Taking Mountain Top Removal Head-On, North Carolina Considers Ban via It's Getting Hot In Here
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Less crime? Thank the regulators via Our Word is Our Weapon
Every American should be eternally grateful to environmentalist campaigners and government regulators for their successful efforts in the 1970s, despite fierce opposition by industry, to phase out the use of lead in petrol and house paint [1]. This single policy change is definitely responsible for a significant overall increase in IQ and educational attainment, and very probably responsible for a significant fall in violent crime when for the first time in decades a generation of children grew up without exposure to lead and the increase in hyperactivity, aggression and brain damage it causes. Here’s a recent research summary from the NBER:
The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Adult Crime
A large portion of the decline in the U.S. violent crime rate between 1992 and 2002 may...
The next slums via Our Word is Our Weapon
This FT article about the shift of poverty in the US from inner cities to the suburbs is fascinating as a whole, but one part really jumped out at me:
One reason is that suburban housing stock is ageing and losing its appeal, and is therefore more affordable. “The housing is not built to last 60 years,” says Myron Orfield, a former Minnesota state senator. “They don’t age well and don’t gentrify - they are not beautiful old homes.”
This reminds me of Ed Glaeser’s claim that “American housing is the best in the world”. But it’s probably not even as good as what was being built 50 years before. As Christopher Leinberger observes:
This future is not likely to wear well on suburban housing. Many of the inner-city neighborhoods...
“Rey de la soya” pide menos Amazonia via Governance Focus
El gobernador del estado brasileño de Mato Grosso, el tercero en importancia del país, defendió la deforestación de la Amazonia a fin de obtener más tierras aptas para cultivos.Se trata de Blairo Maggi, quien además de ese cargo, es conocido como el "Rey de la soya", debido a que es considerado el mayor productor de Brasil."Con el empeoramiento de la crisis mundial de alimentos, el momento ha llegado en que será inevitable discutir si debemos preservar el medio ambiente o producir más comida", declaró al diario Folha de Sao Paulo. Ver Artículo...
On the edge of destruction via Governance Focus
The Amazon's southern and eastern rim is known by locals as the Arc of Fire - or, less poetically, the Zone of Destruction. The area's cerrado and cerradão growth is essential to protection of the canopied rainforest further north - and to the region's water supply.See full Article (paid subscription...
Is That Where We Are? via It's Getting Hot In Here
Last year, Friends of the Earth Canada (FOE) launched a lawsuit against the Minister of the Environment to hold him accountable for the fact that Canada won’t meet its Kyoto target. Not only the country won’t meet its Kyoto target, but the actual Government didn’t even try.
The lawsuit rests on the fact that the Minister ignored the will of the Parliament by not complying with the requirements set by the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act (KPIA). The KPIA required the Minister of the Environment to release, within 60 days after the Act came into force, so before August 21st, 2007, an environmental plan that would enable Canada to meet its Kyoto target. Obviously, when the KPIA was adopted by the Parliament, I was hoping it would have an impact on the Government.... It’s not a ‘conspiracy’, it’s policy via Our Word is Our Weapon
David Leonhardt:
In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.
This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records.
Barbara Ehrenreich:
We say, “There’s something wrong with the economy,” rather than, “I’m getting screwed by the oil companies, the banks, and my employer.” Things get mystified and depersonalized. We say there’s a “recession,” as if were some sort of bad weather, rather than pointing our fingers at the people who brought it down on us...
After Success, Problems for Microfinancing in Mexico via Governance Focus
Carlos Danel and Carlos Labarthe turned a nonprofit that lent money to Mexico’s poor into one of the country’s most profitable banks.Micaela Rivera Abendes with her cheese in her mother's kitchen. She receives a credit loan by Microfinance Institution Compartamos.But rather than inspiring the admiration of colleagues in the world of microlending — so named for the tiny loans it grants — the co-executives of Compartamos are being villified as “pawnbrokers” and “money lenders.”They are the center of a fractious debate: must microfinance become big business?On one side stand traditional microlenders, like the economist Muhammad Yunus, founder of the most famous microlender, the Grameen Bank, and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. On the other side are the Two Carloses, as...
These Guys Are No Fossil Fools! Markey and Waxman Call for Ban on New Coal Plants via It's Getting Hot In Here
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“Toxic West Virginia” Series Takes Close Look at Mountain Top Removal via It's Getting Hot In Here
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Beating Back the Coal Rush: Feds Suspend Subsidized Loan Program for Rural Coal Plants via It's Getting Hot In Here
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Suburbanization, discrimination and urban decline via Our Word is Our Weapon
To follow up yesterday’s post on Baltimore, here’s Ryan Avent on what I think was a key mechanism in the precipitous decline of many American cities:
During the great suburbanization wave of the postwar era, policies discouraged or prevented black suburban homeownership at every turn. Whites moved into appreciating assets in the suburbs, building wealth while they constructed a segregated and elite system of services for themselves–especially schools–constituting an upward-mobility engine. Blacks were relegated to the cash-strapped center, denied the ability to build wealth through homeownership, stuck in failing schools, plagued by crime. You want to find the root of differences in racial mobility, suburbanization and residential segregation is a good place to start....
How bad is Baltimore? via Our Word is Our Weapon
The Wire is brilliant television, but there’s something I keep asking myself when watching it, though particularly the unremittingly bleak fourth season: Is Baltimore really this bad? Here are a few stats, with a comparison to London thrown in:
Baltimore lost 3% of its population between 2000 and 2006, while London gained about the same proportion.
14% of Baltimore’s housing units are vacant compared to about 3% of London’s.
On any given day, there are over 28,000 residents of Baltimore City who are incarcerated or under the supervision of probation or parole. That appears to be more than 4% of the total population. There aren’t any directly comparable figures for London but the total official capacity of its nine prisons is about 7,500, in a city more than...
Can Coal Ever Be Clean? Check Out “Burning the Future: Coal In America” to Find Out via It's Getting Hot In Here
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Argentine Companies May Get Tax Breaks for Governance via Governance Focus
Argentina may grant incentives such as lower tax rates to companies that improve corporate governance standards, part of an effort to attract investment to South America's second-biggest economy.The securities regulator known as CNV is discussing the incentives with the economy ministry and the stock exchange, CNV Chief Executive Rodolfo Iribarren said.``It is a topic that is being evaluated because we have to find out the fiscal cost,'' he said in a telephone interview yesterday from Buenos Aires. ``In the second half probably we will have a clearer outlook on whether we could launch this measure in 2009.'' See full...