Grow Crops, Not Algae

Written by Ryan McGuine // The incredible crop yields made possible by modern, intensive agriculture have literally made it possible to feed the world. Fossil fuels, which are used to power mechanized cultivation and as feedstocks for fertilizers and pesticides, are central to intensive agriculture. Chief among the fossil fuel-derived agrochemicals is nitrogen fertilizer, in the form of ammonia. Continue reading

How We Use Energy in 2020

Written by Ryan McGuine // Every June, BP releases its annual benchmark publication, the Statistical Review of World Energy, which details trends in energy production and consumption over the course of the previous year. Continue reading

Troubled Waters for Emerging Markets

Written by Ryan McGuine // The global economy has faced a series of dramatic shocks related to the COVID-19 outbreak. While high-income countries have thrown money at their health systems and economies to dampen the hardship, many other countries lack the resources to do so. Continue reading

This is America

Sparked by the death of George Floyd, who was killed by police officers in Minneapolis, protesters marched against systematic racial bias and police brutality in cities throughout America last week. This is a site about global development, a field which typically avoids coverage of the USA. Nonetheless, its tools to study poverty and inequity are just as applicable in wealthy countries as they are in low- and middle-income ones. Continue reading

Long Story Short: Poverty, Development & Coronavirus

Written by Ryan McGuine // Poverty and development are intimately related, and COVID-19 provides an example of that connection as it continues to spread worldwide, including to ill-prepared regions like South America and Africa. Continue reading

Coronavirus & Climate: Silver Linings & Red Herrings

Written by Ryan McGuine // The COVID-19 outbreak has dramatically changed daily life around the world. The global economy has ground to a halt as governments and individuals take unprecedented social distancing measures to "flatten the curve." Everything humans do affects the natural environment in some way, and coronavirus-related changes to daily life present an interesting contrast to before the virus. Continue reading

What’s Cooler Than Being Cool?

Written by Ryan McGuine //

Cooling enables many things that are taken for granted in modern life, including keeping indoor spaces comfortable, and preserving food and medicine. Refrigeration works by boiling a refrigerant to remove heat from a space and condensing it to dump the heat outside, a cycle which needs a high rate of energy. Continue reading

Stop Trashing the Future

Written by Ryan McGuine //

Humans produce a staggering 2 billion tons of refuse annually, and rising. When managed poorly, it has a tendency to build up and cause problems for human health — it collects in the oceans, harming sea life; clogs sewer drains, leading to floods; and gets burned openly, causing respiratory illness. This carries enormous costs. Continue reading

Environmental Kuznets Curve

Written by Ryan McGuine //

In the 1950s, Simon Kuznets postulated that as economies become wealthier, the level of inequality there would increase, then decrease. When plotted against income per capita, this creates the inverted-U shaped curve seen below. Around 1991, Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger noted a similar inverted-U shaped relationship between income levels and environmental degradation, dubbed the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Continue reading

Community-Based Health: Lessons from Rural Kenya

Written by Erica Petersen // Waiting in Chicago O’hare Airport's international terminal in May 2019, I had no idea what to expect of the upcoming ten weeks. My colleague from the Masters of Public Health program at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I were both nervous and excited as we boarded our flight to Nairobi. The two of us were headed to Maseno, Kenya, a small town on the west side of the country, to assist a local university in conducting a Community Health Needs Assessment under the supervision of a professor who has been doing HIV prevention work in Kenya for over 20 years. Continue reading