Oh, the irony...
Jun. 16th, 2003 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenFrom the 15th March issue of NewScientist (OK, OK, I'm behind on my reading):
"Despite the fact that George W. Bush backed out of the Kyoto Treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the US Department of Energy has reported that US emissions dropped 1.2 per cent in the first year of his presidency. It is the first time that emissions have declined since 1991, when Bush's father was president... Emissions dropped in 2001 because the US economy crashed - just as it did in 1991 under his father. Somehow we suspect that George W. is not eager to take the credit for this particular contribution to controlling global warming."
No deep political conclusion here, I just find this amusing :-)
"Despite the fact that George W. Bush backed out of the Kyoto Treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the US Department of Energy has reported that US emissions dropped 1.2 per cent in the first year of his presidency. It is the first time that emissions have declined since 1991, when Bush's father was president... Emissions dropped in 2001 because the US economy crashed - just as it did in 1991 under his father. Somehow we suspect that George W. is not eager to take the credit for this particular contribution to controlling global warming."
No deep political conclusion here, I just find this amusing :-)
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Get ready for the crash...
Date: 2003-06-15 06:23 pm (UTC)My response to an claim (in error) I made that China being responsible for 70% of global growth in production.
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BTW, I've double checked (I tend to do this). The 70% figure I quoted before is _way_ off. Forget I even mentioned it ;-)
The situation is actually worse than I thought.
"Growth in global output (gross world product, GWP) fell from 4.8% in 2000 to 2.2% in 2001."
Whoops. No country is a contributer to world economic productive growth, because there's been a world economic recession in that area (less stuff!). It's more of a question who have contributed the most to the decrease rather than the increase...
"The causes: slowdowns in the US economy (21% of GWP) and in the 15 EU economies (20% of GWP); continued stagnation in the Japanese economy (7.3% of GWP); and spillover effects in the less developed regions of the world. China, the second largest economy in the world (12% of GWP), proved an exception, continuing its rapid annual growth, officially announced as 7.3% but estimated by many observers as perhaps two percentage points lower."
But also there's the following.
GDP - real growth rate: 2.2% (2001 est.)
Hmmm.. In other words, we're producing less but our GDP is increasing.
In part that's possibly due to increases in services and human capital but there's a nagging doubt (that anyone who understands economics would have) that this _should_ be reflected in productivity as well.
Instead there's a disparity in the two directions which usually means that the economy is turning in on itself - a separation between exchange value and use value. And that's very bad news, because as every economist knows - whether classical, neoliberal, Keynesian or even Marxist - productivity (in economic terms) is everything.
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and...
US and German Economic Comparisons (from an aus.politics thread where some was silly enough to suggest that Germany had come to nought and the US was a powerhouse economy)
From the outset I would like to say that these are projections and are from the CIA World Factbook 2002.
Industrial Production growth rate:
Germany, -2.1%
United States, -3.7%
GDP real growth rate:
Germany, 0.4%
United States, 0.3%
Exports:
Germany, $608 billion
United States, $723 billion
Imports:
Germany, $487.3 billion
United States, $1.148 trillion