Davos

Lots of good stuff from Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network.
Met Peter some years ago at PCForum

Some snippets:

Ethanol:
Schwartz at Davos 07: Clinate change keeps on coming:

"At the Yale reception spoke with Zedillo about the impact of the biofuels industry in the US on Mexico…pricing corn out of the tortilla market for the poor of Mexico. They may have to break NAFTA to survive the US move in ethanol."

But NYTimes says that's OK:

The Price of Corn - New York Times:

"The historical cheapness of corn has driven it into nearly every aspect of our economy, in the form, most familiarly, of corn syrup. The low price of corn over the past half-century lies at the very foundation of America’s historically (and unrealistically) low food prices.

Gratifying our two major appetites — cheap food and cheap gas — used to seem easy because both corn and oil were abundant. Cheap oil helped keep corn prices low because it cost farmers less to run their tractors and combines.

But we are entering a new dynamic now. While there has been talk recently about refining ethanol from sources other than corn, that could take a while. So at the moment what we are trying to do is gratify those appetites from the same resource: agricultural land. No matter how high prices go, what will need to change isn’t the amount of corn acreage available or even the size of the enormous harvests we are already getting. What will need to change is the size of our appetites."

Different sort of Conservative!

Schwartz at Davos 07: Non stop morning:

"Thursday morning:
The morning began at 7 with a breakfast conversation with David Cameron, the Tory leader. He joined me because of a comment I had made at the dinner the evening before. I must say I continued to be surprised by him. He intends to really lead on environmental issues in Britain. He said, “After all shouldn’t a conservative be for conservation.” "


And maybe not all is hopeless in Iraq:

Now I am in the great hall in panel on Iraq, chaired by Richard Haas, the President of the Council on foreign Relations with a Sunni and Shiite VP of Iraq. Much to our surprise the panel was modestly positive. They focused on how to get beyond the politics of exclusion. On the other hand they argued they would need peace keepers for a long time, even possibly under a UN mandate, as a last resort. They even agreed that they were not far from reaching agreement on oil revenue sharing. Graham Allison of Harvard rose to ask whether the Iraquis would really come with their own security forces. And the Sunni VP gave a fairly detailed response on how the forces would develop and intervene. And even the Shiite VP agreed strongly that Iraq would remain one country.

Interesting spin on demographics - call it "anti-aging formula"

Schwartz at Davos 07: Limiting ,population, growth, Africa and Jimmy Wales:
"My first session of the day was The Procreation Choice…about reproductive technologies and all the issues surrounding them. I was the moderator but the panel was terrific. A Columbia Professor Raymond Fisman who has studied how people choose at sperm banks (what is really desirable sperm) and how they choose dates, Prof. Robert Winston of Imperial College, London who argued that gender choice was about to become a real issue, but the rest of the issue was irrelevant. But most profound was Ingrid Mattson, the first woman head of the Islamic Society of North America. She took the conversation in a surprising direction focusing on the immigration issue and how some countries are now trying to raise their birthrates through technology to avoid becoming immigrant societies. She also pointed out that, of course, limiting reproduction has been and continues to be the most critical reproductive decision that women are making today."

And more "anti-aging"
My lunch event was on extending human lifespan. In the end there was a lot of agreement on the technology potential but the real issue they focused on was cost and associated inequities. If we can’t all live longer should anyone?

Africa in the Sino-American Century
Schwartz at Davos 07: Limiting ,population, growth, Africa and Jimmy Wales:

"Africans need to develop the strength to really negotiate with China. Richard Haas said that Africa is now part of globalization …not just an internal matter for the continent. Now linked to the world in at least ten ways…energy, HIV/AIDs, terror, developmental, trade (as negotiators), conflicts, genocide, governance, role of AU, role of external powers. He argued that there is a need for the US and China to come together on how to deal with Africa."

Europe:

Schwartz at Davos 07: Fragmenting Europe and final thoughts:
"Prof. Victor Halberstadt, one of Europe’s leading business intellectuals walked over and joined me for a particularly interesting conversation. He wanted to challenge something I had said a year or so before; that political Europe would be internally absorbed in integrating all the new members of the EU for decades to come. He too said they would be internally absorbed but for a different reason. He sees Europe fragmenting, but not along nation state lines. Rather it is tearing itself apart along many seams, immigrant vs. native, religion, class, age, and culture. The European vision of the post WWII generation has been lost at the very time that the internal tensions are becoming ever greater and the bases for agreement ever weaker. He believes that most of the energy of these societies will be burned up in just holding their countries together. It will mean slower growth in Europe as interest groups buy each other off out of the state coffers and that economic adaptation will be very slow in coming.

Based on a further conversation at his home in Amsterdam, he also believes that at least one of the major fault-lines is likely to be the increasing role of religion in politics in Europe. This will not be about issues of religious values, e.g. abortion, gay rights, etc. as in the US. These are settled issues in Europe. It is more about the politics of identity and Victor sees parties like the German Christian Democrats becoming more Christian. It is another way of creating a unique sense of identity now that the European dream may be dying and the nation state has been semi-absorbed into the EU. It gives people something strong with which to identify. As before in European history, this is unlikely to have a happy outcome."

I only covered a bit, there is a lot more.