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Happy Earth Day 2008!

If you’re looking for the Carnival of the Green #111, I have decided to host it on my new environmental policy site, TREEconomist.

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Well, obviously I missed it. World Water Day was yesterday, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to participate.

In 1992, the UN General Assembly designated March 22 as “World Water Day” to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide.

According to the site, 1 billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water which makes it even easier for me to boycott bottled water. One billion people! This is truly sad. What’s even worse is how many of us spend $1.50 or more on the stuff because it’s convenient and an alternative to soda. I encourage all of you to boycott bottled water and start carrying around a Nalgene bottle or similar. If you must purify it, get a Brita filter pitcher and keep it the fridge.

As I mentioned just because World Water Day was yesterday, doesn’t mean you missed your chance to participate. There are plenty of water walks in the US this Saturday, 24 March (didn’t see any elswhere) or join the Virtual Water Walk. Finally, you can join me and boycott bottled water. I’ve kept my promise since the beginning of February, with just one exception and I’ve been reusing that plastic bottle since. Take the money you will save and give to others so they may have clean drinking water.

Al Gore brought 500,000 messages with him as he testified before Congress yesterday on the threat of climate change, urging legislators to take action. Unfortunately this has become a political issue and it doesn’t help matters that Gore is identified with the Democrats. It is unbelievable that there are people out there like Republican Senator James Inhofe leading a defensive charge.

“It is my perspective that your global warming alarmist pronouncements are now and have always been filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements,” Mr. Inhofe said.

And this is the guy that is the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee?!

When will this stop being a political issue and start being a real threat that we can all discuss without taking sides. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to change the course of destruction of our world and parties are bickering over taxes and protectionism.

A twitter friend, baratunde just sent this to me. If you care about saving the planet from irreversible damage, make yourself heard TODAY. Al Gore is testifying to Congress on global warming tomorrow, Wednesday, March 21st. He will hand deliver your message of support for immediate legislation. Click on Hurricane Katrina now and take 2 minutes to fill out the card. Here is my personal message:

The best solutions to reversing global warming are also the simplest: 1) Increase the federal gasoline tax 10 cents per year incrementally over the next 10 years as Dr. N. Gregory Mankiw suggests. You can keep your tax revenue even if you reduce paryoll taxes by the same amount 2) Ban incandescent light bulbs. 3) Invest in public transportation instead of building new roads.

You have to do it today since Mr Gore is testifying to Congress tomorrow.

NASA photo of Hurricane Katrina sea surface temperatures

Why are you still reading? Fill out the card now!

As many of you know, I am a postgrad in economics and appreciate charts and graphs. So, I’ve been chuckling at Jessica Hagy’s, Indexed for a few weeks now thanks to a friend’s suggestion. Jessica has a simple, brilliant concept: take line graphs and Venn diagrams, throw in a bit of controversial social topics, mix together on a lined index card, and you have a new breed of daily web comic. Today’s Indexed takes on the meaty issues of global warming, abortion, taxes, gay marriage, health care, and Iraq. If you ask me, Jessica’s index cards a loads funnier that most newspaper political cartoons.

Not all of her cards are serious or political in nature. This one about high school reunions hits the nail on the head and got me to snicker since I recently went to my own 10 year reunion. There are loads of other great index cards and it’s definitely a blog I read regularly. Her site could use some tweaking and it’s really frustrating that she has urls in the the header that are not linked, but its easy to look past all that with the great content.

Finally, Indexed just got a book deal with Penguin Viking, so I can’t wait to see what else is in store for Jessica Hagy. Congratulations!

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I hope you don’t have to hear the news about the loss of your job from this blog… RTE is reporting that Motorola in Cork will close its plant by the end of May which means 330 people will be getting pink slips today. This announcement comes just 2 days after Procter & Gamble announced a plant closure in County Tipperary, affecting 280 people. Pfizer also stated they would be eliminating 500 jobs in Ireland last month.

Is the party over for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Ireland? The large share of FDI in Ireland is attributed to its low 12.5% corporate tax rate and comprises over 1000 mutli-national corporations, many of which are US-based. With the American economy on shaky ground, Ireland is at risk of a downturn as more multi-nationals head for Eastern Europe and Asia where labour is cheaper.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of these announcements in the coming weeks and months.

Like last week, I gave another presentation for a different class today. The course is called Economics of Technological Change and covers diffusion (adoption) of technology in a given industry and time frame, among other things. My semester project for this class is to examine the diffusion of solar power in the United States. I am looking at the rate of adoption, the impact solar power has had on innovation and R&D in the industry, effects on economic growth, effects of subsidies, impact on the environment, as well as how solar power has fared with other sources of renewable energy in terms of adoption rate.

The presentation went well considering we were limited to just 5 minutes. There are 48 students in the class so we had to be brief. As I have mentioned earlier, it seems to be a trend in Ireland, or at least at NUI Galway, to present research while in progress, long before the paper is due. Last semester I was hesitant about this procedure, but I have grown to like it and have quickly realized the benefits. For example, the professor has a chance to guide your research and offer suggestions. Dimitri, my instructor, seemed impressed by my topic but cautioned that there is enough material on solar energy diffusion to complete a PhD program. He suggested ways of focusing the research by looking at data for just the past 10 years within the commercial sector, for example. It’s good to air thoughts in front of a group and bounce ideas off others to enhance the focus and I’m much more excited about my project now.

This week, I was able to use Apple Keynote properly on my own notebook and it worked out nicely making for a smooth presentation. I must admit, I felt a little like Nobel Prize nominee Al Gore during An Inconvenient Truth. [grin] I enjoyed speaking in front of the class, it felt very comfortable. I even received some compliments about the slide presentation, thanks to Apple Keynote. Everyone else had the same boring PowerPoint theme, except one student that distributed an outline.

So far, two projects started and another one starting next week with a group of three of us. The semester is really heating up, no pun intended, but I will keep chugging away on the blog posts as well. I welcome your comments and suggestions about my project below.

Photo courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory Credit–Robb Williamson

I found this video courtesy of Greg Mankiw, one of my favorite blogging economists. I apologize in advance for the nerdy humor, but anyone connected to economics will appreciate the jabs at Mankiw’s 10 Principles of Economics.

I presented my research to the other Higher Diploma students yesterday and it was well received. To prepare for my presentation. I used Apple’s Keynote, part of the iWork ‘06 office package. I must say I was very impressed how easy it was to put together a professional presentation. It was a joy to use as compared to Microsoft’s PowerPoint software. As with most Apple products, Keynote was very intuitive and has several built in templates to choose from based on your audience. You can make it look fun or professional, or somewhere in between. The slide transition effects Apple borrowed from OS X are very impressive, but my favorite effect is the reflective picture. If you use iTunes, you know what I’m talking about…how the album artwork appears to be resting on a glossy black table with its reflection in front. It is very easy to add a tables, graphs, pictures, music, videos and even websites.

The presentation view is pretty slick as well. It allows you to see a clock, your elapsed time and your notes on your MacBook, while your audience can only see the appropriate slide. The software is well worth it just for Keynote, but it also includes Pages, Apple’s meager attempt at a word processor. I anticipate the next iteration of iWork (perhaps ‘07?) should have more advanced spreadsheet functions and Apple users may be able to dump Microsoft once and for all. Until then, I still use Excel as well as OpenOffice.org for the word processor and spreadsheet functions.

The downside to my presentation was partly due to Apple’s decision to make a different display adapter for the MacBook than what was used on the iBook G4. When I got to the presentation room, I had my old iBook VGA adapter and to my shock and horror, when I plugged in the cord to my MacBook, it did not fit. Damn you, Apple. That’s like making a new iPod that doesn’t function with all of the old accessories and cables. Oh wait, they did that with the new Shuffle as well. Fortunately, Keynote has the ability to export to PowerPoint, so I just dumped that file on a USB key and used the instructor’s notebook for the presentation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have all the snazzy features of Keynote.

I digress. Despite these problems the presentation went on without any problems. I outlined my paper and proposed direction, got some great feedback from my fellow students and instructors. The idea of presenting a paper while you are working on it is very new to me as an American student. I did something similar last semester and I had my doubts about this practice, but once I presented my topic in front of my peers, I was sold on the idea. By presenting the research during the research, I am able to look at my topic in a whole new light and focus on areas that may not have been entirely obvious. For example, my instructor suggested that I not only look at the economic impact of gasoline taxes, but to also look at the political discourse. Furthermore, he suggested separating these into a few sections and examining opposing views. The class feedback was useful and I also learned a valuable lesson to not trust adapters!