Self interest is the best interest when it comes to formulating and implementing policy initiatives. While international aid and technical assistance is valuable it must be treated with caution and judged with a hearty dose of common sense. A prime example of this is the acquisition and installation of the Doppler radar system in Barbados that is part of an EU initiative for the Eastern Caribbean. The project has taken nearly twenty years from inception to completion and seems to be not yet fully operational. Had we determined that this was a project that we could fund and implement ourselves it would have been operational within 3 years.
All economic assistance comes with strings attached that may limit the source of the consulting services as well as the source of equipment and supplies needed to complete the project. Quite often the standards design follow those of the donor country and does not take into account our environment of high humidity, saline water vapor and the threat of hurricanes that requires structural resistance to higher wind velocities.
Similarly, the formulation of policies might be coloured by the given political wisdom of the day that may not necessarily be based on the best empirical evidence but on political expediency and emotionalism. Thus it is with the use of highly subsidized ethanol from corn and other bio-fuels to reduce the consumption of oil. An early critic of this was former President Fidel Castro who recognized that the diversion of massive amounts of corn from the food chain into the production of ethanol would have an adverse effect on the cost and availability of a wide range of food products.
We now learn that former Vice-President Al Gore has belatedly come to the same conclusion. In a recent speech in Greece to a group of clean energy financiers he stated that the benefits of ethanol are trivial. In addition there is a growing body of evidence that the production and use of ethanol has a higher carbon footprint that that of unadulterated petrol.
With all the hype and clamor for the use of ethanol as a “green” fuel, it is still a major plank in our own energy policy. Clearly it is time to rethink the direction that we are taking on this issue.
Far too often we look for a silver bullet to solve complex issues. We wait around for the results of exhaustive studies produced by academics who are unfamiliar with our local conditions or the absorptive capacities and resilience of our society before we initiate action. Our home grown solution for the continued viability of the National Insurance Scheme was developed on a sound actuarial basis and implemented by explaining to the public what was necessary. We now have a graduated move to a retirement age of 70 and an increase of contributions to ensure the health of the fund. Contrast this with the violent protests in France when the government moved the retirement age from 60 to 62.
Similarly, the hand of the IMF was all too visible in the recent budget that sought to make corrections after such a long period of inaction in the face of the worst financial crisis in our lifetime. We need a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to address the economic and social problems that we face due to the global financial crisis and, in the longer term, the impact of climate change. This is not to say that there are not problems of our own making that we need to address. Comments from both sides of the House alluded to that in the budget debate. If we have the ability to identify the problems ourselves surely we can also develop our own solutions. It seems as though we really do have a government that we can no longer afford.
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