Nuclear waiting room, Ugandan oil & Irish economic history
Good reading and links for the weekend from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
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A century of Ireland’s economic history
Fascinating read this:
“The Irish economy during the century after partition” Cormac Ó Gráda,Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke Economic History Review May 2022
Ireland, which had not been particularly rich to begin with, had fallen significantly further behind other western European economies by 1958, being overtaken by Finland and Italy. The mid-1950s represented a nadir for the Irish economy, a period when observers from near and far were questioning its future viability. A key public policy document of the time noted that ‘a sense of anxiety’ about Ireland's economic prospects was indeed justified, and that ‘after 35 years of native government people are asking whether we can achieve an acceptable degree of economic progress’.16 The Irish economy's relative position had barely improved by the mid-1980s (column 3), implying only very mild convergence since the 1950s. Greek and Spanish incomes had by this stage also caught up with Irish ones. However, by 2018 the doleful picture painted by Lee had been reversed … household consumption per head in Ireland being more or less on a par with that in Germany,
International air travel in Asia
Of all international air travel, international flights in Asia and the Pacific have been hit hardest by COVID. The volume of flights has been about 90 per cent below usual levels since the start of the pandemic.
Source: FT
Ugandan oil project & the stress level of giraffes
Lake Albert oil project has become a litmus test for large-scale oil development in the age of net zero. TotalEnergies and Cnooc are still going to great lengths, in one of world’s most sensitive ecologies in East Africa to pull oil out of the ground.
To study Ugandan game reserve animals’ reaction to massive oil project backed by France’s Total, researchers will monitor their hormones and their stress levels by collecting blood and fecal samples.
Poverty on the mind
A key insight is how much intellectual energy is involved in being poor. Scarcity – in the words of Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir’s book, Why Having Too Little Means So Much – reduces intellectual bandwidth. If you have to worry about whether you have food for dinner that evening, and for the rent on Friday, you have little space to think about anything else.
Powerful piece this Michael Marmot in Guardian
Nuclear waiting room
Megadrought
Memphis state of mind: the world of Ettore Sottsass
Fertilizing the past
Treeincarnation
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