Varun Sivaram for the Council on Foreign Relations: Over the weekend, Moore’s Law — the prediction that the number of transistors (building blocks) on an integrated circuit (computer chip or microchip) would double every two years — turned 50 years old. It so happens that the silicon solar panel, the dominant variety in the market today, is about the same age — roughly 52 years old. And over the last half-century, while the computing power of an identically sized microchip increased by a factor of over a billion, the power output of an identically sized silicon solar panel more or less doubled. …
To put this all together, Moore’s Law worked so well for microchips, because Moore had a set of physical reasons to believe in his prediction: that the density of transistors on a chip would inexorably increase as the years passed, because transistors just work better when they are smaller. And by making a specific, quantitative prediction, Moore’s Law became a self-fulfilling prophecy — industry leaders like Intel and Qualcomm published technology roadmaps that signaled their intention to match Moore’s Law so that financial markets and the rest of the computing ecosystem knew what to expect. As a result, electronic devices evolved in lockstep with the evolving, shrinking transistor, and today’s mobile phones have more memory and computing power than supercomputers in the 1980s.
A different and generic phenomenon — the experience curve — characterizes solar and battery cost declines. If these cost declines were accompanied by performance enhancements, then an industry roadmap could spark synergistic innovation — new long-range electric vehicle designs might evolve alongside lighter batteries. But as costs decline while performance stagnates, it is not just a matter of time before an electric vehicle with a thousand-mile range emerges. Instead of leading energy innovation, clean technology firms merely peddle commodities.
FEED THE WORLD
Heinz-Wilhelm Strubenhoff for the Brookings Institution: Overpopulation is an appealing emotional concept for many. With refugees, poverty, malnutrition and hunger broadcast onto televisions around the world every day, emotional pictures are more convincing than facts.
However, population explosion is a myth. Today, we have 7.3 billion people. In 2050, we will have around 9 billion, and in 2100 the world population will possibly reach its peak with about 10-11 billion people. This implies an actual annual population increase of less than 1 percent with a tendency to fall to zero by 2100. World fertility patterns tend to change due to rising income, and that is what might facilitate that drop to zero percent growth. With rising income, food consumption patterns also change. Calorie intakes of poor and rich people are surprisingly similar, but rich people consume more protein. This adds about a further 1 percent growth to food demand, which means that the world will need to produce approximately 2 percent more food annually if today’s poor become rich. Will we be able to sustainably supply that extra 2 percent? The answer is most likely yes.
Let’s run through some numbers of food production and consumption. The world produces about 2.5 billion tons of cereals at present. A person needs a little more than 500 grams a day in grain-based diets, or 200 kilograms per year, which would be equivalent to one ton of cereals for a family of five. … If we consider a grain-based diet with an already moderate consumption of protein, current world cereals production could feed more than 10 billion people if distributed well.
COPS WITH CAMERAS
Sam Adler-Bell for the Century Foundation: The oft-made claim that body cameras significantly reduce brutality relies on a single 2012 study conducted in Rialto, Calif., which demonstrated a 59 percent drop in use-of-force incidents, and an 87 percent drop in complaints against officers. However, those results have not been reproduced elsewhere. In fact, a three-month investigation conducted by Fusion in December 2014 found “little evidence police body cameras reduced police-involved shootings or use-of-force incidents” in cities that provided data.
The Fusion report found that officers tend to “control the record button,” and that “in many use-of-force incidents, camera footage doesn’t exist, is only partially available or can’t be found.” When footage is available, it tends to coincide with the officer’s account of what happened …
There are also very serious privacy concerns about the implementation of body cameras on a wide scale — which would add a new layer of state surveillance to the already heavily surveilled neighborhoods where policing tends to concentrate. …
“The problem with body cameras,” says Aidge Patterson, a coordinator at People’s Justice Community Control and Police Accountability in NYC, “is that I don’t believe in the idea that police can police themselves.” Body cameras will always be compromised as a form of oversight, he suggests, because they depend on the active cooperation of the police.
Instead, Patterson suggests, we should be the ones with the cameras.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
