Imagine driving from the heart of a city for 50 miles and finding elephants blocking your road! That was the childhood I grew up in, a stone’s throw away from some of the most dense tropical forests of Asia. Though the forests were lush and the environment pleasant, there was a constant stress on the local communities to fight poverty and attain financial stability. This was the story of India during the 1990s. Two decades later, India has not only grown economically stronger, but has also … [Read more...]
The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice
Guest column by Dierdre N. McCloskey [Editor's note: Dierdre McCloskey is one of the world's foremost economic historians, whose many books have provided extraordinary insights into how societies rise from poverty to prosperity and remain prosperous. We are grateful for Dr. McCloskey's permission to reprint this article, which first appeared in the New York Times and then was republished on the website of the American Institute for Economic Research.---E.C.B.] The world is rich and will … [Read more...]
Africa’s priority: Unrestricted energy development
Africa has been recording fast economic growth in the last two decades, with an average annual GDP growth of 4.6% (2000-2016). However, that has not been sufficient to meet the developmental goals and poverty is again on the rise. In recent years, poverty rose slightly in Africa for the first time in more than a decade, especially in countries like South Africa, Niger, and Uganda. To make things more challenging, COVID-19 has had a negative effect on the GDP. The GDP of South Africa—the … [Read more...]
GMO: The Missing Link of India’s Agricultural Future and the Solution to Food Poverty
India’s agricultural sector is in danger of being left behind, as its neighbors China and Bangladesh are moving ahead with their embrace of genetically modified food crops. Are GM crops the secret to India’s Next Green Revolution? China and Bangladesh, have been keen on utilizing the newly invented GM crop varieties to boost their agricultural sector and also address their food security. Among the various GM crops they’ve introduced in recent decades, GM rice is of special importance. … [Read more...]
Prayer for 2019: A call to pray for missions, leaders, and development
As 2018 passed into 2019, I found myself thinking about how to pray for matters on a global scale. Having had some time to ruminate on it now, I’d like to share some of my thoughts with you. There is always a reason for hope for those in Christ. God, through His Son, has not only given us assurance of “good things to come” but also called us to actively participate with Him in reconciling this world to Him through Christ. The least a believer can do is pray for the poor and hurting in our … [Read more...]
Strange Agreements and Stranger Taxes: The United Nations’ Climate Drama
When I first watched Stranger Things (a Netflix original) in 2016, I thought the story writer was really talented and the show lived up to its name. But a real-world storyline is even stranger: the climate policies recommended to us by the UnitedNations. Despite its many scientific and structural failings, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the world’s most influential, though not the most credible, source of policy on climate change. No other political or … [Read more...]
Coal Helps Developing Countries Fight Poverty And Disease. Quit Whining About It
Developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America face the uphill task of reducing mortality due to diseases, many caused by poor hygiene and other localized pollution concerns accompanying poverty. Poor communities are constantly exposed to diseases caused by poor hygiene and lack of basic facilities like latrines, sewers and sewage treatment plants, and purified water supply. Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, water borne diseases like diarrhea, and others are common among people … [Read more...]
Wealthy Countries Resilient in the Face of Extreme Weather
Since 1900 the number of deaths from natural disasters, including floods, hurricanes/cyclones, earthquakes, and tornados, has fallen dramatically, even as the number of reported occurrences of such events increased due to improved telecommunications and technologies to track and report such events, broader news coverage, and the globalization of international aid. Even as global population has grown from fewer than 2 billion people in 1900 to more than 7.4 billion people today, the number of … [Read more...]
Standard of Living: The Real Hockey Stick
The long-debunked Hockey Stick graph depicts global average temperature as rapidly increasing since the 1950s along with CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. It is alarming if you are unaware of the statistical follies employed: confirmation bias (excluding contrary data) and the choice of a bogus principal components method that will generate a hockey stick even from random data. But there is another Hockey Stick that is statistically sound and far more important to human life—the correlations … [Read more...]
Climate Policy: Theological, Scientific, and Economic Considerations
A Panel Presentation to the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change Download the full presentation (PDF). I’m grateful to James Taylor, Joe Bast, and the Heartland Institute for asking me to speak. My remarks today in part abridge, condense, and supplement what the Cornwall Alliance has said in a 76-page interdisciplinary research paper we published last December, A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and … [Read more...]
