The Center for Global Development's blog, covering global poverty, foreign aid, health, and development economics, with data-driven analysis.
HN commenters cite it for estimates of lives lost to USAID cuts, developing-country emissions, and India's excess COVID deaths.
That claim seems to have originated in this article from Mawson Infrastructure Group [1]:
> According to a recent post by the Center for Global Development, Christmas lights consume a whopping 6.63 terawatt-hours in the US alone, with the global figure being substantially higher across the rest of the world. The tiny state of El Salvador, for instance, consumes 5.35 terawatts for Christmas lights, and the African nation of Tanzania stands at 4.81 terawatts. Add these figures up all over the globe and you soon discover that bitcoin isn’t the energy consumer that many environmentalists lead people to believe – at least not compared to Christmas lights.
This is the post from the Center for Global Development that Mawson is using [2]. The relevant paragraph says:
> A 2008 study from the US Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that decorative seasonal lights accounted for 6.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity consumption every year in the United States. That’s just 0.2% of the country’s total electricity usage, but it could run 14 million refrigerators. It’s also more than the national electricity consumption of many developing countries, such as El Salvador, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nepal, or Cambodia.
That is followed by a chart that shows the national consumption of El Salvador, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nepal, and Cambodia, and the decorative holiday light consumption of the US.
Mawson misunderstood that chart. The 5.35 tWh for El Salvador and 4.81…
This reminds me of the account of NGOs ( Non Governmental Organizations )- key functionaries in the dispensation of foreign aid - in Jim Rogers' book, Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip, something I read many many years ago:
"Even in countries with no roads to speak of, Mercedes service is available – often
to the exclusion of things like food – thanks to all the US foreign aid, the IMF,
and World Bank money being shipped in. It is no secret that this money is aimed at
nourishing only those corrupt enough to get their hands on it, while at the same
time fattening the bureaucrats on both sides of the transaction who diligently
work the trough. And none of them is driving a Chevy.
I knew much of this from my last trip. The upcoming trip, especially as it took
us through Africa, would be an eye-opening education into the workings of the
latest foreign aid scam: the nongovernmental organization, or NGO. As an American
taxpayer, I would be amazed to discover that a lot of the money we send to these
countries goes to support Mercedes and BMW dealers and various Swiss bankers."
"After cocoa, the commodity produced in greatest abundance in the Ivory Coast is to
be found in the commercial capital, Abidjan, one of the more cosmopolitan cities in
West Africa: NGO bureaucrats. They grow here in enormously high concentration, even
for Africa. They and their like have been directing Africa’s destiny for centuries.
One might wonder…
The potential gains, especially from freer immigration, are astounding.
"The gains from eliminating migration barriers dwarf---by an order of a magnitude or two---the gains from eliminating other types of barriers. For the elimination of trade policy barriers and capital flow barriers, the estimated gains amount to less than a few percent of world GDP. For labor mobility barriers, the estimated gains are often in the range of 50–150 percent of world GDP." [1]
A typical example:
"Take a male construction worker in the capital of Ghana. There isn’t much you could do to greatly raise his economic productivity in Ghana; access to better tools or training might make him modestly more productive. But if you let the exact same person emigrate to work at a construction site in any big U.S. city, his economic productivity would rise roughly 700% to 1,000%." [2]
[1] Clemens, Michael A. 2011. "Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(3): 83-106.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.25.3.83
[2] http://www.cgdev.org/blog/trillion-dollar-bills-sidewalk-why-don%E2%80%99t-more-economists-study-emigration
Why does your cost-benefit calculation not include the benefits to those foreign workers who are allowed to compete for jobs in the U.S.?
The academic literature* shows much, much larger productivity and income gains to those who migrate to richer countries than any negative effect to native workers. Even if an influx of immigrants depressed some existing Americans' wages by a small amount, that delta would only pale in comparison to how much better of the immigrants would be.
Do you oppose efforts to educate more American's as computer scientists? This too would "depress" the wages of existing computer scientists but you would (hopefully) find it abhorrent if someone used your "wage depression" logic to stop teaching CS in inner-city schools.
Unless you think that the lives of non-American's are not worth considering, these hugely positive impacts of immigration should be part of your calculation.
*
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~jkennan/research/OpenBorders.pdf?new
http://www.cgdev.org/files/1425376_file_Clemens_Economics_and_Emigration_FINAL.pdf
I have read that. He concedes the study is valid and the problems real and difficult. Then he adds his own opinion that nevertheless it's worth it.
> In the short term, he writes, there are clearly challenges, but over the long haul, he argues that diversity has a range of benefits for a society, and that the fragmentation and distrust can be overcome. It’s not an easy process, but in the end it’s “well worth the effort.”
“well worth the effort”. That's pretty subjective. I'm sure many would like to avoid "fragmentation and distrust" in the first place.
> One study isn't enough by itself.
There are many similar studies:
"A higher degree of ethnic diversity is associated with a higher incidence of civil
conflict" - https://www.cgdev.org/doc/events/02.09.07/Matuszeski-JMP.pdf
I mean, this stuff is intuitive for anybody with a sense of history.
To be clear I'm not arguing against diversity per se. I raise these points to encourage us (as a society) to discuss - and not emote - these issues honestly.
Shrinking consumption would mean either that developing countries would need to stay in poverty forever, or to somehow find a way to greatly impoverish people in the developed nations that would not lead to widespread rioting.
Additionally, the bulk of world emissions currently comes from developing countries: https://www.cgdev.org/media/developing-countries-are-responsible-63-percent-current-carbon-emissions
So shrinking consumption in developed countries would be far from enough. We'd need to find a way to make China, for instance, accept that they should accept a vast diminution in their living standards in order to satisfy mostly Western activists.
Solutions to climate change based on shrinking consumption or reducing growth in general are political and technical nonstarters. We need to focus on decoupling growth and consumption from resource usage and emissions. Only by developing the technology to do so do we have any hope to mitigate the effects of climate change.