Pickings have been slim this week and I'm late getting the links posted. Hopefully we will get back on track this week.
1. Hidden environmentalists: India's waste pickers
In Pune, India, a city that suffered a waste disposal crisis in 2010, an alliance of waste pickers has established an inclusive, sustainable model for solid waste management that presents a potential blueprint for the future.
... They formed SWaCH – India’s first wholly-owned cooperative of self-employed waste pickers. Since 2005, SWaCH has worked in partnership with city authorities, providing door-to-door collection for a small fee and – unlike other contractors that favor landfills and incineration units – recycling and composting the city’s rubbish.
However, as Vishnu, head of operations, explains, it is an initiative driven primarily by social, rather than environmental forces. Before SWaCH, waste pickers rummaged through landfills to find scraps to sell.“They were not working in a clean area – there are snakes and pigs and dogs. And they were not getting enough sellables to sustain their families.” By incorporating waste pickers into the municipal mechanism for waste collection and formalizing what had previously been a completely unregulated economy, SWaCH has provided increased economic security and social uplift for thousands of families in Pune. ...
2. Discover asks How Many People Ever Lived?
While I was writing The Cancer Chronicles, I came to a point, early on, where I wondered how many people had ever been alive in the world. The best answer I could find came from a study by an organization called the Population Reference Bureau: 108 billion.
I was stunned by the magnitude of the number. It is still common to hear that more people are alive today than have ever lived. Or an even more extreme claim: that 75 percent of everyone who ever walked the earth is living today. But that is not even close to being correct. By the Population Reference Bureau’s reckoning, the proportion of living to dead is only about 6 percent. ...
3. The Rise Of The Renting And Sharing Economy Could Have Catastrophic Ripple Effects
... "The potential impacts of renting/leasing as a long-term trend, though, are worrisome: Renting and sharing could lead to lower home sales (and, subsequently lower home values and net worths), as well as lower auto and retail sales," write the strategists. "The ripple effects could also be catastrophic: Adjusting to a consumer who does not necessarily buy, but rather rents, would necessitate a shift in production, sales, and even employment structures. Everything interesting in economics happens at the margin, so if the nth consumer chooses to rent an apartment instead of buying a house or making do with a car-share program instead of purchasing a new vehicle, then demand for new houses and cars drops." ...
4. Lawrence Berkeley National Labs: Solar Costs Continue To Fall
... Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (LBNL) recently released their report summarizing the trends in installed costs of solar installations from 1998 to 2012. They looked at over 92,000 installations over the past two years, and found that the cost dynamics continue to move strongly downward.
Some of the main findings:
Installations in the U.S. more than quadrupled from 2009 to 2012, going from 7,000 megawatts to 31,000.
Costs continue to fall at a healthy clip, with the most recent year-over-year declines of 14% for systems less than 10 kilowatts (kW), 13% for systems in the 10 – 100 kW range, and 6% for systems larger than 100 kW. Median installed prices were $5.3, $4.9, and $4.6 per watt respectively. LBNL attributes these declining U.S. prices mainly to falling module prices, which accounted for 80% of the total price drop.
The trend in 2013 appears to be continuing. The initial data available from the California Solar Initiative shows prices falling by 10-15% in the first six months of this year.
LBNL did note that the module prices appeared to be stabilizing in 2013, but the report also commented that experience from other countries suggests the price declines can and will continue. The median installed price of small residential PV systems last year (without tax) was $2.6 in Germany (fully half the price in the U.S.), $3.1 in Australia, and $3.1 per watt in Italy.
Many of these additional gains will come about as a result of reductions in soft costs, as permitting becomes streamlined, and companies develop more efficient customer acquisition and financing tools. ...
5. Germany Fights Population Drop
... In its most recent census, Germany discovered it had lost 1.5 million inhabitants. By 2060, experts say, the country could shrink by an additional 19 percent, to about 66 million. ...
... Germany, however, an island of prosperity, is spending heavily to find ways out of the doom-and-gloom predictions, and it would seem ideally placed to show the Continent the way. So far, though, even while spending $265 billion a year on family subsidies, Germany has proved only how hard it can be. That is in part because the solution lies in remaking values, customs and attitudes in a country that has a troubled history with accepting immigrants and where working women with children are still tagged with the label “raven mothers,” implying neglectfulness.
If Germany is to avoid a major labor shortage, experts say, it will have to find ways to keep older workers in their jobs, after decades of pushing them toward early retirement, and it will have to attract immigrants and make them feel welcome enough to make a life here. It will also need to get more women into the work force while at the same time encouraging them to have more children, a difficult change for a country that has long glorified stay-at-home mothers....
... Demographers say that a far better investment would be to support women juggling motherhood and careers by expanding day care and after-school programs. They say recent data show that growth in fertility is more likely to come from them. ...
6. A Surprising Map of the World Shows Just How Big China's Population Is
In order to comprehend what it means for one country to have one-fifth of the world's population, this nifty map (from the indispensable @Amazing_Maps on Twitter) divides the world into five regions, each with the same population of China.
Always look forward to the Saturday Links.
The "renter" thing was interesting. 3 or 4 years ago we were being told that we needed more renters, that too many folks had bought homes and one good thing about the economic downturn was that this was getting sorted out.
One argument was that renters can more easily move to where the jobs are. They can live in Vegas when it is booming and up and move to Fargo when it is booming etc etc.
Posted by: ceemac | Aug 20, 2013 at 11:15 AM