Important Information on Biofuels

When most people hear the words "biofuel" they generally think of an eco-friendly and renewable fuel source. As a result of the significant increase in demand, biofuels are severely threatening the stability of crops. Here are some additional pieces of information you should know about biofuels.

• In the States, currently a huge percentage of their corn grown goes to biofuel, which, as I'm sure you know has driven up the price of corn and corn products.

• What is interesting, which this article mentioned, is using cellulosic ethanol (aka making trees into fuel).

• This technology is relatively new and there are two potential ways of processing the trees both of which are mostly still in the research and development stages and are not currently contributing hugely to biofuel production. 

• Cellulosic ethanol is a better option than starch-based ethanol because it does not compete with the agriculture sector for land and other resources.

• There is just a lot of money needed to expand and develop these technologies, and the government is hesitant to supply this money, as fossil fuels are still "relatively cheap".

• I think there is great potential here and with "plantations" of C4 plants such as switchgrass and miscanthus, which have high energy potentials and can be grown on marginal land (thus not competing with the best crop land). 

• ·Further research should be emphasized to expand these sectors, with less of a reliance on other biofuel crops that inhibit food production... more food should be grown in urban environments anyway! (Perfect world!)

Do you think the benefits of biofuels outweigh the cons? Check out this article by the BBC on the unethical nature of biofuels.

(From Marlaina M) 

Canadian Healthcare: Thoughts about party platforms on major issues

I'm currently finishing up the health economics class that Queen's university offers, which is designed to help students better understand how healthcare systems function and how they can be improved from an economics (read: least biased) perspective. Since my exam is in 2 days and I'm pretty well studied up for it, and also since it's the Canadian general election, I'm going to give my new-found knowledge a try and analyze some of the platforms that the three major Canadian political parties have regarding major issues in the Canadian healthcare system.

Issue 1: Regarding the status of the 1984 Canada Health Act:

• As expected, all the parties supported the universal, public-funding of healthcare Canada. Canadians are very proud of our iconic, egalitarian system and it would be political suicide to “scrap” or even to “amend” it. What the platforms didn’t clearly mention is that one pillar of the Health Act, “public administration”, is ambiguous. Administration could mean “insurance/funding of care” AND/OR “provision/delivery of care”. The two are very different. Right now, Canada has a publically-funded system with pseudo-privately delivered care. Delivery is “pseudo-private” because all the hospitals/clinics in Canada are heavily government-regulated, and there is no competition, which from an economics point of view, is inefficient and doesn’t generate high-quality care. Many changes to the Canada Health Act can be made to make our system better while preserving our national values of equality, universality, comprehensiveness, and yes, even public administration (insurance). Senator Kirby detailed has one such proposal: the introduction of so-called “internal markets” in healthcare delivery to create competition amongst publically-funded private providers, as well as a national wait-times guarantee. His ideas, and many others, deserves debate, or at least consideration, especially in a system that obviously can be improved.

Issue 2: Regarding the rising cost of pharmaceuticals:

• The Conservative platform of throwing money at provinces (for them to figure things out) is not the answer to the problem. According to health economics (and common sense) concepts, throwing money at many healthcare problems, including pharmacare, will actually only awaken “latent demand”: those patients that are teetering at-the-margin between whether or not to buy those drugs. Such “marginal patients”, seeing a drop in drug prices because of the injection of funds, can of course buy more drugs, but this is only a short-term solution and does little to solve the root issues of the problem (with are likely related to both supply and demand for drugs).
• In contrast to the Conservative plan, the NDP plan is actually evidence-based. They plan to create “a universal prescription-medications insurance plan” may actually work to decrease drug costs in the long-term. It makes economic sense. Pooling together all the individual drug insurance plans into one national plan will create a demand-pool that exerts considerable influence on the willingness-to-pay (the price) of drugs – you can think of it as a reverse-monopoly (what economics call a monopsony). Because of this huge bulk-purchase, drug prices can be bid down.

Issue 3: How to reduce wait times without hiring more MDs/Nurses:

• At the risk of sounding like another Conservative-basher, we actually learned in our health econ class that “continuing to increase funding for health care to record levels”, the Conservative platform, is not the solution. (In fact, that’s actually the problem! The system now needs record-high funds to be maintained!) Again, I refer to the principle of latent demand: increased funding to increase health system capacity will only reduce waits in the short-run. When “marginal patients” (those deterred by long wait times but can afford to wait a little) see wait times temporarily decreasing, they will join the new shorter wait lists, which will lengthen the wait list again, leaving wait times relatively unchanged in the long-run.
• In terms of the other two parties’ goals: both of them promote improved and increased home-care, which can potentially reduce costs because we know that hospitals are the single-biggest money-hogs in the health system (page 31 of this 2010 CIHI report).
• The Liberals mention that the increasing the rural health work force is critical, but they fail to mention specifics of how they will actually implement this other than increasing broadband expansion. In fact, a wide range of methods can be implemented, from training young doctors in rural regions to providing employment opportunities in rural regions for spouses and educational opportunities for kids, all of which have been shown to raise the number of doctors willing to work in rural areas (although doing so would take more time and effort).
• None of the parties even dare to mention the fundamental reason behind wait times, according to health economics principles.
• The fundamental reason is collective choice in a publically-funded system. That’s why you see excessive wait times in all countries with publically-funded health systems. Essentially, collective choice means that, with regards to a public pool of goods, people are less willing to contribute to it, but more willing to take from it for individual benefit. In terms of the healthcare system in Canada, people are less willing to contribute to total health system capacity (supply), since not many people really want to pay higher taxes (taxes fund our health system). However, since healthcare services are free at the point of service, Canadians are keen to claim more health services individually (greater demand). At the population level, then, the total demand for healthcare would be much greater than total supply, resulting in excess demand that causes waits.
• Unless the parties are willing to look at ways of reducing public healthcare demand (for instance, via a parallel private supplementary health insurance system, or better yet, via prevention) while maintaining or increasing public healthcare capacity/supply (by inducing competition between providers with “internal markets”, etc), the thorn of long waits will always stick in our sides.

Issue 4: Clearly defining what is “medically necessary” to determine what should be covered by public insurance, and what could be covered by private insurance:

• At this point I don’t have the expertise to comment on this issue, but I would like to point out that both the Liberals and the NDP say that this definition must be made with “scientific evidence” and “objective clinical evaluation”, whereas the Conservative response was to “work with the provinces and territories to renew the Health Accord and to continue reducing wait times”…a blatant, albeit clever, dodge of the question.

Okay, enough for now - I'm going to go study for my other exams. What are your thoughts?

Cutting Waste in Healthcare

In Canada: according to emergency pediatrician Dr Brett Taylor, there's many practices in canadian healthcare that are not cost-effective: many new technological procedures and protocols are not only costly, they're also less effective than traditional measures. He argues for targeted research into just exactly which procedures are effective enough to be worthy of funding, and which are not. He also states that Canadian healthcare now is a zero-sum game: to achieve savings somewhere, procedures elsewhere must be cut. "Peak dollar" has been passed...we can no longer do more with less.

Comments?

Should the ignorant be urged to vote?

Should the ignorant be urged to vote? Declining voter turnout (voter apathy) is worrying since it reduces the legitimacy of democratic outcomes. But a growing number of Canadians (60%, in 2007) now don`t understand how our parliamentary democracy works. Also, more people respond emotionally to (and vote based on) slogans, misinformation, and fear-mongering than actually spending the time to analyze facts and make rational decisions. So...should these people be encouraged to vote? Do we really want a government elected by people who were only harassed to "do their civic duty" but who know little of the actual issues?

(or does this point to the need to increase public education and awareness of issues?)

Are corporate tax cuts helping societies?

Are tax cuts for corporations helping societies as a whole?

The reasoning behind corporate tax cuts is to give businesses a boost so that they can hire more workers and reduce unemployment.

But, according to a leading US economist, Jeffery Sachs, corporate tax-cuts largely create negative effects on society (reduces govn't revenue that reduces healthcare/education/social welfare funding).

Countries are now caught in a "negative-sum game", each trying to lower their corporate taxes more than other countries to attract businesses, but in doing so each is spending less and less on education/healthcare/social welfare/etc.

Sachs thinks this is atrocious, what do you think?
-YY

"I've done enough!"

Unfortunately, this is one of the main reasons why many companies today support "green week" or "green day" or "earth hour"...

This is something to watch out for - that striving to be sustainable in one thing doesn't turn into a feel-good excuse for society/companies/etc to be unsustainable in everything else.

When the future of society is at stake, there is no such thing as "enough".

(From Yan Y)

Growing number of patient complaints - a symptom of something worse?

"A sign of discontent with Canada's health system is the growing number of complaints made from patients to Alberta MDs about unsatisfactory healthcare experiences. What is also alarming is that the College, when it does pay attention to the complaints, does not appear to address the root causes of the problem (the possible flaws in the medical system itself). Rather, a short-sighted "band-aid" approach has been used to temporarily put out the fire, which may lead to more complaints. With the Health Accord expiring in 2014 and federal elections around the corner, Alberta's issue may be signal Canadians to push for a re-structuring of the medical system that reflects patient-centered care that acknowledges and uses the valuable feedback from patients to improve care."

(From Mike Y)

First ever ISH issue (March 28th, 2010)

Happy belated 1st birthday, ISH!

---------------

It Starts Here 1 - March 28th, 2010

Dear all,

As mentioned, I will be experimenting wish a newsletter format, basically, once a week, I sent out something with capped 3 articles or whatnot to cover the best news. If you have anything to submit to me, please let me know, this is subject to grow! For those not present at yesterday's meeting, this newsletter is a crude means of keeping us (people who are doing about something about the world's problems) in touch.

Fact of the week: CRT Monitors (the big computer screens) contain lead in their glass screen to counter the radiation the device emits

Innovation of the week: Lifestraw, stick it into any body of water, and it will filter out 99% of the nasties in there. Only costs $3 a pop, a savior in the developing world where 1 million die annually due to the lack of clean drinking water:
http://www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/lifestraw.htm

LOCAL
Queen's solar project: QBACC and AMS Sustainability office are heading up this campaign. QBACC will do direct action and AMS will encourage administration to file the RFPs. If you want information on this, or to get involved, please talk to Yan, Kenneth or Myself.

GLOBAL
South Korean Warship Sunk: North Korea is suspected, but this has not been officially state yet by the South Korean government. North Korea has threatened to Nuke any country that makes a move on it. Worries grow due to Kim Jung-Il's failing health. His death could lead to a power vacuum, destabilizing the country, and potentially putting the Nukes into the wrong hands
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/South+Korea+resumes+hunt+missing+warship+sinking/2736561/story.html

HANDS ON
Build a rocket stove: A highly effective method of cooking using just twigs. These stoves just need twigs to run, and emit fewer particulates into their environment. Good for conserving fuel at home while cooking, or for the developing world where thousands of people succumb to lung disease as a result of burning coal bricks indoors to cook.
How to: http://boingboing.net/2008/06/26/rocket-stoves-use-tw.html

Yours in action,
Mark