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Google announced that it was considering leaving China over cyber-attacks on the email accounts of human rights activists that use its computers there. The threat from China’s #2 most used search engine (#1 being Baidu, which has been much more amenable to the Chinese government’s censorship demands) comes as Google announced it was ending self-censorship of its search engine. Previously blocked searches, such as references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre or details about President Obama’s recent town hall meeting in Shanghai, were now available on Google.cn, though it likely won’t take long for the Chinese government to step in.
Google’s exit will essentially make internet search a monopoly in China. Granted this is barely worse than the duopoly that currently exists, as Baidu maintains a 60% market share in the world’s largest internet-using country by creating knock-off websites of Wikipedia and Myspace. And other prominent US search engines such as MSN and Yahoo essentially left China over its censorship policies while Google took a lot of heat in 2000 for choosing to remain there. Google chose to self-censor information, a policy that many human rights activists said went against Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” How does that reconcile with Google’s current threats to pull out? Isn’t some access to information better than no access? Will Google’s departure kill internet innovation in China by allowing a monopoly to exist, and that too with a company that is in lockstep with the Chinese government?
Sound off here by leaving a comment…
With health care making up an estimated 16% of United States Gross Domestic Product , increasing competition has been touted as a key mechanism for reigning in skyrocketing costs as the US congress debates health care legislation. That includes competition for health insurance and prescription drugs. However, although everyone agrees that competition is a cornerstone of any capitalist economy, the debate has been rigorous with even President Barack Obama flip-flopping on his previous support for prescription drug importation.
As a presidential candidate, President Obama supported drug importation as a way to give Americans access to lower cost prescription drugs and even co-sponsored legislation in the Senate in 2007. He has since backed off, and Food and Drug Administration commissioner Margaret Hamburg sent a letter to Senators arguing that the importation of FDA-approved drugs from countries like Canada would be logistically challenging and could endanger the U.S. medicine supply.
So why the opposition? It’s easy to see why Senators from New Jersey oppose drug importation, since there is such a large drug industry presence there. But why would Obama oppose it?
Since announcing that a health care system overhaul would be his top domestic priority in 2009, Obama has courted support from the health care industry in order to avoid the industry pressure that derailed the Clinton attempt at health care reform 15 years ago. Drug companies have been a valuable ally for Obama, and have spent millions on television and print ads to support the reform legislation. If an amendment to the health care reform bill allowing drug importation were to pass, it could jeopardize drug industry support and ultimately the entire bill.
So is Obama allowing Americans to pay more for prescription drugs than any other country because it’s politically advantageous? Not exactly. According to a study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, drug importation would produce “at most a modest reduction in prescription drug spending” in the US, by $40 billion over 10 years or about 1%. If the US only allowed importation from Canada, the reduction would be negligible. [Download PDF of CBO report]
Meanwhile, Obama claims to still support drug importation in the long term. Linda Douglass, spokeswoman for the White House Office of Health Reform, reported that Obama proposed $5 million in his 2010 budget for the FDA to develop import policies. She said the agency will continue working on ways “to create a pathway to importing safe and effective drugs.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency announced today that greenhouse gases (GHG) are a threat to the public health and welfare of the American people. The announcement coincides with the start of the UN climate change meetings in Copenhagen, which also kicked off today.
EPA’s endangerment finding covers emissions of six key greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – that have been the subject of scrutiny and intense analysis for decades by scientists in the United States and around the world. According to the EPA, the results of these scientific studies overwhelmingly show that levels of GHGs are at unprecedented levels due to human activity despite recent controversy surrounding leaked e-mails at a British climate research center. Those e-emails seemed to indicate that some scientists had exaggerated and even altered results of global warming studies.
The announcement by the EPA itself does not impose any new requirements on industry, but it will provide further momentum to President Obama’s previously announced emissions standards for cars and trucks.
The full report can be found on the EPA website.
The Aspen Institute has released their latest report ranking the world’s top MBA programs, titled Beyond Grey Pinstripes. On this list, however, you won’t find Harvard Business School or The Wharton School of Business. Which program is #1? The Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Beyond Grey Pinstripes is a biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs that best integrate social and environmental stewardship into their curricula and research. Programs are evaluated based on the relevant MBA coursework offered, scholarly articles written by faculty members that address social, environmental, or ethical topics, and extra-curricular activities and programs such as clubs or guest speakers.
The full ranking and methodology can be viewed here. Below is a list of the top 10 programs.
1. York (Schulich), Canada
2. U. of Michigan (Ross), USA
3. Yale School of Management, USA
4. Stanford Graduate School of Business, USA
5. Notre Dame (Mendoza), USA
6. UC Berkeley (Haas), USA
7. RSM Erasmus, Netherlands
8. NYU (Stern), USA
9. IE Business School, Spain
10. Columbia Business School, USA
Reuters reported today that, according to an administration official, US President Barack Obama would attend the beginning of the UN climate meeting in Copenhagen on December 9. The news comes after days of speculation whether Obama would attend the meetings despite slow progress towards climate change legislation in the US. Obama will travel from Copenhagen to Oslo to receive his Nobel Peace Prize, and is not expected to return for the end of the December 7 to 18 meetings in Copenhagen even though 65 other heads of state will be in attendance.
Environmental activists had hoped Obama would reaffirm his commitment to climate change, one of the cornerstones of his campaign and a top priority for his administration. However, although The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 [Download PDF], also known as HR 2454 or the Waxman-Markey Bill, passed the US House of Representatives in June of 2009 it has since stalled in the US Senate as health care legislation has become a priority. HR 2454 called for (1) retail electricity suppliers to meet 20% of their demand through renewable electricity and electricity savings by 2020, (2) an increase in overall US energy productivity by at least 2.5% per year by 2012, and (3) establishing a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and setting goals for reducing such emissions by 83% of 2005 levels by 2050.
Opponents in the more conservative Senate claim that any cap-and-trade legislation will cripple the US economy, although the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported that HR 2454 would “reduce budget deficits by about $24 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” The same report also indicated that cap-and-trade legislation would reduce GDP by 0.25% to 0.75% below what it otherwise would have been in 2020, and by 1% to 3.5% in 2050. However, with real GDP in 2050 estimated to be 2.5 times what it is today, the impact overall is expected to be rather modest [Download CBO report].
Senate Democrats reaffirmed that a climate change bill would pass the Senate in early 2010, but until then Obama must carefully strike a balance at Copenhagen. He is expected to announce some kind of political commitment to cutting emissions by 2020, perhaps by 17% as indicated in the House bill, but has his hands tied until a bill is passed through the Senate and reconciled between the two chambers.
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Recommended Reading A pragmatic look at climate change, Al Gore's latest "Our Choice" makes the case that doing good is most achievable when it also means doing well.
Published by Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn in 2008, "Earth: The Sequel" is a timely read considering the current debate in the US Congress (and globally) about climate change legislation. It cogently presents the business case for investing in renewable energy sources.
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