Link Banana

Abigail Haddad is an excellent contrarian:

Organic food has garnered an extraordinary amount of attention from the media and, along with “local” food, is a darling of foodies and environmentalists, who talk up its civic virtues and benefits to the environment. There’s just one problem with this: agriculture has moved away from small-scale, local, and organic farming because these types of farms are land- and labor-intensive and don’t do a very good job of feeding lots of people. In addition, they are not definitively better for the environment, and their growth would lead to higher food prices than most Americans are willing to pay.

Some more practical points:

If you drive to your local farmers’ market to buy a few items from a farmer who has driven a truck several hours to be there, the number of food miles is relatively small; but compared to conventional agricultural products, the efficiency of each food mile is much lower.

If you drink organic milk, you may picture happy cows wandering in fields full of grass; but in fact, as Michael Poll[a]n discussed in his 2001 New York Times article “Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex,” it’s more likely your organic milk came from cows that spend their days in lots, eating grain and attached to milking machines—just like conventional cows.

Because I’m on a segue kick, Marian Tupy recently offered a comparison of Zimbabwe and Botswana. Though the comparison’s slightly insane — anything looks well-run when compared to a basketcase — it’s an interesting perspective on a country I rarely hear about. Some history of Botswana:

Botswana, previously the Protectorate of Bechuanaland, gained independence from Great Britain in 1966. Her new president, Seretse Khama, a descendant of the local Bamangwato chiefs, received his education at South Africa’s Fort Hare University and Oxford’s Balliol College. In 1948, he married a white woman, Ruth Williams, who clerked at Lloyds in London. Their marriage was political dynamite that was, at first, opposed by both the traditional chiefs in the Bechuanaland and by the government in South Africa, Botswana’s immensely more powerful southern neighbor whose white population had just elected a regime that wanted to increase racial segregation between whites and blacks. Fearing South Africa’s negative reaction, the British government banned the Khamas from the Protectorate for almost a decade.

The racial prejudice that the pair encountered from both sides of the racial spectrum proved to be formative. While most regimes in post-independence Africa sent their white populations packing, Khama and his successors strove for racial harmony. As a result, Botswana benefited greatly from the human and financial capital of her large white community, which totals 7 percent of the overall population. It is surely a sign of Botswana’s relative comfort with racial diversity that on April 1, 2008, Ian Khama, the first-born son of the country’s founder, took over the reigns of power in Botswana, thus becoming the first half-white leader of an African democracy.

For The American, Laura Vanderkam reviews what seems a pretty interesting (and controversial) book.

There’s just one problem, says Robert Bryce: “Energy independence is hogwash.” In his new book, Gusher of Lies, Bryce challenges the notion that America can ever be totally “independent” of the global energy market. It is neither practical nor desirable, he argues. Repeated ad nauseam as a campaign slogan, the concept of energy independence keeps us from having an honest discussion about globalization, economics, and foreign policy. Americans will be best served by embracing global interdependence, and getting government out of the energy business as much as possible.

The American make a pretty interesting comparison between the price of oil and Vladimir Putin’s aggression abroad.

We found that as the price of oil rose, the aggressiveness index increased: that is, the more valuable oil became, the more hostile Russian foreign policy became. The reverse was also true: when oil prices dropped in 2001 and 2002, so did Russia’s aggression. The relationship proved strongest at the annual level: a $1.48 increase in oil prices yearly correlated with an additional “point” increase in Russian aggression.

The American has compiled some interesting data about the way we live today. What if found especially interesting, however, is this: in 1950 29% reported bathing once a day, 63% said less than that. In 1999, 75% reported bathing once a day, and on 21% said “less frequently.”

In what amount to a literature review of Ben Olken’s papers on developmental economics — with all the slightly boringness that implies — Michael Moynihan explains that Robert Putnam may have been on to something.

So when he decided to test the validity of the much-debated “bowling alone” theory—Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s argument that television, among other “individualizing” cultural phenomena, has had a negative effect on the social fabric of the West—he found himself in Indonesia, a country not affected by many of the cultural externalities that compromise Putnam’s American-based study.

… “The main results suggest that each additional channel of television reception is associated with 7 percent fewer social groups existing in the village, and with each adult in the village attending 12 per­cent fewer group meetings.” That would seem to confirm Putnam’s thesis. But the results were nuanced. Olken noted that “despite the impact on social capital, improved [TV] reception does not appear to affect village governance, at least as measured by discussions in village-level meetings.”

In an essay with parts that might qualify as “overtly partisan” Michael Barone makes an interesting point:

Americans’ views of the economy are increasingly a function of voting behavior or party loyalty, rather than the other way around. The most succinct evidence of this comes from a January 2006 report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press entitled “Economy Now Seen Through Partisan Prism.” As the Pew report notes, during the1992 campaign year and up through 1994 there was a partisan divide on the economy, with about 20 percent of Republicans and less than 10 percent of Democrats rating it as excellent or good. From 1995 to 1998, with a Democratic president and a visibly aggressive Republican Congress, Democrats and Republicans gave similar ratings to the economy. From 1998 to 2000, Democrats were somewhat more positive about the economy than Republicans, at a time when economic growth was vibrant and inflation low.

 Nuclear power’s — I hope — coming back. In The American Duncan Currie says so. And though this isn’t new news (The Economist put it on the cover months ago), Currie does a good job rounding up opinions and facts on the issue. That does not, however, make the piece a breeze to read.

The Whitman-Moore coalition supports fur­ther research into renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal power. But it counsels a realistic assessment: geothermal is often impractical and capital-intensive, while wind and solar remain “intermittent and unre­liable.” According to CASEnergy, “A wind farm would need 235 square miles to produce the same amount of electricity as a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant. The nuclear plant would occupy less than one-half of 1 percent of that area. A 1,000-megawatt power plant can meet the needs of a city the size of Boston or Seattle.”

In a very interesting article for The American, Amity Shlaes talks fondly of his family’s love for infrastructure tourism. In infra-touring the Panama Canal, she delves into the history of Panama, the realities of global trade, and the damage America has done the country.

Panama, the canal, inspired; but Panama, the country, seemed to move without a hitch from being the region’s “canal country” to being its drug country. The United States certainly cannot be blamed for all that is wrong in Panama; but it did its share by being cavalier about sovereignty (TR), by enabling villains like Manuel Noriega, and by fostering a lot of trouble in between. A century after the canal opened, and nearly two decades after the U.S. invasion, Panamanians are still ambivalent about the United States. They seek confirmation that Washington will follow through on the good things that it promises.