Corn, Cows & Carbon Dioxide

Written by Ryan McGuine // In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released a new special report. While the report is long and jargon-rich, it is at its core a charge to alter the way people interact with land. Farmers have achieved nearly-miraculous yield gains in the past, yet even more food will be needed to feed a projected 10 billion people by 2050. At the same time, the ways that humans use land contributes massively to climate change, and climate change is making it harder to feed the world. Continue reading

Regulating Greenhouse Gases

Written by Ryan McGuine // Today's shift toward toward an energy system that emits less greenhouse gases than the current one is necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change. However, achieving this transition on a meaningful timescale is remarkably difficult. While no single policy tool is capable of driving down greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as necessary, it is possible to develop a suite of policies capable of doing so, and at a reasonable cost. Continue reading

Unclear Future for Marine Fuels

Written by Ryan McGuine // International trade is crucial to the functioning of the global economy, and has played a major role in the gains in well-being observed over the last two centuries. Today most of that trade is done using container ships, but the fuel most commonly used in the shipping industry produces more air pollution per unit energy than most other fuels. In order to reduce shipping's negative environmental effects, the International Maritime Organization recently adopted two major air pollution regulations. Continue reading

Avoiding the Resource Curse

Written by Ryan McGuine // Economic history is full of countries with abundant stocks of natural resources exporting them to generate revenue. Despite this, economic history is short on countries that have successfully converted natural resource revenues into long-term, sustained economic growth. In fact, this effect is so pronounced that Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner alleged that countries with bountiful supplies of natural resources actually grow more slowly than countries that do not — a phenomenon known as the "resource curse." Continue reading

Power, Representation & Development

Written by Anna Wangen // Who writes the story of "development"? In a sphere that includes everything from high-level international governing bodies to the smallest local NGOs, as well as academics, humanitarian organizations, aid workers and more, the sheer diversity of actors and institutions renders conflicting ideologies, goals, and interests unavoidable. Despite the presence of defined parameters for development work, these frameworks are dictated through mechanisms over-representative of the Global North. Continue reading

Mr Kim Leaves Washington

Written by Ryan McGuine // In January, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim announced his plans to resign after six years in the role, and begin work at an independent infrastructure fund manager. This decision surprised many, since he was only recently re-elected for a second five year term in 2017. Dr Kim cited an opportunity to make a bigger impact in the private sector addressing the "infrastructure gap" as the main reason for his resignation. Continue reading

Technology Dynamics and Growth

Written by Ryan McGuine // According to the Solow Model, productivity growth is the key to long-term, sustained economic growth. Countries that lag behind the global technological leaders should be able to achieve rapid productivity growth by transplanting existing knowledge developed elsewhere, but available everywhere. But authors of a new paper propose replacing the concept of productivity as readily available knowledge with a two-part notion consisting of "technological adoption" and "intensity of use." Continue reading

Partners in Light

Written by Ryan McGuine // In January 2019, I found myself in Haiti's Toussaint Louverture Airport after having overseen the installation of a solar electricity system to provide an orphanage with constant lighting. As someone who made up the career "humanitarian energy engineer" for a job report in high school, I should have been filled with a huge sense of pride. There was indeed some pride, but in truth I felt somewhat more conflicted. Continue reading

Feeding the World: Population vs Technology

Written by Ryan McGuine // Today the world produces historically spectacular amounts of food. Despite this, around 12% of the world remains undernourished, and assuming current trends hold, the world's population is projected to reach 9.8 billion people around 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, making the challenge of keeping everyone well-fed even more difficult. Technological progress has enabled the huge crop yields of today, but how to continue that yield growth, and whether that is the best way forward, remains uncertain. Continue reading