Environmental Economics

The Economist - Shoots, Greens, and Leaves

http://www.economist.com/node/21556904

In practice, this means looking for investment-hungry projects that bring high returns in broad environmental and narrow commercial terms. These are more numerous than the trade-off view of growth would suggest. McKinsey, a business consultancy, drew a cost-curve (see chart 3) for projects to cut carbon emissions. Those at the bottom are cheap as well as good for the environment (though ensuring that the people who pay for the investment reap the benefits is not straightforward). The biggest gains are in things influenced by consumer choice: hybrid cars, energy-efficient light bulbs and fridges. The International Finance Corporation, the private-sector arm of the World Bank, reckons that a 1% increase in building costs can cut energy and water bills by 20%. Other examples include drought-resistant crops and “no-take zones” in overfished waters. Drought-resistant crops (including genetically modified ones) reduce the amount of water plants draw from the soil—an environmental plus—and are hardier, raising returns to farmers in bad years. “No-take zones” let fish stocks recover and have been found to boost the incomes of fishermen in the surrounding area.

At the other end of the spectrum—where the environmentally friendly action is costly—are carbon capture and storage and generating solar power. These are a reminder that, however much policies can redirect resources towards greener growth, they cannot magically transform everything into a win-win. Trade-offs remain. But at least green-growth accounting should make them more open and explicit.

INCLUSIVE GREEN GROWTH - The World Bank

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTSDNET/Resources/Inclusive_Green_Growth_May_2012.pdf

Animate your thoughts:

http://doctorprodigious.wordpress.com/hd-animations/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHcfNy1_zqA&list=PLB0FFF03FE5DB14B2

Thanks to all.

Debt Cycles and the Economy

Ray Dalio gets it. And explains it. With adorable animations. Thanks Ray.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/how-economic-machine-works/

Pablo too was a lover of pastries

Always, sweetness

Why such harsh machinery?
Why, to write down the stuff and people of everyday,
must poems be dressed up in gold,
or in old and fearful stone?

I want the versus of felt and feather
which scarcely weigh, mild verses
with the intimacy of beds
where people have loved and dreamed.
I want poems stained
by hands of everydayness

Verses of pastry which melt
into milk and sugar in the mouth
air and water to drink,
the bites and kisses of love.
I long for eatable sonnets,
poems of honey and flour

Vanity keeps prodding us
to lift ourselves skyward
or to make deep and useless
tunnels underground.
so we forget the joyous
love-needs of our bodies.
we forget about the pastries.
we are not feeding the world.

In Madras a long time since
I saw a sugary pyramid,
a tower of confectionery -
one level after another,
and in the construction, rubies,
and other blushing delights,
medieval and yellow.

Someone dirtied his hands
to cook up so much sweetness

Brother poets from here
and there, from earth and sky,
from Medellin, from Veracruz,
Abyssinia, Antofagasta,
do you know the recipe for honeycombs?

Let's forget about all that stone.

Let your poetry fill up
the equinoctial pastry shop
our mouths long to devour -
all the children's mouths
and the poor adult's also.
Don't go on without seeing,
relishing, understanding
all these hearts of sugar.

Don't be afraid of sweetness.

With or without us,
sweetness will go on living
and is infinitely alive,
forever being revived,
for it's in a man's mouth,
whether he's eating or singing,
that sweetness has its place.

Translated by Alstair Reid.


South America does love its pasties:

DJ Mirikina

microsoft excel takes me, and the desktop, to another level:

The Road Not Taken

At some point I thought this poem was actually more optimistic. Brave. Daring. People quote it all the time to justify some new move or something that they are nervous to do. Something they want to be proud of. And sure, you get to apply the poem to your life as you see fit. But call me a realist, and also knowing a thing or two about overgrown trails (i.e. that is typically not the time you find yourself most in love with nature), I think that this poem - namely the signature line - is best kept together. Look at it in context of the paragraph:

I shall be telling this with a sigh,

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a road, and I,

Took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

What is the sigh, Rob??!!

Was it nostalgia? Maybe remembrance of a time when you had the option to actually choose rather than the obligation to just keep moving forward? Was it relief? Maybe satisfaction that you had made a choice you were happy with? Or could it also be exasperated? Exhausted from that freaking overgrown trail. It made a difference to take that path sure, but difference is a pretty neutral word and you didn't help us out with an adjective there, bud.

But that's how choices go. You choose them. They make all the difference. And the only emotional response you can predict for how you will feel about those choices in your future better be a word so vague that it allows for all the possibilities. Better be a word like sigh. 

No answers here. Not even any advice. Just a beutiful reflection.

Ahhhhhhhh.