by Alex Evans | Apr 29, 2009 | Influence and networks
Paul Kedrosky has dug up this interesting map of the spread of the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century – a process that took place gradually, over a span of four years.
So how would such a map look if used to plot the spread of a pandemic today, Kedrosky wonders? Well:
there would be similarities, of course, but there would also be big differences. Instead of contiguous, banded advance you would see viruses hurled ahead of the index cases by air travel, like spot fires a mile ahead of a Santa Ana-driven wildfire. Instead of bands you would have clusters and jumps, mostly corresponding to airline disease vectors. And instead of four years to travel through a corner of the known world, you would have the virus around the world in four days, as is the case today with this H1N1 swine outbreak.
Interesting coda: in comments, Matt Dubuque notes that when the Black Death wiped out a significant chunk of the English labour force in 1340, remaining agricultural labourers were able to crank their wage rates sky high. Presto! – major resource transfer from rich to poor.
by Alex Evans | Apr 29, 2009 | Cooperation and coherence
Heh heh. Jamais Cascio was at an Institute for the Future scenario planning workshop last week, where he gave a presentation on IFTF’s three Fifty Year Scenarios (first one here; others to be published shortly). All of them are rather sobering, he observes – but, he continues, there was also a fourth scenario. Here’s his brief description:
In this ?fty year period, a massive depression, coupled with the collapse of a key resource, undermines traditional economic models. Even as the global economy recovers, a global war erupts, a horrifying accident triggered by political systems overwhelmed by increasingly rapid communications, a tragedy multiplied by the almost casual use of chemical weapons. The end of this war coincides with the emergence of a pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen, killing millions upon millions — and, combined with the war, almost eliminating an entire generation in some parts of the globe.
After the pandemic ebbs, a brief, heady economic boom leads many to believe the worst has ended. Unfortunately, what follows is a global depression even more massive than the previous one, causing hyperin?ation in some of the most advanced nations, and leading directly to the seizure of power by totalitarian, genocidal regimes.
What follows is perhaps predictable: an even greater world-wide war, nearly wiping out a major culture and culminating in a shocking nuclear attack.
Yep, you’ve guessed it: this ‘scenario’ runs from the late nineteenth century through to 1945.
by Alex Evans | Apr 28, 2009 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th7CFye03gQ&fmt=18[/youtube]
by Leo Horn Phathanothai | Apr 28, 2009 | Economics and development, Global system, North America
This is the provocative question that Martin Wolf poses in a recent commentary in the FT, reflecting on an essay by former IMF Chief Economist, Simon Johnson, which compares the crisis in the US to past financial crises in emerging economies.
In ‘The Quiet Coup’ Simon Johnson points to several striking similarities: profligate spending by the elites, massive pile-up of national debt, and elite capture of government demonstrated in the bending of regulatory systems in their favour. Pat Oliphant’s cartoon in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune is a stabbing illustration of this view:
Here is his description of the typical emerging economy financial crisis:
Typically, these countries [seeking IMF assistance] are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason–the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit–and, most of the time, genteel–oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon–correctly, in most cases–that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.
Substitute Wall Street for the Russian oligarchy and you get a compelling narrative of the unravelling of the financial crisis in the US. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Apr 28, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity
We’ve been posting regularly here about the various ‘landgrab’ third party food supply deals that have been such a feature of the last year or two (see the map that Mark posted a couple of weeks ago) – particularly in Madagascar, where a particularly dubious example of such a deal is perceived to have played a part in fomenting the recent coup d’etat there.
Over at ForeignPolicy.com, though, Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has a different and interesting take on the issue:
The purchases weren’t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal. Estimated on the basis of one crop per year, the land purchased represents 55 to 65 cubic kilometers of embedded freshwater, an amount equal to roughly 1½ times the water held by the Hoover Dam. And, because this water has no price, the investors can take it over virtually free. It’s not quite a scenario from a James Bond movie, but the rush to lock up scarce water resources in agricultural belts is nonetheless disturbing. It suggests another food crisis might not be too far away.
In a sense, the great water grab is only prudent: Some 70 percent of all freshwater withdrawn for human use goes into agriculture, but underground aquifers are falling—in some regions by several meters per year—and rivers are running dry due to overuse. The worst problems are in some of the world’s most important agricultural areas: eastern Spain, the U.S. Great Plains, the Middle East and North Africa, and parts of Pakistan, northwest India, and northeast China. As the former head of the International Water Management Institute warned, “We could be facing annual losses equivalent to the entire grain crops of India and the U.S. combined” if current trends hold.
