artilugio
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We are currently having problems with inadequate electricity generation in Ecuador, where drought has weakened hydropower output. What do you think second-best solutions might be for countries in this boat? Waiting for foreign donors/investors/lenders to impose higher prices as a condition of major help? Waiting for solar and batteries to get better/cheaper and replace more of diesel's role, and also to make generation cheaper for the energy firms so that their deficits are smaller and more bailout funds can be aimed at new investment?
Countries like Ecuador, Colombia, and Nigeria have recently demonstrated courage in reducing motor fuel subsidies (which, in Nigeria, may impact those firms and households who rely on diesel backup). Are electrical price subsidies politically even tougher due to electricity being so much more common than cars in low and middle-income countries?
Some functionary involved in malaria vaccine distribution to tell us how they could expand and accelerate.
Someone to explain to us how that Danish pharmaceutical firm's governance structure works, and whether it's better for continuous investment in innovation than the one where "founder mode" ends and lawyers take the reins of firms crucial to human progress.
I liked your interview with a professor who talked about defense methods against pandemics and potential gene drive efficacy against malaria, new world screw worm, lyme disease, and maybe one other nasty enemy. Works in Progress also had an article about gene drives' promise against diseases like these in its most recent edition. I would also like to know about Jamaica and Uruguay's attempts to open new fronts against the New World Screw Worm.
I liked an interview that I believe to have been on 80k hours about efforts to reduce air pollution in India. I would like to know what effect could be expected from allowing export of natural gas from countries like Turkmenistan, Iran, and Venezuela to India.
I am interested in learning about the importance of fertilizer prices and natural gas prices to global nutrition. I think there is a woman at the Breakthrough Institute who studies this topic. I suppose oil prices may be an important input, too.
I would like to know more about how USD interest rates and oil prices impact global poverty, so as to better evaluate the importance of factors like home rental inflation and economic sanctions in determining poverty rates.
someone recently posted the transcript from an 80k hours podcast interview with an MIT scientist who invented something called the CRISPR drive, which the MIT scientist thinks could be used to make lots of male screwworms infertile so that they stop making larvae that eat the flesh of many millions of animals every year. New World Screwworm would be difficult to eradicate in South America, where it does most of its damage, but it is still endemic in Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Trinidad and Tobago, which are island nations who would be protected by the sea from re-infestation if NWSW were to be eradicated on their territories. I imagine it may also be problem on non-sovereign islands like Colombia's San Andres and Providencia in the Caribbean, and maybe Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, which definitely has a parasite that is endangering several bird species by invading the organisms of hatchlings. Uruguay is trying to eradicate NWSW on its territory now. maybe a megaproject could pay technicians from the Uruguay mission, if it turns out to be successful, to try to repeat the feat on a Caribbean island to try to bring the issue to the attention of more nation-states and donors.
Uruguay is a promising place to start. the IAEA web site says that Chile is the only South American country that doesn't have a Screwworm problem. that takes care of most of Argentina's border. Success for Uruguay would make the job a bit easier for Argentina to follow. it's fun to imagine a bunch more deer and capibaras and bunnies
hopefully international cooperation and funding would be feasible, as each country that undertakes eradication presumably makes subsequent tries a bit easier, especially for neighboring countries
Island-hopping would make sense for thrift, as eradication in Puerto Rico and Curacao doesn't seem to have been as high-maintenance to keep up as eradication in Panama. IAEA web site says Cuba, DR, Haiti, Jamaica, and T&T have screwworm. Islands belonging to South American countries like Colombia's San Andres and Providencia and Ecuador's Galapagos islands may also have them
If increased homebuilding does not raise inflation economy-wide, might it still make credit a bit more expensive by raising competition for credit?
If more direct effects on interest rates of increased homebuilding are smaller than effects on policy rates via lower rent-->lower inflation, should we surmise that US yimbyism may be a useful intervention for augmenting global development and reducing global poverty?