Ooh, the weekend!

Remember when I said, 'Paris is nice'? That was a bit taciturn because I haven't really SEEN any of it yet. Our accommodations, on the Cite Universitaire campus, are pretty nice, although occasionally brutally hot (it's by the highway, so at night you can choose between hot and noisy). My room is about 4x8 meters, with a big chunk taken up by a big lime green box that hides a closet and toilet/shower. Very modern. The rest of the campus makes me feel like a freshman again, it's very American in style - a big chunk fenced off from the rest of southern Paris, lots of big nice brick buildings, lawns of students playing sports, and nights of loud music and the stench of stale beer and pot wafting from dorm rooms. I've only taken one trip into the city so far; on Thursday night we went to an Erasmus (European exchange program) party on a boat by the Eiffel tower. The party was crap: the dance floor was below deck and the windows didn't open, and a tall Dutchman would hit his head on the ceiling; the music was bad and beers were 6 euro a bottle (US$7.50). But the view was nice. Of course I didn't have my camera, but of course I'll try and be by the Eiffel tower again before I leave (the world cup final is broadcast there tomorrow. That octopus predicted Spain, but I'll be rooting for the Netherlands!). Also, we're heading to Versailles later today. Maybe a museum tomorrow morning, but does it have to be the Louvre? I'm feeling finding one perhaps slightly less obvious that I might actually be able to get through in half a day!

Yesterday we went to University de Versailles Saint Quentin, which has a master program in management of eco-innovation. We saw the graduation presentations of two groups, and had some lectures on what an entrepreneur is (a calculated risk-taker, probably well-educated, probably but not necessarily starting their business from experience in an industry), and eco-innovation in particular. The graduation presentations were interesting but not awesome; they were about how to turn the city of Saint Quentin into a leading center of eco-innovation (something the French gov is on about right now), but neither group really convinced me they would be able to do what they said they wanted to do. One group in particular seemed to have nice ideas but no feasible way to implement them, or any clear over-arching vision. The other group had more in the way of budgets, time tables, alternative plans, and milestones, but left a lot of questions about their proposals (for example, they propose switching to a service economy, e.g. you rent your TV instead of own it, but it wasn't clear how this would be implemented, why people would like it, or why it would be better for the environment). To give the benefit of the doubt though, we were supposed to receive their written reports beforehand, but we didn't. Presumably, these would reflect more accurate and in-depth research than a 20 minute presentation.

The eco-entrepreneurship lecture was from Keith Culver, a Scottish-Canadian and the head of the program at UVSQ, and was part call to arms (the world could end by 2030 due to rising pressure from population, and on energy, food and water resources), and party an exploration of what eco-entrepreneurship is (basically, whatever you want it to be. The EU doesn't define it, but knows they like it, and that seems to be the general theme). Basically he was trying to tell us that we should be coming up with big, regime-changing, revolutionary ideas instead of incremental ones. Maybe I agree, but there seems to be an inversely-proportional relationship between how revolutionary an idea is and how likely it is to succeed. What's better, an idea with a one-in-a-million chance of success that would be really awesome, or one with a 1 in 2 chance of success that is only an incremental improvement for the environment and in delivery of value? Also, Keith lost all credibility in my eyes when he first said that using the tax system to internalize environmental costs was a 'moral hazard' because the rich could still pay to get what they wanted (he said instead we should be pursuing cultural change to ideas such as 'stuff makes us happy'), but then said that we should seriously be exploring the idea of population control and didn't understand that students got offended when he said that. Is he fucking serious?? Rightly so, the Indians in the group WERE offended, probably because they learn in school about India's program of forced sterilization of the poor in the 1970's under Sanjay Gandhi. This program was so reprehensible that it is difficult to encourage voluntary family planning in India today, so it was pretty much a resounding failure. In fact, I doubt there has ever been a non-voluntary effort of population control that I would consider consistent with my own moral code or the ideals of liberal democracy. Also, I think it's worth noting that the population issue is solving itself with remarkable speed, because the world is getting richer, which means people don't need to rely on their kids for sustenance in old age, and because more people can afford basic health care, meaning more children live to adolescence, and in response family sizes drop. Basically, once per-capita GDP reaches around $10,000, family size drops to near replacement rate, and many places in the world are reaching this threshold (e.g. Mexico, Chile, South Korea, Mauritius. Notice also that these are countries which liberalized trade and pursued export-led economic growth). This is visualized nicely by the Gapminder program, if that link doesn't work go here and put crude births on one axis and GDP on the other. This program is really awesome, and for a good introduction (and to learn a thing or two about how much the world has changed in the last 20 years, how rich many people have actually become, and what an amazing impact this has had on quality of life in most places around the globe, check out the founders TED talk). Because people have failed to realize the synergies between these factors, the UN has had to continually revise its estimates of world population in 2050: in 1970, they estimated a median of 16 billion, in 1990 they estimated 12 billion, and today the median estimate is 9.5 billion. And to tie back to taxes, I would assert that the tax system is essentially a structural expression of what a society values and does not value, because if you tax something you get less of it, and if you subsidize it you get more of it. Tax systems today don't necessarily reflect this because they built up over time because of a need for government revenue, but if we all sat down and though about what should get taxed and what shouldn't, I think we would see less tax on work and more tax on environmental damages. So instead of being a moral hazard, the tax code should be seen as an expression of social values. Not only that, I would point out that altering the tax code and trying to change cultural values (e.g. 'stuff makes us happy') are not mutually exclusive.