (as much as it irks me to say it). Politics. My enemy. I've tried to stay neutral, un-opinionated, but I fear that this program is going to force me to take interest, to take a side. And this reality is rearing its head everywhere I turn. Maybe it's time to embrace politics. Take it for what it is and really start to make a difference.