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空气污染 英国需要采取更多措施来净化污浊的空气 Air pollution 空气污染 The big smoke 雾都 Britain needs to do more to clean up its dirty air 英国需要采取更多措施来净化污浊的空气
VISITING Oxford Street, a road teeming with tatty
shops and overcrowded with people, is plainly a trial. Less plainly, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a noxious gas, have been found to be around three times higher there than the legal limit. In 2013 the annual mean concentration of NO2 on the street was one of the highest levels found anywhere in Europe.
British air is far cleaner than it was a few decades ago. Fewer people use coal-burning stoves; old industrial plants have been decommissioned. But since 2009 levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, coarse or fine particles that are linked to lung cancer and asthma, have fallen more slowly. The exact number of deaths caused by dirty air is unknown. But in 2010 a government advisory group estimated that removing man-made fine particulate matter from the atmosphere would increase life expectancy for those born in 2008 by an average of six months.
英国的空气比几十年前干净多了。使用燃煤炉灶的人越来越少;老工业厂已经停产。但自 2009 年起,氧 化氮、微粒物质、以及与肺癌和哮喘相关的粗、细颗粒含量的下降速度减慢了。因污浊空气所引发的死亡 人数是未知的。但 2010 年,一个政府顾问组估算如果将大气中人为造成的微粒物质除去的话,2008 年的 出生人口人均寿命将增加六个月。
Much of the slowdown is the result of fumes from diesel cars, which were championed by successive governments because they use less fuel and thus produce less carbon dioxide than petrol cars. In 2001 only 14% of all cars ran on diesel; by 2013 the proportion had increased to 35%. (Greener "hybrid" and electric cars have increased ninefold since 2006, but account for just 0.5% of the entire fleet.) Second-hand cars are particularly noxious, but even newer ones have not been as clean as hoped. Many cars that belched out few pollutants in tests produced more when on the roads.
下降速度放缓的大部分原因在于柴油汽车排放的尾气—这为历任政府所支持,因为柴油汽车耗用更少的能 源,比汽油汽车排放更少的二氧化碳。2001 年,仅 14%的汽车使用柴油。2013 年,这个比例上涨到了 35%。 (更绿色的"混合动力"和电瓶车自 2006 年以来增加了九倍,但仅占汽车总量的 0.5%。)二手汽车尤其 有害,但新车也没所期望的那样清洁。很多车在污染物排放测试中排放量低,车在上路时却排放了更多。
Climate change and geoengineering 气候变化与地质工程学 Fears of a bright planet 地球发光,令人担心 Experiments designed to learn more about ways of geoengineering the climate should be allowed to proceed 为更好地利用工程学手段研 究气候问题所设计的实验应该获准进行下去。SHINY things absorb less heat when left in the sun. This means that if the Earth could be made a little shinier it would be less susceptible to global warming. Ways to brighten it, such as adding nanoscale specks of salt to low clouds, making them whiter, or putting a thin haze of particles into the stratosphere, are the province of ―geoengineering‖. The small band of scientists which have been studying this subject over the past decade or so have mostly been using computer models. Some of them are now proposing outdoor experiments—using seawater-fed sprayers to churn out particles of the exact size needed to brighten clouds, or spewing sulphur particles from underneath a large balloon 20km up in the sky.发光的物体放在太阳下面会吸收较少的热量。这就意味着如果让地球发
一点光的话,受到全球变暖的影响就会小一些。让地球发光的方式,比方说在低空云层上添加纳米级的盐 微粒,让云变得更白,或者是将一层薄的雾状物洒向平流层,这些都属于地质工程学的范畴。过去十年左 右研究这一领域的一小批科学家主要使用计算机模型,其中一些人现在提出要做室外实验――就是用装有
海水的喷雾器射出大量使云彩发光所需的相同大小的粒子,或者从升到距地面 20 公里处的大型气球下喷 洒硫粒子。
The aims are modest. The scientists hope to understand some of the processes on which these technologies depend, as a way of both gauging their feasibility (can you reliably make tiny puffs of sea salt brighten clouds?) and assessing their risks (how much damage to the ozone layer might a stratospheric haze do, and how might such damage be minimized?). The experiments would be far too small to have any climatic effects. The amount of sulphur put into the stratosphere by the experimental balloon would be 2% of what a passenger jet crossing the Atlantic emits in an hour.这样做的目标并不宏伟。科学家们
希望能够了解这些技术所依托的一些过程,也是作为衡量其可行性(能否可靠使用微小的海盐粒子让云彩 发光?)和评估其风险(附着在平流层的雾状物会给臭氧层造成多大危害,如何把危害降到最低?)的方 式。这些实验对气候变化的影响微乎其微。实验所用的气球投入平流层的硫总量相当于横越大西洋的喷气 式客一小时喷射气体总量的 2%。
Nonetheless, these experiments—and this whole line of research—are hugely controversial. Many scientists are skeptical about geoengineering and most greens are outraged. Opponents object to them for a range of reasons. Some are against the very idea of geoengineering and any experiments in the area, even those which pose no immediate risk to the environment. They abhor the hubris involved in trying to affect the mechanics of the climate and despair at the potential diversion of attention from controlling carbon emissions as the route to countering climate change. They find the idea of some–possibly many—countries having the power to change the climate for the whole planet a geopolitical nightmare. Even modest experiments in geoengineering, according to this logic, are the beginnings of a slippery slope, one that will engender a false sense of security and domesticate an idea that should have always remained outrageous.尽管如此,这些实验以及整个研究领域存在巨大争议。许多科学家怀疑地质工 程学,多数绿党成员感到很气愤。反对的原因很多。一些人反对地质工程学这一学科和涉 及该领域的实验,甚至对环境不会立即造成风险的实验也遭到了反对。他们讨厌尽力影响 气候机制而产生的傲慢行为,并对应对气候变化过程中可能将注意力远离控制碳排放的行 为感到绝望。他们发现,一些(也可能是许多)国家有能力改变全球气候的想法是一个地 缘政治的梦魇。根据这一逻辑,即使是很小的地质工程实验也是大灾难的开端,会产生不 真实的安全感,并滋生一种永远都令人气愤的想法。Yet caving in to this opposition would raise, rather than reduce, the dangers to the planet. Geoengineering is not an alternative to mitigating climate change by cutting carbon emissions, but it may be needed as a complement to it. Although pressure for cuts in carbon emissions through negotiations such as those currently taking place in Lima is yielding results—witness the recent agreement by China and America on new reduction targets—it has so far been insufficient to the task, and emissions look set to rise for decades yet.然而,向这种反对 声音投降会增加而非减少对地球造成的危险。通过减少碳排放来缓解气候变化,地质工程 学并不是其备用方案,但可能是一种补充方案。尽管通过协商来解决减少碳排放问题的压 力会带来好的结果(例如目前在利马召开的气候变化峰会见证了中美两国制定新的减排目 标),但是到目前为止,这么做是远远不够的,而且排放量还会在几十年里有所增加。 Even if emissions do eventually start to fall, the cuts will take decades to have any effect so temperatures are likely to go on going up for some time. Although they have not soared in the past couple of decades as they did in the 1980s and 1990s, there is a fair chance that this year will tie with the hottest on record. The planet is not getting cooler and the pressures on the
climate are unlikely to go away. It is therefore not too hard to imagine a world, decades hence, in which emissions are falling but temperatures are rising steeply and the ability to adapt to them has been stretched too far. An additional way to stabilize temperatures might then seem in order. Geoengineering offers that possibility.即使排放量最终真的会开始减少,也要在几十年之后
才会见到成效,所以在一段时间内温度还是可能会上升的。尽管过去几十年温度不像上世纪八九十年代那 样上升得那么厉害,但是今年很有可能追平过往的最高温度纪录。地球不会降温,气候带来的压力也不可 能消失。所以不难想象,几十年后的世界,排放量减少,但是温度陡升,适应这样的环境无法做到。到那 时,让温度稳定下来的额外方式似乎可能成形,而地质工程学就会实现这一目标提供可能。
Knowledge can be dangerous; ignorance can be worse 知识有危险,无知更危险。 Research on a question of such gravity will have implications beyond its scientific results. But that is a reason to hold the scientists to high standards, not to duck the experiment entirely. If the research consists of safe, well-conceived experiments designed to improve scientific understanding of the processes involved; if it is conducted by people who openly discuss with the public the implications of their research; if it is funded by bodies that take the need for transparency and debate about the risks inherent in such research seriously: then it deserves to be approved.关于这一严重性问题的研究可能会
带来科学以外的结果。但是这是让科学家保持高标准要求而不是完全回避实验的一个原因。如果研究是由 安全的,构思缜密的,旨在增强对操作过程的科学理解的实验组成,如果做研究的人公开讨论过研究的意 义如果为实验提供资金的机构能够认真对待研究本身的透明度和所造成风险的讨论,那样的话实验才能获 得批准。
There are all sorts of reasons why geoengineering may prove impossible, either politically or scientifically. It may be too dangerous to countenance, and the circumstances which might make it an appealing complement to cutting emissions may never arise. But to treat research into the subject as taboo on the basis that ignorance is a viable defense against folly would be a dangerous mistake.
地质工程学不可能实现有各种各样的原因,有政治上的原因或者科学上的原因。地质工程的做法太危险, 无法获得批准,而将其作为减少碳排放的补充方案也无法实现。但是如果忌讳这一研究领域,原因是无知 可以切实地捍卫愚蠢的话,那这就是一个很危险的错误了。
Government dithering has not helped. Part of the problem is that several departments are responsible for air pollution. This means nobody has taken a lead on it, complains Joan Walley, a Labour MP who chairs an environmental committee that has released a series of damning reports. And few politicians are keen to bash drivers. Talking to Britons about car ownership is "like talking to an American about hand guns", quips one air-pollution scientist 政府
的犹豫不决并没有起到作用。部分问题在于有好几个部门都对空气污染负有责任。这意味着没有人愿意出 头,琼·沃利抱怨道,她是一名工党议员,也是一已发布一系列谴责报告的环境委员会的主席。很少有政 客愿意解雇司机。一名空气污染科学界嘲讽说,跟英国人谈论汽车所有权就像"跟美国人谈论手枪一样。"
Some improvements have been made. In 2008 a "low-emission zone" was created in London, which targets large vans and coaches. A smaller "ultra low-emission zone" has been proposed for 2020, which would charge all vehicles that are not of a certain standard 12.50 (18.80) a day. European Commission fines for breaching limits may encourage cities to do more. But other countries are more ambitious: 60 such zones exist in Germany, targeting private cars as well as vans. In December Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, announced that she wanted to ban diesel cars by 2020. Cities in Denmark and the Netherlands do more to boost cycling.
成效还是有的。2008 年,伦敦设置了一个"低排放区域",针对的是大卡车和长途公车。已有提案建议 在 2020 年建立一个更小的"超低排放区",对没达到一定标准的所有车辆一天收费 12.5 英镑(18.8 美 元)。欧盟委员会对排烟限制的罚款措施可能促进城市采取进一步的行动。但是其他国家更加具备野心: 德国有 60 个类似的区域,既针对卡车也针对私人汽车。12 月,巴黎市长安娜·伊达尔戈宣布她希望在 2020 年前淘汰柴油汽车。丹麦城市和挪威更侧重于鼓励骑自行车。
When a thick "pea souper" smog enveloped London in 1952, causing the deaths of around 4,000 people in one week, the government was compelled to push through legislation to clean the air. Perhaps the largest problem now is that, with rare exceptions such as a Saharan dust smog that covered the capital in April 2014, this new pollution is invisible. But policy-makers should not lose sight of it.
当 1952 年伦敦被浓浓的"淡黄色烟雾"笼罩时,在一周内造成了约 4,000 人死亡,政府不得不立法来净 化空气。也许现在最大的问题是,除了像 2014 年 4 月笼罩首都的撒哈拉沙尘烟雾这样的少数情况外,这 种新污染是看不见的。但是政策制定者们不能看不见这一点。
Household wealth 家庭财富 The balance-sheet boom 资产负债表的繁荣 Household wealth, and debt, is forecast to swell in 2015 预计 2015 年家庭财富和债务将膨胀 WITH the excesses of Christmas nearly over, Britons are planning their budgets for the new year. Their decisions will be crucial for the economy. After paying down debts to repair their balance-sheets in the years after the financial crisis, consumers are spending again. Yet wealth, like wages, remains lower than in 2007. A recovery in riches is an essential component of official forecasts for further growth.
随着圣诞节购物狂潮接近尾声,英国人开始进行新一年的规划预算。他们的决定对经济状况至关重要。金 融危机之后几年,在偿还完资产负债表的债务后,消费又开始消费了。然而家庭财富和工资一样,仍然低 于 2007 年。财富复苏是官方预测未来发展的一个必要因素。When the financial crisis hit,
wealth immediately suffered (unlike real wages, which hardly budged in 2008 but have fallen every year since). Household net worth—ie, assets minus debts— plummeted by 12% in 2008, driven by a 13% fall in housing wealth, which makes up just under half of all household assets. The hole is not yet filled: adjusting for inflation, housing wealth—168,000 ($261,000) per household— remains 13% below its pre-crisis peak. Financial wealth, which includes investments in stocks and shares, has fared slightly better, but is still down 4% on 2007. 当金融危机袭来时,财富首当其冲遭受损害(不像实际的工资,2008 年勉强回升但从那
以后逐年下降)。家庭净值,也就是资产减去债务,在 2008 年骤然下降了 12%,这是受了约占家庭资产 一半的房屋财富下降 13%的影响。这个窟窿至今还没有被填上:通货膨胀调整、家庭财富(每户 168,000 英镑(261,000)美元)保持在比危机前峰值低 13%的水平。包括股票投资在内的金融财富稍有起色,但 仍比 2007 年低 7%。
As a result, households reduced their debts from 2008. Savings jumped from around 7% of income pre-crisis to 11% by 2010. By 2013 the average household had 62,000 worth of debt, down 16% in real terms on 2007. Largely as a result of this frugality, household net worth, which averaged 320,000 in 2013, has recovered about half its losses from the crisis.其结果就是,自 2008 年以来,家庭 减少了债务。危机前约占收入 7%的储蓄在 2010 年达到了 11%。2013 年,每家约有 62,000 镑的债务,扣除物价因素比 2007 年降低了 16%。在这种俭省的影响下,2013 年平均为 320, 000 英镑的家庭净值已挽回了危机中一半的损失。 That suggests that balance-sheets are not fully patched up. Yet consumers have been spending more; since 2013 saving has hovered around its pre-crisis level.
And forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), Britain's fiscal watchdog, see it falling further still, from 6.6% of income in 2014 to 5.4% in 2015 and then 4.8% by 2019.这表明资产负债表并没有完全被修补好。然而消费者已经开 始增加支出了,自 2013 年,储蓄就在危机前水平左右徘徊。英国财政监督部门预算责任办 公室(OBR)预测,储蓄将会进一步下降,从 2014 年收入的 6.6%下降到 2015 年的 5.4%,然 后到 2019 年的 4.8%。 Several factors lie behind the reversal. Better employment prospects mean workers are less in need of rainy-day funds. They might also expect wage growth and want to borrow against that future income. But the most significant factor is recent house-price growth, which boosts homeowners' wealth without them needing to save. House prices are up 17.5% on average since 2012 (30% in London) and the OBR reckons a further rise of 7.4% is on the cards in 2015.这个逆转背后有
It was a housing boom that allowed the aggregate debt-to-income ratio to reach a record high of close to 170% before the crisis. The OBR now forecasts another balance-sheet boom, with debt surpassing its pre-crisis high in 2017 and reaching 184% of income by 2020.正是房屋市场的繁荣让整体上的债务收入比达到了历史新高,
This is troubling. If puffed-up house prices prove temporary—as in 2007—high debt could leave households vulnerable and harm the financial system. Housing is illiquid, meaning that in a crisis fire-sales can cause prices to fall rapidly. Even at current levels—146% of income—the Bank of England rightly frets about household debt, and in October limited the number of high-risk mortgages banks can issue (the market has cooled slightly since). The bank's concern makes the OBR's forecast look either wrong or terrifying.这很棘手。如果和
In addition, saving is lower than the figures suggest, according to a recent working paper by John Ralfe, a pensions consultant, and Bernard Casey of Warwick University. The (recently revised) statistics fail to count pension payouts as running down savings. Adjust for this and the savings rate fell to 0.2% in 2013 and will become more sharply negative if the OBR forecast is borne out. So much for an end to Christmas excess.另外,根据养老金顾问约翰·拉尔夫和华威大
Astrophysics 天体物理 Dust to dust 尘归尘,土归土 A dramatic recent "discovery" in physics is looking rather dodgy 近期,物理学中的一项戏剧性发现看上出非常模糊 IN MARCH Chao-Lin Kuo, an astrophysicist at Stanford University, filmed himself knocking on the door of his colleague Andrei Linde. In the 1980s Dr Linde was one of several cosmologists who developed the theory of cosmic inflation, which
holds that, in the first instants of its existence, the universe underwent a brief period of faster-than-light expansion.三月,斯坦福大学天体物理学家郭兆林拍下了
自己造访同事 Andrei Linde 的一幕。上世纪 80 年代,Linden 博士是少有的几位发展了宇宙膨胀论的宇 宙学家。宇宙膨胀论认为,在其出现的那一瞬间,宇宙经历了一段超光速膨胀。
Because inflation neatly cleaves several knotty problems in cosmology, many astrophysicists (though not all) subscribe to the theory. But direct, unambiguous evidence for it has been lacking. That was why Dr Kuo was visiting Dr Linde—to tell him that, thanks to the work of a telescope in Antarctica called BICEP-2, such evidence had now been found. After digesting the news, an emotional Dr Linde broke open a bottle of champagne to celebrate. The video has been viewed almost 3m times.因为膨胀论能完整解释宇宙学中的一些难题,许多天体物理学家都
倾向于该理论。但是膨胀论仍缺乏直接、清晰的证据。这正是郭博士拜访 Linde 博士的原因—在南极洲的 BICEP-2 天文望远镜发现了这种证据。收到消息后,Linde 博士开了一瓶香槟来庆祝。这段视频已经被浏 览了将近 300 万次。
It now seems that Dr Kuo might have to make a new video, informing Dr Linde that he has wasted a bottle of bubbly. A paper just released by the team behind Planck, a European space telescope, casts serious doubt on the BICEP-2 result. What looked like a clear window back into the earliest moments of the universe might simply have been a faint glow from the diaphanous clouds of dust that exist between the stars.现在好像郭博士不得不再做一个视频,告诉 Linde 博士他浪费了一瓶香槟。
The BICEP-2 team, led by John Kovac of Harvard University, had been studying the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB)—a weak bath of radiation, left over from the Big Bang, that suffuses the universe. They were looking for evidence of primordial gravitational waves. These are ripples in the fabric of space, created, if the theory of inflation is correct, as the early universe was undergoing its post-creation growth spurt.由哈佛大学 John Kovac 领导的 BICEP-2 小
组长期研究宇宙微波背景辐射,即一种由大爆炸产生的微弱辐射,弥漫在宇宙中。他们在找寻原始引力波 的证据。如果膨胀论是正确的的话,那么这种由宇宙在初创后迸发过程中产生的波会存在于空间架构中。
A dusty trail 布满尘埃的小径 Such waves should have left a distinctive, polarised mark imprinted upon the CMB. And, in a press conference on March 17th, that is exactly what the BICEP-2 team claimed to have found. It was the biggest news in physics since the discovery, in 2012, of the Higgs boson, and it was widely covered (including in The Economist). Not only would the BICEP result have confirmed the theory of inflation, but studying the gravitational waves it purported to have found would have given cosmologists a way to look back to the very earliest moments of the universe.这种波应该在宇宙微波辐射背景上留下了一个独特的、极化的记号。并且,在 3 月
But up. the The
gravitational waves are not the only things that BICEP-2 might have picked The Milky Way is filled with thin clouds of interstellar dust which, under influence of the galaxy's magnetic field, scatter and polarise starlight. BICEP team were confident that the contamination from the dust was small
enough not to affect their detection of gravitational waves. But the behaviour of the dust is poorly understood, says Chris Lintott, an astronomer at Oxford University, and not everyone was convinced.但是引力波并不是 BICEP-2 发现的唯一一件事情。
银河中遍布的星级尘埃,在星系磁场的作用下,散射或极化星光。BICEP 小组相信,灰尘的污染非常小, 不足以影响其对引力波的测定。但是牛津大学的天文学家 Chris Lintott 称,对灰尘行迹我们理解不足, 而且无法令所有人信服。
The Planck results suggest that they were right to be sceptical. The European telescope has just unveiled a map of dust density across the entire sky. It suggests that, contrary to the BICEP team's hopes, the signal from the dust is so strong that the telescope might well have seen no primordial gravity waves at all.Planck 小组的结果说明,怀疑论者是正确的。欧洲天文望远镜最近提出了一份整个天空中的灰
That, at least, is the most likely interpretation, but it is not the only one. The Planck team are careful to stop short of saying that their results are fatal to BICEP's claims, pointing out that applying their data to the BICEP results involves considerable "statistical and systematic uncertainties". There are, in other words, a couple of glimmers of hope that signs of inflation have actually been seen. One is that the precise behaviour of the dust is still mysterious, which means the mathematical transformations used to apply Planck's data to BICEP's results may turn out to be incorrect. And even if those maths are sound, statistics may ride to the rescue—for if the amount of radiation from the dust is at the lowest end of Planck's estimates, a small gravitational-wave signal may survive.至少这是最有可能的解释。但却不是唯一的。普朗克
Rowing back on a triumphant announcement about the first instants of creation may be a little embarrassing, but the saga is a useful reminder of how science works. There is no suggestion that anyone has behaved dishonourably. Admittedly, the BICEP team's original press conference looks, with hindsight, seriously overconfident. More information-sharing between the various gravitational wavehunters, all of whom guard their data jealously, might have helped tone down the triumphalism. But science, ideally, proceeds by exactly this sort of goodfaith argument and honourable squabbling—until the weight of evidence forces one side to admit defeat.收回早期的胜利宣言可能有点尴尬,但是这个冒险非常恰当地 提醒了我们,科学工作者的工作方式。没人会觉得谁的表现有愧其身份。固然,BICEP 小 组最初的新闻发布会,事后来看,过度自信了。在各种引力波守望者当中共享贡多信息可 能有助于缓和这种胜利主义,可惜他们都视自己的数据如命根子。但是,想象中的科学, 正是通过这种善意的争论和尊重彼此的吵闹,直到证据的分量迫使一方承认失败。 That could happen soon: the Planck and BICEP teams have pooled their data and are working on a joint paper, expected to be published in the next few months. Information from other gravity-wave hunting experiments—including some run by the BICEP team themselves—will shed extra light, too. It is not yet impossible that Dr Kovac and his colleagues will be proved right after all. But at this point it would take a brave cosmologist to bet on it.这一幕可能很快上演:普朗克小组
和 BICEP 小组已将各自的数据凑到一起,并联合撰写论文,预计将于接下来的几个月中发表。通过其他引 力波探测实验,包括 BICEP 小组自己的,将会摆脱多余的光。可能最终 Kovac 博士及其同事无法自圆其说。 但这一时刻,需要勇敢的天文学家站出来孤注一掷。 Display screens 显示屏 Going through a phase 相转变 A new way to create electronic images 新的电子图案显示方法 Wave of the future?未来之波
CRYSTAL displays are a familiar and ubiquitous technology. But if Harish Bh askaran ofOxford University is right, their days may be numbered. The essen tial feature of LCDs is thatthe pixels in them switch between amorphous an d crystallike phases, which changes theiroptical properties. In a paper in this week's N ature, Dr Bhaskaran and his colleagues describesomething similar in a solid material. At the least, that would stop the messy abstractimpressionist patterns which happen when an LCD is dropped too hard. At mo st, it might openup a new range of applications, from clothes that change col our to dimmable windscreens.
液晶显示屏是一项成熟而广泛应用的技术。但如果牛津大学的 Harish Bhaskaran 的想法实现,液晶屏 的好景也就没几天了。LCD 的基本特征是其像素在非晶相和类晶相间转化,因此改变其光学性质。在本 周的《自然》杂志上,Bhaskaran 博士及其同事陈述了一种类似的固体材料。至少该材质可以防止当 LCD 猛烈坠地后产生麻烦的抽象印象派图案。最理想情况下,它会有新的应用范围,从变色布料到可调 光挡风玻璃。
Solid phasechange materials are already used to store data in optical memory disks. They arealso being considered for use in memory chips, because the s witch between amorphous andcrystalline states alters their electrical proper ties in ways that can store electronic bits of data.Dr Bhaskaran, though, has s hown that thin enough films of the right sort of material can bemade to chang e colour, too.固态相变材料已经用于在光储存盘中储存数据。也可能被用于记忆芯片,因为其非晶态
和晶态之间的转变也改变了其电学性能,因此他们能储存电子数据。然而,Bhaskaran 博士展示了一种 特定材料膜,在足够薄的情况下也可以改变颜色。
This property would make them suitable both for displays that rely on reflec ted light (so- electronic paper) and the older, backlit sort that called rely on transmitted light. The resulting displayswould be thin and could be flexible if printed on the right material-increasing the range ofapplications they might be used in. And they would consume little power, since energy need b eused only when a pixel has to be flipped from one phase to another. 这
一性能将使其适合于反射光显示(所谓电子纸)和早期的依赖透射光的背光显示。所得显示屏不仅薄,而 且铺在合适材料上时非常灵活,增加了其应用范围。而且它消耗的功率更少,因为这种材料只需要在变相 的时候消耗能量。
The researchers' material of choice is an alloy of germanium, antimony and t ellurium. Both thecrystalline and the amorphous phases of this substance a re stable at any temperature adevice is likely to experience, and thin films of it are more or less transparent. The powerneeded to effect the phase cha nge could be fed to individual pixels by electrodes made ofindium tin oxide, w hich is also transparent.
研究人员选择的材料是镓、锑和碲合金。这一物质的晶态和非晶态在任何设备适用温度下都很稳定。其薄 膜也几乎透明。要激发相转变所需的能量可以由透明的铟锡氧化物电极向单个像素提供。
The colour of a pixel would depend not only on its phase, but also on its thick ness, whichwould affect the way light waves being reflected within it interfe re with one another, cancellingout some frequencies while amplifying others. (The effect is similar to the creation of colours bya thin layer of oil on a pudd le.) Generally, the alloy layer needs to be thinner than 20nanometres for th at to happen.
单个像素的颜色不仅取决于其相态,也同其厚度有关。厚度会影响光波在两个像素间界面处的反射,削弱 部分频率,加强其他频率。(此效应类似于池塘表面薄油层产生的色彩。)一般来说,合金层需要薄于 20 nm 才会发生这一现象。
To demonstrate their idea, the researchers sprayed films of their alloy onto pieces of silicon,quartz and plastic. They then used a device called an atom ic-force microscope, which has atip a few nanometres across, to apply appropriate electric currents in a grid pattern acrossthe film's surface. Thi s grid mimicked an array of pixels, creating a stable pattern. The result,as t heir picture of a Japanese wave shows, is a recognisable image—if not, yet, a perfect one.为了证明其观点,研究人员将其合金铺覆到硅,石英和塑料上。然后他们使用所谓原
子力显微镜的设备来施加合适的电流在横穿膜表面的网格上。原子力显微镜尖端仅有几个纳米大小。网格 模仿像素排列,产生稳定的模式。他们对日本电波的拍摄结果是一个可识别的图像,即便不可识别,也是 非常完美的。
Adding the indium-tin-oxide electrodes is a more complicated process, But to show it can bedone in principle, Dr Bhaskaran has made a single pixel thi s way. Whether his idea will get offthe lab bench and into the shops remains to be seen. It is by no means the only suggestionaround for a new generation of display screens. But it looks plausible.加入铟锡氧化物电极是更为复杂的过程,但是
可以从原理上展示其过程。Bhaskaran 用这种方式制备了单个像素。他的想法能否从实验室走进商用还 是未知。这绝不是新一代显示屏的唯一方案,但颇得看好。 Treating mental illness Body and soul
A professional schism hinders Britain's mental-health system THE day after Mandy Peck tried to electrocute herself in the bath her family took her to a mental-health centre in Chelmsford and asked for help. They were told that there were no beds available and sent home. Two days later Ms Peck jumped to her death from a multi-storey car park. She left a daughter behind. Ms Peck would not have been turned away had she arrived at hospital with a broken leg. Yet the National Health Service (NHS) often fails those suffering from a broken spirit. The numbers are fuzzy, but about one Briton in four suffers a mental-health problem at some time in their life, ranging from mild anxiety to severe schizophrenia. Less than a third of those receive treatment. That is in part because many sufferers are ashamed to seek help, but it is also due to funding gaps and disorganisation within the NHS. The result is a system in crisis, says Sue Bailey, a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. This failure is costly. Mental-health problems cause more suffering in Britain than physical illness, poverty or unemployment, according to Richard Layard, an economist and author of a book on happiness. People with severe mental illnesses have higher rates of physical illness than the general public. According to the King's Fund, a think-tank, this costs the NHS between £8 billion ($13 billion) and £13 billion each year. Sufferers are also more likely to commit crime; mental illness has become the most common reason to claim disability benefits. Researchers at the OECD, a club of rich countries, reckon getting mentally-ill people back to work could increase employment in Britain by nearly 5%. Part of the problem is money. The consequences of mental illness cost the British economy over £100 billion a year, according to the Centre for Mental Health, a think-tank, yet the NHS spends just £11.3 billion on the problem. Some, like Mr Layard, see misplaced priorities. Doctors spend about £3.5 billion a year treating the depression and anxiety disorders suffered by some 6m British adults—a vast amount less than is spent treating the physical ailments of roughly 500,000 patients in the last year of their lives. Recent cuts to health spending have fallen hardest on mental-health care, just as doctors say demand is rising. The number of NHS beds for patients with mental illness has declined by over 30% since 2003. Many facilities are
now full. As a result patients are having to travel long distances or wait months for care. To free up room, a mental-health centre in London has discharged patients to bed-and-breakfasts. Others are not so lucky: sufferers picked up by police are often diagnosed in jail cells. This week Norman Lamb, the minister for care, said that services for young people are "stuck in the dark ages". A second challenge arises from the way the NHS is structured. Mental-health care is staffed and funded separately from physical care—treatment is focused on the mind or body, but rarely on both at once. Yet research shows depressed people are more likely than others to develop heart and lung disease, and to suffer from strokes. Mental illness also appears to make diseases more lethal. On average men with mental-health problems die 20 years earlier than those without them (most from causes other than suicide), says the British Medical Association. The government is alive to these problems. Britain's spending on mental health may be inadequate, but it compares favourably with that of other rich countries. From April ministers have promised to limit the long waiting times that prevent many people using mental-health services. And in 2012 the government pledged to give mental health care equal priority to physical care, enshrining this principle as part of the Health and Social Care Act. But critics complain that the promise has yet to deliver much practical change. Reform advocates would like better integration between mental- and physical-health care. "Liaison psychiatry" involves placing mental-health specialists in hospitals to work alongside doctors. The Centre for Mental Health found that one such initiative in Birmingham reduced the length of hospital stays and the number of readmissions and improved the health and well-being of patients. The centre calculated that the programme saved four times its costs. Yet such services are often meagre. It would be better and cheaper to keep sufferers out of hospital altogether, says Emma Stanton, who runs Beacon UK, a mental-health consultancy. Ms Stanton recommends treatment at home through teams of doctors, nurses and social workers. Instead of swallowing antidepressants, health bosses would like sufferers of mild conditions to receive help under a programme called Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT), which aims to expand the use of treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy. This helps individuals challenge the gloomy thinking that can lead to anxiety and depression. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which evaluates treatments, considers it good value. Yet David Clark, an adviser for IAPT, says it reaches only a fraction of those who need it. He would like its budget doubled. Convincing politicians to cough up more funds will be tough. Some critics fear that beefing up treatment of the most common mental-health problems risks saddling the system with overwhelming costs. Fortunately there is a lot that can be achieved without more cash. Many mental-health services still do not meet the standards recommended by NICE, and communication between services is poor. Elaborate therapies are not always necessary—one effective treatment for those suffering mental illness is keeping them in a job. Other types of therapy, say advocates, should pay for themselves by saving healthcare costs and increasing productivity. Improving Britons' mental health is not only humane, but economical.
心理疾病治疗 身体与灵魂 一个专业性的分裂阻碍英国心理健康系统 在曼迪· 派克试图在浴室用电击自杀的第二天,她的家人将她送至且切姆斯福德的一家心理健康中心寻求 帮助。他们被告知中心没有空余床位,随即回家。两天之后,派克于一个多层停车场跳楼自杀。她死后还 留下了一个女儿。
Autism Why it's not "Rain Woman" Women have fewer cognitive disorders than men do because their bodies are better at ignoring the mutations which cause them AUTISM is a strange condition. Sometimes its symptoms of "social blindness" (an inability to read or comprehend the emotions of others) occur alone. This is dubbed high-functioning autism, or Asperger's syndrome. Though their fellow men and women may regard them as a bit odd, high-functioning autists are often successful (sometimes very successful) members of society. On other occasions, though, autism manifests as part of a range of cognitive problems. Then, the condition is debilitating. What is common to those on all parts of the so-called autistic spectrum is that they are more often men than women—so much more often that one school of thought suggests autism is an extreme manifestation of what it means, mentally, to be male. Boys are
four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls are. For highfunctioning autism, the ratio is seven to one. Moreover, what is true of autism is true, to a lesser extent, of a lot of other neurological and cognitive disorders. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed around three times more often in boys than in girls. "Intellectual disability", a catch-all term for congenital low IQ, is 30-50% more common in boys, as is epilepsy. In fact, these disorders frequently show up in combination. For instance, children diagnosed with an autistic-spectrum disorder[1] often also receive a diagnosis of ADHD. Autism's precise causes are unclear, but genes are important. Though no mutation which, by itself, causes autism has yet been discovered, well over 100 are known that make someone with them more vulnerable to the condition. Most of these mutations are as common in women as in men, so one explanation for the divergent incidence is that male brains are more vulnerable than female ones to equivalent levels of genetic disruption. This is called the female-protective model. The other broad explanation, social-bias theory, is that the difference is illusory. Girls are being under-diagnosed because of differences either in the ways they are assessed, or in the ways they cope with the condition, rather than because they actually have it less. Some researchers claim, for example, that girls are better able to hide their symptoms. The weaker sex To investigate this question, Sebastien Jacquemont of the University Hospital of Lausanne and his colleagues analysed genetic data from two groups of children with cognitive abnormalities. Those in one group, 800 strong, were specifically autistic. Those in the other, 16,000 strong, had a range of problems. Dr Jacquemont has just published his results in the American Journal of Human Genetics. His crucial finding was that girls in both groups more often had mutations of the sort associated with abnormal neural development than boys did. This was true both for copy-number variants (CNVs, which are variations in the number of copies in a chromosome of particular sections of DNA), and single-nucleotide variants (SNVs, which are alterations to single genetic letters in the DNA message). On the face of it, this seems compelling evidence for the female-protective model. Since all the children whose data Dr Jacquemont examined had been diagnosed with problems, if the girls had more serious mutations than the boys did, that suggests other aspects of their physiology were covering up the consequences. Females are thus, if this interpretation is correct, better protected from developing symptoms than males are. And, as further confirmation, Dr Jacquemont's findings tally with a study published three years ago, which found that CNVs in autistic girls spanned more genes (and were thus, presumably, more damaging), than those in autistic boys. The counter-argument is that if girls are better at hiding their symptoms, only the more extreme female cases might turn up in the diagnosed groups. If that were true, a greater degree of mutation might be expected in symptomatic girls as a consequence. However, Dr Jacquemont and his colleagues also found that damaging CNVs were more likely to be inherited from a child's mother than from his or her father. They interpret this as further evidence of female-protectedness. Autistic symptoms make people of either sex less likely to become parents. If mothers are the source of the majority of autism-inducing genes in children, it suggests they are less affected by them.
None of this, though, explains the exact mechanism that makes boys more susceptible than girls. On this question, too, there are two predominant theories. The first is that males are more sensitive because they have only one X-chromosome. This makes them vulnerable to mutations on that chromosome, because any damaged genes have no twin to cover for them. One cognitive disorder, fragile-X syndrome, is indeed much more common in men for this reason. Dr Jacquemont's study, however, found only a limited role for X-chromosome mutations. That suggests the genetic basis of the difference is distributed across the whole genome. The other kind of explanation is anatomical. It is based on brain-imaging studies which suggest differences between the patterns of internal connection in male and female brains. Male brains have stronger local connections, and weaker long-range ones, than do female brains. That is similar to a difference seen between the brains of autistic people and of those who are not. The suggestion here is that the male-type connection pattern is somehow more vulnerable to disruption by the factors which trigger autism and other cognitive problems. Why that should be, however, remains opaque.
自闭症 为什么它不是"雨女" 与男性相比,患有认知障碍的女性较少,因为她们自身的身体能更好的忽略导致认知障碍的基因突变 自闭症是一种奇怪的状态。有时它是由"社会失明"症状(无法阅读或理解他人的情绪)导致的孤独。这被 称为高功能自闭症,或亚斯伯格症候群。虽然他们的男性和女性同伴会认为他们有点奇怪,但高功能自闭 患者通常是成功的社会人士(有时非常成功)。然而,另一些场合,自闭症表现为一系列认知问题的一部 分。那么,条件逐渐衰弱。对于那些所有被称为自闭症患者范围的人来说共同点是男性远多于女性,以至 于一个学校认为自闭症意味着一种极端的在心理上表现为一名男性。比起女孩而言,男孩有四倍的可能性 被诊断为自闭症。至于高功能自闭症,比率达到 7 比 1。 此外,自闭症的真相,在较小程度上,就是神经病学的认知障碍的真相。被诊断为注意力缺乏症的男大约 是女孩的三倍。"智力残疾",一个全面概括先天性智商低下的术语,在男孩中常见比例多达 30%~50%, 癫痫症也是。事实上,这些疾病经常共同出现。例如,被诊断为自闭症谱系障碍的小孩经常也收到 ADHD 的诊断。 导致自闭症的确切原因还不知道,但是基因很重要原因。虽然还没发现是由于它自身的突变导致自闭症, 但超过 100 个基因被认为是使某些人在环境影响下更容易受到攻击的对象。 这些突变在男性和女性中是一样普遍的,所以一个对分歧发生率的解释是对于同等的基因毁坏,男性大脑 比女性的更容易受伤害。这被称为女性保护模式。另一个广发的解释是社会偏见理论,认为这些不同是虚 幻的。这些被诊断不足的女孩,因为她们被评估的方式或对环境的处理不同,而不是他们真的很少有这个 症状。例如,一些研究者声称,女孩能更好的隐藏这些症状。 弱势性别 为了调查这个问题,洛桑医科大学的医生 Sebastien Jacquemont 和他的同事分析来自两组患有认识异 常症状孩子的基因数据。一组有 800 人明显确定患有自闭症;另一组是明显有一系列问题。 医生 Jacquemont 刚将他的研究成果发布在美国人类遗传学杂志上。他的关键发现是两组中,女孩比男 孩更多有伴随异常神经发展种类的基因突变。这在拷贝数量变异组(CNVs,一组对 DNA 特定部分的染 色体进行复制)和单核苷酸变异组(SNVs,修改 DNA 信使中单独的基因字母)两组中都是对的。 从表面上看,这似乎是令人信服的女性保护模式证据。因为 Jacquemont 医生检验的所有孩子的数据都 被诊断有问题,如果比起男孩,女孩有更严重的突变,那就表面他们生理机能的其他方面掩盖了结果。如 果这个解释是正确的,因此女性比男性能在出现的症状中更好的保护自己。而且,作为进一步的确认, Jacquemont 医生的发现与一个三年前发布的研究成果相符,研究发现 CNVs 在自闭症女孩中横跨多个 基因(也因此假设更具破坏性),比患自闭症男孩的多。 相反的观点认为如果女孩能更好的隐藏他们的症状,在被诊断的小组中,只有更极端女性案例会出现。如 果这是正确的,那么在女孩症候群中预期有更多程度的突变。然而, Jacquemont 医生和他的同事同样 也发现受损的 CNVs 遗传于母亲的可能性大于他或她的父亲。他们解释这进一步证明了女性保护机制。 自闭症症状使任何性别的人都不大愿意成为父母。如果母亲是孩子自闭症诱导基因的主要来源,因此建议 孩子们能少受到影响母体的影响。 即使没有这个,准确机制也说明男孩比女孩更易受到影响。在这个问题上,也有两个主要的理论。第一个 理论认为男性更敏感, 因为他们只有一个 X 染色体。这使对染色体的突变更易受影响,因为任何受损基 因都没有双胞胎来掩盖。认知障碍,X 染色体易损综合症,确实因为这个原因在男性中很常见。然而 Jacquemont 医生的研究发现 X 染色体突变的作用有限。这表明该差异的遗传基础是分布在整个基因组 的。
另一种解释则是解剖学意义上的。它基于男性和女性大脑内部连接模式差异的脑成像研究。男性大脑比起 女性而言,有较强的本地连接,较弱的长范围连接。这与是否患有自闭症者大脑的不同相似。这表明男性 类型连接模式在某种程度上更加易受因此自闭症的其他认知障碍因素得破坏。然而为什么会这样,仍是未 解之谜。 译者:雷婧
The best and worst states for small business
Red tape blues
Small businesses fret less about taxes than over-regulation IAN TONER, an architect in Philadelphia, recently went to city offices for a permit to build a stoop for a client's home. The city, he learned, had just imposed new requirements:he would have to get maps from gas, electric, water and other utilities to ensure the stoop would not disturb their underground lines and then resubmit his application. A process he thought would take a day took more than two weeks. That's not all. Other new rules require that he prove that his builder has general liability, workers'compensation and car insurance, and has paid all his taxes. Four times a year he must set aside a half day to ensure he is paying the state's and city's myriad taxes correctly. Mr Toner doesn't question the need for rules and taxes; what galls him is the time and hassle involved in complying with them. "The information exists all over the place and the burden is on me not just to gather it but interpret it. I'm not going to leave here because of this, but they're all things that could turn a person off of coming here." America's states and cities have traditionally tried to attract businesses by offering them tax breaks and other cash incentives. Yet there may be a more effective way, and one which puts no strain on stretched budgets: make life simpler. Thumbtack, a website that matches customers to businesses, and the Kauffman Foundation, a think-tank, asks thousands of small businesses annually about local requirements for hiring, regulations, zoning, licences, health insurance and training. They have enough data to compile (somewhat subjective) "business climate" grades for 38 states and 82 cities. One surprising finding is how little local tax rates matter. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they pay their "fair share" of taxes, which the survey-takers reckon means they don't feel over- or undertaxed. But many complain about the difficulty of complying with complex regulations: this was a strong predictor of how small businesses rank their states. To be sure, low-tax states such as Texas generally score well, while high-tax states such as California and Illinois flunk their tests. This may be because the kind of politicians who like high taxes also like bossing people around. But not always. Minnesota, a high-tax state, earns a respectable "B" for business climate, partly because it is easy to start a business there. Washington and Florida, both low-tax states, earn a "C" and a "C+". Entrepreneurs fault Washington's harsh zoning laws and gripe that in Florida new firms must jump through hoops like dolphins at SeaWorld. The lesson for politicians is: "no matter what else you do, make things easy," says Jon Lieber of Thumbtack. "This may seem obvious but a lot of governments don't do it right. Don't require a plumber to spend two days at city hall pulling permits when he could be doing jobs." Too often, state websites are confusing and bureaucrats unhelpful. Dennis Kessler, an accountant in New Jersey, says he usually can't get through on the telephone to the relevant department. When he does, the information is often misleading or incomplete. He recently spent 30 hours trying to help a client change its corporate status without getting a different federal taxidentification number—only to discover that this is impossible.
Licensing rules are a headache. In theory, they protect the public from incompetence, which is useful if you are hiring a doctor. But increasingly they protect incumbents from competition—the requirement to have a licence raises an occupation's wages by 18%, according to Morris Kleiner and Alan Krueger, two economists. In the 1950s less than 5% of workers required state licences; now 35% do. Some make no sense. Celeste Kelly, a horse lover, began offering horse massage, a subject she had studied privately, in 2006; she charges $55 per session. In 2012 the Arizona State Veterinary Medical Examining Board ordered her to "cease and desist" or face heavy fines and possible criminal charges. According to the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian law firm which is suing the board on her behalf, Arizona does not require vets to learn massage, and Ms Kelly may offer it for free; she simply can't charge for it unless she's a vet. "Veterinarians I know think it's ridiculous," she complains. "It's their political arm that has crafted legislation to be self-protective." State licensing regimes vary widely. Louisiana requires licences for 70% of low-wage occupations, according to IJ, including barber, bartender and cosmetologist. In Wyoming, it is a more modest 24%. In Hawaii, licences require an average of 724 days of experience and education; in Pennsylvania, 113. Enforcement is uneven, too. Changes to regulations have little effect on economic growth in the short run—cyclical influences such as the state of the housing market or the fortunes of a particular industry (high-tech in California, oil in Texas) matter more. But in the long run, business-friendliness makes a difference: one study found that states that rank better on indices of taxes, costs and regulations enjoy stronger job growth, after filtering out the influence of industry composition and the weather. Globally, countries that rank higher in the World Bank's surveys of the ease of doing business grow faster. Lowering barriers to entry for new businesses gives consumers more choice and cheaper prices. A gourmet-food-truck fad began in Los Angeles with $2 Korean tacos in 2008, and has thrived because the city is flexible about where such trucks can park. By contrast, Chicago forbids food trucks from operating within 200 feet of a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, and requires them to have a GPS to ensure compliance, which makes life very hard for them in the downtown business district. Businesses lobby for lots of things they should not have: handouts from the taxpayer, handicaps imposed on their rivals. But it is hard to find fault in their plea for simpler rules, swifter bureaucratic decisions, government websites that a normal person can navigate and officials who actually answer the phone. Clearing away old rules is hard. Their benefits tend to be concentrated (eg, when they protect incumbents); their costs dispersed (slightly higher prices affect all consumers, but only a little). States and cities can, however, slow the pace at which new rules proliferate, for example by estimating their economic impact before enacting them. Last year Iowa's governor vetoed a bill that would have required licences for drug-abuse counsellors, and Arizona made life easier for firms operating in multiple cities with separate sales taxes by limiting them to one tax form and one audit. The difficulty is that many rules purport to protect the public: from shoddy services, dangerous products or even death. Even if the cost is high and the risk remote, no politician wants to be accused of compromising public safety. Last year Mike Pence, Indiana's Republican governor, vetoed the licensing of diabetes educators and anaesthesiologist assistants, on the grounds the new rules would raise barriers to business and require additional bureaucracy. But
a year later, he signed into law a modified version of the measure, minus the extra bureaucracy but otherwise much the same.
小本生意的旺市与淡市 繁文缛节让人忧郁 小本生意担心监管过度问题多过税收 最近,费城建筑师伊恩· 托纳前往市政府办公室为其客户获得房屋门廊建设许可证。伊恩了解到,费城刚 刚颁布了新的要求:申请者得提交天然气、电气、水气等公司的地图,确保门廊不会影响地下线,然后重 新提交申请。他原本以为这个过程只需花费一天,而事实上却花了大概两个礼拜。 这还不是全部的。其他新的条例要求,申请者还要证明建筑工人享有责任保险、劳工补偿以及汽车保险, 并且全部交过税。一年四次,他得留出半天时间来确保他准确支付了州政府以及市政度各种繁杂的税。托 纳先生并不是在纠结这些条例和税收的必要性;让他觉得受到羞辱的是遵守背后所花费的时间与麻烦。 "信息随处可见,我所承受的压力不仅仅是去收集这些信息,更多的是去解释。我不打算因为这个就离开, 但是那些却是阻碍人们来此的力量。" 沿袭传统,美国的州和城市通过税收减免政策和其他的现金奖励措施来尽量吸引招商。但是,或许还有另 外一种更有效的方法,不对紧张的预算施压,即生活更简单。 美国一家本地服务网上交易市场—Thumbtack(图钉),以及发挥智囊团作用的考夫曼基金会每年会向成 百上千小本生意打听情况,询问当地对于招聘、规章制度、分区制、健康保险以及上岗培训的一些要求。 他们有足够的数据对美国 38 个州以及 82 个城市编译"商业环境"(有点主观)。 令人吃惊的是,当地税收无关痛痒。近六成受访者称,他们支付问卷者认为的不高也不低的税收。但是许 多人抱怨遵循复杂法规的难处:这是一个很强烈地预兆,表明了小本生意如何去评价他们所在的州。 可以肯定的是,像德克萨斯州这样低税收的地方通常排名靠前,评价高;相比而言,想加州和伊利诺斯州 这样高税收的却未能博得民心。或许是因为喜欢高税收的政治家们很喜欢发号施令。但也有的特例,比如, 明尼苏达州税收高,却赢得了一个令人尊敬的"B"级商业环境等级;可能是因为这里创业很容易。像华盛 顿和佛罗里达这样低税收的,却分别得了一个"C"和一个"C+"。企业家把责任归咎于华盛顿苛刻的分区制, 还抱怨佛罗里达州的新公司就像海洋世界里海豚跳铁圈一样。 来自图钉的约翰· 烈博说,政治家得到的教训是:"不管你做了什么,简化它们。"他继续说,"这看起来显 而易见,但很多政府官员却无法做到。不要指望水管工会花两天的时间在市政厅请求许可证,特别是在他 们还可以做别的事的时候。" 州政府网站时常让人费解,而且官僚们常常无所用处。新泽西的会计丹尼斯认为,通常,他无法打通相关 部门的电话。当他打通的时候,回馈的信息往往是让人误解的或者不完整。最近,他花了 30 个小时帮助 一名客户在未获得不同的联邦纳税人识别号的情况下去改变法人地位,但最后他发现一切都是徒劳的。 许可证管理是一件很头痛的事。经济学家莫里斯和奥兰认为,理论上讲,这些制度保障了大众,特别是当 你雇佣了一名医生,它们可以避免无能医生。渐渐地,这些制度保护现任者不受竞争力的影响;即对执照 的要求使得工资上涨 18 个百分点。在 20 世纪 50 年代,不到 5%的工人需要证明,现在增加到 35%。 一些制度纯属无稽之谈。骑马爱好者克莱斯特· 凯里开始提供为马按摩的服务,这项服务是她于 2006 年 个人研究的;按摩一次 55 美元。2012 年,亚利桑那州兽医医学研究委员会要求凯里停止这项服务,否 则将面临高价罚款以及牢狱之灾。据司法部部门,一家持自由论的律师事务所帮助凯里控告该委员会,亚 利桑那州并没有要求兽医要学按摩,而且凯里小姐也可能会免费提供该服务;除非她是兽医,不然她不能 收费。凯里抱怨道,"我所认识的兽医觉得这很荒唐。这是他们获得自保的政治手段。" 许可证体制变化莫测。依据司法部门,路易斯安那州要求包括理发师、酒保以及美容师在内的占 70%的 低收入职业持有许可证明。在怀俄明州,该比例较少,为 24%。在夏威夷州,执照获得的资格要求是工 作经历加教育经历 724 天;在宾夕法尼亚州,113 天。执行过程更是入目不堪。 从短期看,条规的变化对经济增长无影响,而周期性的影响因素比如房地产市场的状态或者一个特定行业 的财富积累(加州的高科技,德克萨斯州的石油),却更重要。但是,从长期看,商业友好型却有不同: 一项研究发现,排除行业类别组成与天气因素影响,税收、成本和监管指数排名较前的州享有更强的就业 增长。全球范围内,在世界银行一项关于做生意的方便性的调查中,排名更靠前的过家发展更快。 降低创业的门槛让消费者享有更多的选择,更实惠的价格。一股美食车潮因 2 美元的韩国烤肉于 2008 年在洛杉矶流行开来,这是因为洛杉矶这座城市随处可适应美食车。相比而言,芝加哥却禁止快餐车停留 在实体餐厅的 200 英尺范围内,还要求他们配有 GPS 定位以确保他们遵守了上述条例,而这一切让市中 心商业区的人们生活艰难。 企业为了许多不属于他们的东西四处游说:纳税人的救济金,给对手造成的障碍。然而,我们很难去指责 他们想要简单条例、更迅速的官僚决策、普通人可以使用的政府网站以及可以接通电话的官员。 废除老规矩是很难的。老规矩的受益者们往往很集中(当要保护现任者的时候);所需成本分散(稍高的 价钱会影响所有的消费者)。然而,州政府以及市政府却可以放慢新规则的制定速度,例如,在制定之前 可以先评估其经济影响。去年爱荷华州的官员投票通过一项法案,其内容要求吸毒人员的顾问持有执照; 亚利桑那州放宽对公司的要求,通过限制公司只有一个税种和一种审计,允许其在多个城市支付单独的销 售税。 许多条例制定出来是为了保护民众免受赝品、危险的产品以及死亡的威胁,而这恰恰也是难点。即使成本 高,危险遥不可及,没有一个政客愿意因为危害公共安全而被起诉。去年,印第安纳州共和党州长麦
克· 彭斯投票糖尿病教育者以及麻醉学者助理的许可证,理由是新的法规会给商业活动造成困难,并会增 加额外的官员。但是一年以后,他签署了一份修改版的法案,减少多余的官僚机构,其他方面则一样。
High streets
Strange town
Why some streets in London stay resolutely the same KENTISH TOWN ROAD is a humdrum high street in north London. It contains pawnbrokers, pound shops, hairdressers and some long-in-the-tooth hardware stores. Unlike Camden Town to the south, full of bars and tattoo parlours, or Hampstead to the west, with its bistros and boutique clothing shops, little seems to have changed on the street for the past three decades. "It's never quite got going," admits Gary McLaren, a local bookseller. Yet the lack of change is odd—and hints at some of the strangeness of London. Kentish Town has excellent transport links to central London, and plenty of residents prepared to pay good money for that. Off the high street stretch rows of pretty Victorian terraced houses, which sell for as much as 2m ($3m) apiece. Between 2007 and 2014 property prices in the postcode area surrounding the main Tube and railway station more than doubled. An influx of French parents, drawn by a school that opened in 2011, is pushing prices even higher. Yet Kentish Town's shops and cafes are almost invariably untrendy and in some cases mouldering. A hair salon, a butcher and a sportswear shop have each been owned by the same men for more than a quarter of a century. Why? One explanation is that, in common with other parts of London, Kentish Town has lots of social housing as well as costly Victorian terraces. Camden Council, the local authority, is building even more in the borough. This helps cheaper shops survive, suggests Tony Travers of the London School of Economics: council tenants are less likely to drive and so rely more on local outlets. And the sheer volume of car and lorry traffic on the busy high street, which is a main road into the city, might deter shoppers from visiting and swanky businesses from setting up in the area. Demography plays a part, too. Fully 72% of the population of Kentish Town is white, including a good number of Irish residents—higher than the proportion in London as a whole, at 60%. Unlike the high streets around Peckham and Brixton in south London, which cater for African shoppers who may travel far to reach them, few specialist shops draw people to Kentish Town. "We're not a destination high street," sighs one local trader. NIMBYs have not always helped. Lots of civic groups are active in the area, campaigning against late licences and the like, says Dan Carrier of the Camden New Journal, a newspaper. A local business association is also good at complaining. Partly because of this, a big supermarket has not yet opened on the high street—though Lidl, a discounter, will set up shop this year. "We quite like that it is rough around the edges," says Michael Williams, a writer and local. Paradoxically, soaring house prices in the area might be another brake on change. Wealthy family buyers mean that some houses once split into flats have been turned back into homes, says Mr Carrier. The result is fewer shoppers on the high street. Wealthy residents are more likely to get their groceries online or drive to bigger stores. And most will go out to the West End rather than a local restaurant. Such "counter-currents" will prevent Kentish Town from gentrifying fully, suggests Gillian Tindall, a local historian. And they affect many other streets in London, too. Lupus Street in Pimlico serves a large council block on one side and white stucco houses on the other. Caledonian Road in Islington, close to rapidly-changing King's Cross, is still full of kebab shops. London is a
global city, but it is also a collection of villages, cranky and resistant to change.
商业街 陌生的城市 为何伦敦仍执拗地保持部分街道不变样 肯特镇路(KENTISH TOWN ROAD)是伦敦北部的一条颇显乏味的街道。这这条街上有当铺、一磅店 (像中国的一元店)、理发店和一些古老的五金店。不似南部尽是酒吧和纹身店的卡登姆镇和西部满是夜 总会与精品服饰店的汉普斯蒂德,30 年来肯特镇路似乎并无改变。当地的一位书店老板 Gary McLaren 坦诚,"它从未真正改变。"但是欠缺改变是如此之怪异—而且这暗示了伦敦的些许陌生感。 肯特镇通向伦敦市中心交通便利,还拥有众多愿意支付交通费的居民。距主干街不远,目之所及尽是铺陈 开来的一排排维多利亚式排屋,这些房子售价每栋房屋 200 万欧元(合 300 万美金)。在 2007 至 2014 年间,在主要的地铁站和火车站附近的房价都翻了一倍不止。一所于 2011 年开放的学校吸引了大 批法国父母,这些法国父母的涌入也促使房价的再升高。然而肯特镇的商店和咖啡馆几乎一直都是那个价, 有时候价格还会下跌。一间发廊、一间肉铺和一间运动服装店,同一店主可以拥有这其中一间店铺超过 25 年。这是为什么? 一种解释是,与伦敦的其他地区一样,肯特镇有许多的社会住房(指由住房协会和地方市政会提供的廉租 房或廉价房)和高价的维多利亚式排屋。伦敦卡姆登地方议会(地方当局)甚至在自治市(享有自治特权 的市镇)建造更多这样的房屋。伦敦经济学院的 Tony Travers 表示,这样有助于更廉价的店铺存活下来: 那些社会租房的租户的购买力收效甚微,所以更多的还是依赖于当地商铺。在繁忙的主干街(通向市中心 的主街)上,汽车总量和货车流量很可能遏制了顾客对商店的光顾,也阻止了一流企业在此处的设立开办。 人口结构也是很大一部分原因。肯特镇有近 72%的人都是白人,其中大部分是爱尔兰居民(比伦敦的爱 尔兰总人口还要多)—这比伦敦总人口的 60%还多。不像伦敦南部的佩卡姆和布里斯顿附近的街道那样, 为了迎合那些专门为来到这些这里的非洲顾客而设立的商店,这里几乎没有独特的店铺足以吸引人们来到 肯特镇。肯特的一位商人感叹,"我们的街道并不是顾客的目的地。" 邻避效应(not in my back yard,指居民或当地单位因担心建设项目带来诸多负面影响,从而激发人们 的嫌恶情结,滋生"不要建在我家后院"的心理,及采取的强烈和坚决的、有时高度情绪化的集体反对甚至 抗争行为。)并不一直都起作用。该地区的许多公民组织是很活跃的,他们常反对老旧的许可证这类事物, 来自卡姆登新日报(Camden New Journal)的 Dan Carrier 说道。当地的一个工商协会也很擅长这种 控诉。在一定程度上出于这种原因,一家大型超市都未能在这条街上开张—即使是将在今年开业 Lidl(一 间德国的连锁超级市场,在全球拥有超过 8000 间分店。)当地作家 Michael Williams 说,"我们的确 喜欢在边缘徘徊,不入大流。" 相反的是,该地区飞涨的房价可能是改变的另一个阻碍。Carrier 表示,那些富裕家庭的买主意味着曾被 隔成公寓的房屋已被变回原来的大房子。结果便是街道上越来越少的顾客。富裕的居民更可能在线购物或 是开车去大商店。而且其中的大多数人会去伦敦西区(the West End)而不是当地的餐厅。 当地的一位历史学家 Gillian Tindall 表示,这般"逆流现象"将完全阻止肯特镇的区域贵族化。而且他们 还影响了伦敦的很多其他街道。例如皮姆利科的 Lupus 街,一边提供社会住房,另一边就有高档的白色 粉刷住宅。伊斯灵顿的古苏格兰路(Caledonian Road,临近不断改变的国王十字火车站)仍旧满是烤 肉店。伦敦是一个全球化城市,但是它也是一个村落的集合而且它古怪又固执的拒绝改变
Leaders Satellites Space: the next startup frontier Where nanosats boldly go, new businesses will follow—unless they are smothered with excessive regulations AROUND 1,000 operational satellites are circling the Earth, some of them the size and weight of a large car. In the past year they have been joined by junior offspring: 100 or so small satellites, some of them made up of one or more 10cm (4-inch) cubes. They may be tiny, but each is vastly more capable than Sputnik, the first man-made satellite launched by Russia in 1957. And many more are coming. Space hardware used to cost so much that it was available only to generals, multinationals and the most privileged scientists. No more. Many of these nanosats, as small satellites weighing no more than a few kilograms are called, have been launched for small companies, startups and university departments, sometimes with finance raised on crowdfunding websites. Their construction costs can be down in the tens of thousands of dollars, which makes them thousands of times cheaper than today's big satellites. Admittedly, there is much they cannot do, but with that sort of price differential, and some ingenious use of the abilities they do have, they could
be surprisingly competitive players on a number of fronts. In the next five years another 1,000 nanosats are expected to be launched. Two trends are setting up nanosats for further success. Like people working on everything from robots to 3D printers, nanosat builders are harvesting the benefits of ever better, ever cheaper components built for smartphones and other consumer electronics. Some nanosats even contain complete smartphones, making use of the clever operating systems, radios and cameras which phones now contain. For as long as phones go on getting cheaper and more capable, so will nanosats. The cheapest so far—a tiny chipsat—was assembled for just $25, though it has yet to be successfully launched. The launch systems too are getting much cheaper. SpaceX, the innovative rocket-maker founded by Elon Musk, has already brought down the costs of getting into space; it and its competitors could reduce them a lot further. The biggest beneficiaries will at first be people who make big satellites. But more big satellites will mean more opportunities for small satellites to piggy-back on their launches. And some companies are looking at cheap little launch systems tailored specifically to the needs of the nanosatellite. One reason space engineers are notoriously conservative is that the costs of failure are high. As making and launching satellites gets cheaper, it will be ever easier for innovative, risk-taking nanosat-makers to orbit around the lumbering incumbents. Size does impose limits. Nanosats cannot peer as closely at the Earth or carry out as many experiments as big satellites. But for some jobs that does not matter. The plans that companies already have include using nanosats for monitoring crops, studying the sun and tracking ships and aircraft. Such a system might have been able to track Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which went missing in March. Nano can do Yet not everyone is thrilled. One worry is that constellations of nanosats will mean a big increase in space junk; but, operating in low-Earth orbit, they burn up on re-entry after a year or so. And being cheap, they can soon be replaced with newer models. A more serious concern is that they are a "dualuse" technology: they could be used for military purposes. In America this has led to onerous restrictions. Barack Obama's administration has sensibly repealed a law of 1999 that required all satellites to be licensed by the State Department as munitions under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). This could mean that most commercial satellites will be removed from ITAR by the end of the year and their export administered by the Commerce Department. But some satellite systems and spacecraft—including anything that can carry people into space—will remain under ITAR. Care needs to be taken with military kit, but America's regulations still seem excessive. A regular review to distinguish between systems that pose a real threat and ones that don't would be a help, as would better intelligence. Tight restrictions on new technologies will not work, and will damage America's interests: exciting new ventures like nanosats will simply move to countries from which they can be launched with greater ease.
社论精粹 卫星 太空:下一个 微型卫星大胆地去哪儿,新的商业就会跟去哪儿—除非他们受到过度监管的阻碍 大约 1000 颗运转着的卫星正围绕着地球旋转,其中有些卫星的体积和重量和汽车差不多。去年,初级后 代加入了他们的队伍:100 颗左右的小卫星,他们中有些是由一个或多个 10 厘米(4 英尺)的立方体组
成。他们可能很小,但是他们每个都比 1957 年前苏联发射的首颗人造卫星 Sputnik 功能性强得多。而 且还有更多这样的卫星即将面世。 过去,太空硬件太贵了,只有将军,跨国公司和最享有特权的科学家才能有权使用。没有其他人有权使用。 许多这种微型卫星——由于小卫星质量不超过几千克而得此名——已经提供给小公司、新创办的公司和大 学一些系发射,有时在集体融资网站集资。他们的制造成本可以降低好几万美元,这使得他们比目前的大 卫星便宜成千上万倍。不可否认的,这些卫星有许多办不了的事儿,但是在那种价格差下,加以巧妙使用 他们已有的功能,他们可以在许多方面出乎意料地成为有竞争力的选手。在接下来的五年,还有 1000 颗 微型卫星有望被发射出去。 两个趋势为微型卫星进一步的成功奠定了基础。就像从研究机器人到 3D 打印的人们一样,微型卫星的制 造者从智能手机和其他家用电子产品中获得了更廉价更好的元件。有些微型卫星甚至装有整个手机装置, 利用手机目前现有的智能的操作系统、电台和照相机功能。只要手机在一直降价并且越来越智能化,微型 卫星也会同样变便宜并且更智能。目前最便宜的——微型芯片卫星——只花了 25 美元进行配置,尽管它 暂时还没有被成功发射出去。 发射系统也越来越便宜了。伊隆?马斯克创办的创新火箭制造公司太空探索技术公司已经降低了发射卫星 到太空的成本了,该公司及其竞争对手可以进一步降低发射成本。最大的受益人首先就是制造大型卫星的 人。但是越多大型卫星发射就意味着越多的机会给小卫星。一些公司在研究廉价小型发射系统专用于满足 微型卫星的需求。太空工程师出了名的保守一个原因是失败的代价太高。随着制造和发射卫星越来越便宜, 微型卫星制造者就越容易进行创新和冒险环绕 XX 运行。 体积确实会产生限制。微型卫星不能像大型卫星一样把地球看得那么仔细,也不能像大型卫星一样进行那 么多实验。但是对有些工作来说,体积并不重要。公司现有的计划包括用微型卫星监控农作物,研究太阳 和追踪船只和飞机。这种系统可能可以追踪三月份失踪的马航 MH370。 微型卫星可以做到 但是没有人很兴奋。其中一个担忧是一群微型卫星就意味着太空垃圾大量增加,但是,如果在近地轨道运 行,这些卫星就会烧掉或者一年后重新进入轨道。因为便宜,这些卫星可以很快被更新的型号取代。更应 该关注的是他们是"军民两用"的技术:这些卫星也可以用于军事用途。在美国,这个引发了麻烦的限制。 巴拉克?奥巴马的政府明智地撤销了 1999 年的一项法规,这项法规规定所有的卫星都要遵循《国际武器 贸易条例》,作为军需品通过国务院授权。这可能意味着嘴商业化的卫星将于今年年底从国际武器贸易条 例中去除,并且他们的出口受商务部管理。但是一些卫星系统和飞机——包括一切可以载人进入太空的东 西—还是要遵循《国际武器贸易条例》。 军用装备需要小心,但是美国的条例看起来还是过分了。定期检查区分形成真正威胁的系统和没有形成威 胁的系统会有效,还会更明智。对新技术的严格限制不会有用,还会损害美国的利益:像微型卫星那样令 人兴奋的新冒险只会转移到发射更容易的国家去。
Social change The weaker sex Blue-collar men in rich countries are in trouble. They must learn to adapt AT FIRST glance the patriarchy appears to be thriving. More than 90% of presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoysocial and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome. So it might seem odd to worry about the plight of men. Yet there is plenty of cause for concern. Men cluster at the bottom as well as the top. They are far more likely than women to be jailed, estranged from their children, or to kill themselves. They earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic maths, reading and science entirely. One group in particular is suffering. Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the workplace. Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at the very top). Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent
mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects. From nuclear families to fissile ones Those on the political left tend to focus on economics. Shrinking job opportunities for men, they say, are entrenching poverty and destroying families. In America pay for men with only a high-school certificate fell by 21% in real terms between 1979 and 2013; for women with similar qualifications it rose by 3%. Around a fifth of working-age American men with only a highschool diploma have no job. Those on the right worry about the collapse of the family. The vast majority of women would prefer to have a partner who does his bit both financially and domestically. But they would rather do without one than team up with a layabout, which may be all that is on offer: American men without jobs spend only half as much time on housework and caring for others as do women in the same situation, and much more time watching television. Hence the unravelling of working-class families. The two-parent family, still the norm among the elite, is vanishing among the poor. In rich countries the proportion of births outside marriage has trebled since 1980, to 33%. In some areas where traditional manufacturing has collapsed, it has reached 70% or more. Children raised in broken homes learn less at school, are more likely to drop out and earn less later on than children from intact ones. They are also not very good at forming stable families of their own. These two sides often talk past each other. But their explanations are not contradictory: both economics and social change are to blame, and the two causes reinforce each other. Moreover, these problems are likely to get worse. Technology will disrupt more industries, creating benefits for society but rendering workers who fail to update their skills redundant. The OECD, a think-tank, predicts that the absolute number of single-parent households will continue to rise in nearly all rich countries. Boys who grow up without fathers are more likely to have trouble forming lasting relationships, creating a cycle of male dysfunction. Tinker, tailor, soldier, hairdresser What can be done? Part of the solution lies in a change in cultural attitudes. Over the past generation, middle-class men have learned that they need to help with child care, and have changed their behaviour. Working-class men need to catch up. Women have learned that they can be surgeons and physicists without losing their femininity. Men need to understand that traditional manual jobs are not coming back, and that they can be nurses or hairdressers without losing their masculinity. Policymakers also need to lend a hand, because foolish laws are making the problem worse. America reduces the supply of marriageable men by locking up millions of young males for non-violent offences and then making it hard for them to find work when they get out (in Georgia, for example, felons are barred from feeding pigs, fighting fires or working in funeral homes). A number of rich countries discourage poor people from marrying or cohabiting by cutting their benefits if they do. Even more important than scrapping foolish policies is retooling the educational system, which was designed in an age when most men worked with their muscles. Politicians need to recognise that boys'underachievement is a serious problem, and set about fixing it. Some sensible policies that are good for everybody are particularly good for boys. Early-childhood education provides boys with more structure and a better chance of developing verbal and social skills. Countries with successful vocational systems such as Germany have done a better job than Anglo-Saxon countries of motivating
non-academic boys and guiding them into jobs, but policymakers need to reinvent vocational education for an age when trainees are more likely to get jobs in hospitals than factories. More generally, schools need to become more boy-friendly. They should recognise that boys like to rush around more than girls do: it?s better to give them lots of organised sports and energy-eating games than to dose them with Ritalin or tell them off for fidgeting. They need to provide more male role models: employing more male teachers in primary schools will both supply boys with a male to whom they can relate and demonstrate that men can be teachers as well as firefighters. The growing equality of the sexes is one of the biggest achievements of the post-war era: people have greater opportunities than ever before to achieve their ambitions regardless of their gender. But some men have failed to cope with this new world. It is time to give them a hand.
社会的改变 弱男子 在发达国家的蓝领男性群体正处于困境中,他们必须学会适应。 父系社会现在咋一看似乎正兴盛。超过 90%的国家总统总理,和几乎所有大型公司的大 boss 都是男性。 男性统治着经济,科技,企业,体育,音乐,甚至连说相声的都基本是男的。在大多数国家里男人仅仅因 为拥有一条 Y 染色体便享有在社会和法律上的特权,这样看来,担心男性的"悲催命运"般的困境似乎是在 杞人忧天。 但有却又大量的原由让人不得不担心。男性群体从渣男到精英男,他们在被关进监狱啊,被他们的孩子疏 远嫌弃啊,或者自杀率啊都远远大于女性,却在取得更多的大学学位上败给了女性。在发达国家中,有 50%左右的男孩会在基础数学,阅读和科学学科上挂掉。 在男性群体中又有一类人尤其遭罪。在过去的半个世纪里,发达国家里的受教育程度低的男性已经非常难 应对发生了巨变的劳工市场和家庭。现代技术革新和贸易已经使原先的靠劳力形式的肌肉男的价值直线下 降,缺少教育的男性,不得不在职场中苦苦挣扎,才能博得一席之地。相反的,女性却依靠着自身出众的 技能,在像医疗卫生和教育这样的领域里大放异彩。教育已经变成更重要的事情,而男孩却学校里被女孩 甩在了身后(尖端领域学科除外)。从工厂失业的男性常从此不再去工作。而没有工作的男性会发现去吸 引永久的伴侣是件非常难的事。由此导致低技术的男性被无工作,无家庭,无前景的 "三无"剧毒环环围住。 从核心家庭到易碎家庭 支持左翼 的人倾向于专注于经济,他们认为减少男性工作的机会会加剧贫穷,并,并摧毁家庭。在美国, 只有高中学历的男性的实际收入,从 1979 年到 2013 年减低了 21%,而同等学历的女性,在此期间的 实际收入却提高了 3%。约有 5 分之一的只有高中学历的处在工作适龄的男性,处在失业中。 支持右翼的人担心着家庭的崩溃。绝大多数的女性倾向于和愿兼顾家里财政收入职能和家务劳动职能的男 性成为两口子。她们宁愿单身也不愿随便和一个游手好闲的卢瑟勉强过一辈子,而这是有依据的:美国失 业男性仅仅只付出同等条件下失业女性的一半的时间来做家务事和照顾彼此的生活,这些男人会花更多的 时间来看电视。 因此工人阶级的家庭变的更易解体。双亲家庭这种形式还是精英阶层的标配,而这种家庭形式却在穷人中 正在消失。在发达国家,非婚生子占新生儿的比重比 1980 年高出了 3 倍,已经达到了 33%。而在一些 传统制造业崩坏的地区,这一比例达到 70%甚至更高。生活在破碎家庭里的孩子比起一般家庭的孩子而 言,在学校里会学的更少,更可能辍学和收入较低。同时,因为不善于处理家庭问题,他们自己日后的家 庭也趋于不稳定(简言之单亲家庭的孩子长大后更易于组成新的单亲家庭)。 这两种政治倾向的讨论话题往往会相互交叉重叠。但二者的观点却并不矛盾:经济状况和社会这二者的变 革都是造成此类现状的原因,而这二者还互为因果,形成恶性循环。此外,这些问题可能变得更糟。科技 将瓦解更多的行业,为社会创造更多的价值,但也将使更多的无法升级自身技能的劳动者失业。 经济合 作与发展组织里的一个诸葛天团预测单亲家庭的比例定会继续在所有发达国家中上升。在没有父性角色的 家庭长大的男孩,将更可能不能处理好长久关系(如夫妻关系)以至于形成新的单亲家庭,由此形成一个 男性功能紊乱的死循环。 锅匠,裁缝,士兵和美发师 那么问题来了,我们能做什么呢?其一在于改变文化态度。在过去的一代,中产阶层的男士知晓了他们需 要帮忙照看小孩,并由此改变了他们的行为。工人阶层的男士们需要加紧脚步赶上来了。女士知晓了她们 可以成为外科医师和物理学家而不失其女性魅力。男人们需要明白传统的体力工作一去不复返,他们可以 成为护士或美发师而不失其男性霸气侧漏之美。 政府决策人也需搭把手,因为愚蠢的法令会令问题变得更糟。美国减少了对被关押的以百万数计的非暴力 犯罪的处于适婚年龄的年轻男子的支持,并在他们出狱后找工作这种事上还要制绊脚石造(以乔治亚州为 例,罪犯被禁止从事养猪,救火或在殡葬馆工作)。在一些发达国家,为了阻止穷人结婚或者同居这一目 的,通过如果他们这么干的话就砍掉他们的福利这种手段来达到。
不过比起废弃愚蠢的政策,改革设计于大多数男人都是用肌肉(而非脑)工作的年代的教育系统显得更为 重要。政治家门应该意识到男孩们的学习成绩不良师一个很严峻的问题,并应立足于改善之。一些明智的 政策是为每个人都好,特别是对男孩。早期儿童教育会提供男孩们更系统并更能更好的发展他们的口语能 力和社会技能。有着成功的职业教育系统的国家如德国,在鼓励男孩去学术化,重职业化,并指导他们工 作上,已经做的比起盎格鲁-撒克逊国家而言要好的多了。但政策制定者应将恢复职业教育的重心放在使 受训者更倾向于日后在医院工作而不是在工厂工作这种时代要求上。 更广泛而言,学校需要变得更亲男孩化一些。他们应该意识到男孩比起女孩而言就是会更可能到处闯祸: 比起给他们吃药或告诫他们不要乱动而言,最好还是提供给他们一些有组织的运动和耗费精力的游戏。他 们需要男性榜样角色:在小学阶段,雇佣更多的男性教师,这不但可以给男孩子提供他们可以认同的男性 角色,还可以为男人可以像成为消防员一样的成为教师提供实证。 男女越来越平等是战后我们取得的重大成就之一:比起以前,现今人们不论性别都可以拥有更好的机会去 实现他们的梦想。但是一些男士未能适应这个新的世界,是时候对他们伸出援手了。
Curbing climate change The deepest cuts Our guide to the actions that have done the most to slow global warming ON SEPTEMBER 23rd 120-odd presidents and prime ministers will gather in New York for a UN meeting on climate change. It is the first time the subject has brought so many leaders together since the ill-fated Copenhagen summit of 2009. Now, as then, they will assert that reining in global warming is a political priority. Some may commit their governments to policies aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. What few will say is how many tonnes of carbon dioxide these will save—because they almost never do. According to scientists, cutting carbon-dioxide emissions is an essential part of reducing catastrophic risks from climate change. Yet governments are persistently averse to providing estimates of how much carbon a policy saves. That may be because, in countries where climate change is controversial, it makes more sense to talk about the other benefits a scheme offers rather than its effect on carbon. Or it may be that, in countries which are enthusiastic about renewable energy, pointing out that it may not save that much carbon is seen as unhelpful. Or perhaps governments think climate change is so serious that all measures must be taken, regardless of cost (though their overall lacklustre record suggests this is not the case). Whatever the reason, the end result is that while the world's governments have hundreds of policies for tackling climate change, some of them very expensive—China, America and the European Union spend $140 billion a year on subsidising renewable energy—it is hard to say which policies are having the greatest effect. So The Economist has made a stab at a global comparison of carbonmitigation efforts. Chart 1 is the result. It ranks 20 policies and courses of action according to how much they have done to reduce the atmosphere's stock of greenhouse gases. We have used figures from governments, the EU and UN agencies. As far as we know, this exercise has not been carried out before. Apples, meet oranges First, a health warning: the policies and actions on our list are not strictly comparable. Some are global, some regional and some national. Some are long-standing; some new. A couple are not policies at all, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to the closure of polluting factories and to inefficient state farms reverting to grassland, locking up carbon. And the numbers almost all come with caveats. It is fairly easy to estimate how much carbon a new field full of solar cells or a nuclear-power plant saves by looking at the amount of electricity it produces in a year and how much carbon would have been emitted if fossil fuels had been used instead, based on the local mix of coal, gas and oil. But as Paul Joskow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has pointed out, the standard "levelised" calculations,
which divide the total amount of power a plant will produce over its lifetime by its total lifetime cost, are a poor way to compare fossil fuels and renewable energy. Other measures have problems, too. Take the effects of fuel-efficiency standards. Would companies have curtailed their cars' emissions anyway to sell more of them to cost- and mileage-conscious drivers? And how much has better fuel efficiency encouraged drivers to drive farther? A further complication is that many policies have benefits beyond—or indeed closer to hand than—those they offer in terms of climate. Burning less coal saves lives in the near future as well as reducing climate risks in decades to come. Saving forests preserves wildlife, not just carbon. So our table should be treated with caution. It is only safe to say that one policy is better than another in climate terms if it beats it by a wide margin. As it happens, though, there are some very wide margins to be found. One policy stands head and shoulders above all others. And it is one that few people other than climate-policy specialists will have thought of in this context: the Montreal protocol, a 1987 agreement to phase out substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in air conditioners, refrigerators and so on. It was enacted to limit the damage such substances were doing to the ozone layer, a goal which it has achieved. Like carbon dioxide and many other gases emitted by industry and agriculture—methane and nitrous oxide, for example—CFCs are greenhouse gases. And they are extremely potent ones, causing thousands of times more warming per molecule than carbon dioxide does. That means stopping CFC production, which was in the range of millions of tonnes a year, delivered a climate benefit equivalent to cutting carbon-dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes. Collateral benefits Guus Velders of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has compared the warming effect that would have come about if the emissions of such chemicals had continued to grow at the rate they were growing before the protocol with what has come about thanks to their banning. The net effect is equivalent to that of a whopping 135 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is more than twice today's total annual greenhousegas emissions, which are equivalent to about 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide itself makes up about three-quarters of that, with methane, nitrous oxide and some gases used in industry making up the rest). Durwood Zaelke of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, a think-tank, says that if CFCs were uncontrolled the annual figure would be 8 billion tonnes higher. The Montreal protocol has had nearly as big an effect as all the rest of our list put together. Trailing some way behind the Montreal protocol is a small group of measures—not really climate policies—that have been responsible for avoiding between 4% and 7% of greenhouse-gas emissions. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, nuclear power avoided the production of 2.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2010—that is, emissions would have been 2.2 billion tonnes higher if the same amount of electricity had been produced by non-nuclear plants. Energy from dams and other hydroelectric sources avoided 2.8 billion tonnes (though emissions of methane from the reservoirs behind some of those dams mean the net effects were less than that). Between them they generated 6,000 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2011, compared with 450TWhrs for wind and less than 60TWhrs for solar. The high rate at which new wind and solar capacity is being built will eat into this lead, but it will take some time to overturn it.
The other item in this group is something of a cheat. In 2007 Su Wei of China's foreign ministry said that his country's one-child policy, by reducing the number of births between the late 1970s and the mid-2000s by 300m, had reduced carbon emissions by 1.3 billion tonnes in 2005 (because there were fewer people to consume goods which generated greenhouse gases in their production). Taking this argument further, one could say that the fall in global fertility since 1960 cut emissions even more. That is not exactly a climate policy. But it is a reminder that greenhouse gases are powerfully influenced by factors far beyond the scope of climate-change policies. Three other lessons emerge. First, policies to slow or reverse deforestation are more important than one might expect. Trees absorb carbon as they grow and release it when they are cut down. According to a recent study in Science, declining deforestation in Brazil meant that the country produced 3.2 billion tonnes less atmospheric carbon dioxide between 2005 and 2013 than it would have if the tree-felling had continued unabated. That is 400m tonnes a year. The slowdown in deforestation in tropical countries is one of the reasons that the conversion of forests to farmland now accounts for only 11% of greenhouse-gas emissions globally, much less than 20 years ago. The other reason for deforestation's dramatically reduced share of total emissions, though, is that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide have continued to grow rapidly. The rise is not as fast as it might have been. Rules that make vehicles more efficient and improve the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances have done more than might be expected. America has been setting standards for vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions and fuel efficiency since the mid 1970s; the current rules are forecast to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by 6 billion tonnes in 2012-25, meaning by about 460m tonnes a year. America's Department of Transportation reckons that overall such rules have reduced carbon-dioxide emissions by a cumulative 14 billion tonnes. Europe's equivalent regulations for passenger cars and light trucks do less (European vehicles were more efficient to start with) but are still respectable; being adopted by overseas manufacturers who want to sell cars in Europe gives them an unquantified extra clout. Their time will come New EU rules on the design of boilers and water heaters are expected to save 136m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year within six years. China's Development Research Centre and the World Bank say that on the basis of 2010 figures energy-efficiency targets for Chinese state-owned enterprises save about the same amount; that scheme has recently been much expanded. Subsidies for solar and wind power do less than you might expect, considering the attention they receive. The European Environment Agency calculates that between mid-2008 and 2012, what it calls changes in the carbon intensity of energy (mainly, the rise in renewables) accounted for a third of the decline in carbon-dioxide emissions in the EU. Emissions fell 350m tonnes in that period, so renewable policies seem to be responsible for about 30m fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, making them less effective than energy-efficiency measures. This estimate may be low. A separate calculation by Germany's environment ministry puts the figure for Germany alone at 100m tonnes in 2012. But even if the EU estimate is only half what it should be, renewables would still fall short of other carbon-mitigation policies. They are also extremely pricey. The cost of Germany's Energiewende (its transformation to a renewables-based electricity system) is 16 billion ($21 billion) a year. The cost of helping developing countries phase out CFCs under the Montreal protocol was just $2.4 billion all-told from 1990-2010. The Amazon Fund, which has done much
to fight deforestation in Brazil, has mostly been funded by the Norwegian government at a cost of just $760m over 11 years. Over the next few years, the relative weights of all these policies will change. Nuclear energy is being phased out in Germany and may not recover to its pre-Fukushima heights in Japan. Although it is growing in China, its share of worldwide electricity generation—currently about a seventh—is likely to decline. The same may be true of hydropower. The share of solar and wind power, on the other hand, will rise as costs fall and capacity increases (installed capacity for these renewables doubled in 2012-14). The Economist asked Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists who study emissions policies and actions, to calculate the policies likely to have the biggest impact in 2020. Their findings, in chart 2, suggest that the influence of the EU's renewables regime will grow considerably, though Europe will still be far from the zero-carbon energy system greens long for. Chinese efforts to boost renewables and energy efficiency are also likely to start bearing a lot more fruit. So, they think, could the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which finances greenhouse-gas reduction measures in developing countries to offset emissions in rich ones. Much more to do These estimates work on the basis of current policies. But one possible new measure would make a big difference. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are ozonefriendly replacements for CFCs, and are one of the fastest-growing greenhouse gases, having risen 40% since 1990. Emissions of HFCs are unrestricted, though CDM investments are used to reduce them in some cases. If the Montreal protocol were quickly amended to include them, says Mr Zaelke, it might do almost as much for greenhouse-gas emissions in the next 35 years as it did in 1990-2010. Saving the equivalent of some 130 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide so cheaply would be a big win. But it is still only a tenth of what would need to be done to ensure that the temperature in 2100 is no more than 2C higher than it was at the time of the Industrial Revolution—the limit that the countries of the world have committed themselves to. Without the measures listed in chart 1 emissions might be equivalent to almost 70 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, rather than 50 billion. But even the lower number is too high to meet the stated goal, and the overall trend is up, not down. World leaders gathering in New York are not only being vague about their climate policies. They are being dilatory, too.
控制气候变化 一切为了减排 我们的行为指南已经最大限度减缓了全球变暖 9 月 23 日,120 多位国家总统和首相将会汇聚纽约联合国总部,就气候变化议题举行会议。这是自 2009 年一无所获的哥本哈根气候大会之后,国家元首们第一次为了此项议题聚会。就像当时一样,他们 如今也一致认为控制全球变暖是政治的头等大事。一些元首们也许会承诺实行以削减温室气体排放为目标 的相关政策。但很少人能明确说出这些政策最终将减少多少吨二氧化碳排放量—因为根本没效果。 科学家表示,减少二氧化碳排放量是缓解由气候变化导致的灾难性后果的重要一步。但政府自始至终都不 愿意预估他们的政策到底能少排多少碳。这也许是因为,在那些对气候变化仍存争议的国家,政府更愿意 显示他们实行的其他福利政策是多么有效,而非低碳减排。或者在那些热衷于再生能源的国家,指出政府 政策并没有减少那么多碳排放也于事无补。或者政府认为气候变化太重要了,可以不惜一切代价来完成 (不过总的来看,根据他们拖拖拉拉的表现,这是不可能的)。 不管什么原因结果就是尽管世界各个政府出台了几百条治理气候变化的政策,有的还代价高昂—中国、美 国和欧盟每年花费 1400 亿补贴再生能源——很难说哪些政策是最有效的。 因此,《经济学家》尝试制作了一张全球各国碳减排成果的比较图。图表 1 是结果,列出了前 20 个政策 和行动方案以及每个政策方案的大气层温室气体的减少量。我们使用了政府、欧盟和联合国各机构公布的 数据。据我们所知,以前还没有人做过这样的比较。 当苹果遇见橘子
首先有个温馨提示:本次列出的政策和行动方案严格来说是不可比较的。一些是全球范围的,一些是区域 性或国家层面的。一些是长期执行的,另一些是新政。有几条并不能算是政策,比如由苏联解体导致的污 染工厂关门、效率底下的国有农场复归草原,锁住了碳。 这些数据都显示出了警告信号。很容易估算出一片新铺满太阳能板或盖满核能工厂的旷野减少了多少碳排 放,只要看看它每年发了多少电就可以了;另外,根据当地煤、气、油的混合状况也能很简单地估计出如 果以化石燃料替代之,将多排放多少碳。然而,正如麻省理工学院的 Paul Joskow 指出的那样,标准的 "水平化计算"——即用一座工厂整个使用年限所耗费的成本除以其产生的全部功率值,并不是一种比较化 石燃料和再生能源的好方法。 其他的测量方法也有问题。以燃料效率标准为例。司机对成本和公里数很敏感,公司会为了向他们销售更 多汽车而减少汽车排量么?更高的燃料利用率又在多大程度上鼓励了司机多开车? 更加复杂的是,很多政策所带来的好处不仅仅是治理气候。燃烧更少的煤炭可以在不远的将来挽救很多生 命,也能减少未来几十年内气候变化带来的各种危机。拯救森林不止是控制碳排放,也能保护野生动物。 所以这次谈判应该谨慎对待。只有当某个政策提供了更多的回旋余地,才能说它是更好的。 正好,我们还有很多潜力有待发掘。有一个政策尤其值得注意,尽管除了环境政策研究专家以外其他人很 少考虑到这一点:在蒙特利尔议定书中,一份 1987 年签订的协议要求逐步淘汰空调、电冰箱等家电中的 氯氟化碳成分。这项协议意在防止此类物质继续损害臭氧层,目前这个目标已经达成。 氟氯化碳就像二氧化碳和其他被工业农业排放出来的气体(例如甲烷和一氧化二氮)一样,都属于温室气 体。它们破坏力巨大,每分子所产生的热量比二氧化碳要高几千倍。这也就是意味着每年停止产生数百万 吨的氟氯化碳给缓解气候变化带来的好处,相当于减排数十亿吨二氧化碳。 好处多多 荷兰国家公共健康和环境研究所的 Guus Velders 估算了如果这些化学气体按照协议书禁令出台之前的速 度排放所带来的温室效应:其净排量相当于 1350 亿吨二氧化碳,比现在每年排放的温室气体总量(500 亿吨)的两倍还要多(二氧化碳占温室气体排放量的四分之三,其余的是甲烷、一氧化二氮和其他工业气 体)。"治理和可持续发展智库"的 Durwood Zaelke 表示,如果氟氯化碳的排放未受控制,则每年会多 排放 80 亿吨。蒙特利尔协议书的效果比其他所有协议的总和还要显著。 蒙特利尔协议书之后的其余各项措施——不完全是气候政策——也减少了 4%~7%的温室气体排放。根 据国际原子能机构的研究,核能在 2010 年减排了 22 亿吨二氧化碳——即如果由非核能工厂发电,二氧 化碳将增加 22 亿吨。大坝和其他水利发电减排了 29 亿吨二氧化碳(如果计入大坝后面蓄水库里产生的 甲烷,则净减排量要少一些)。这些在 2011 年共发电 6000 太瓦时,相比之下,风力发电贡献了 450 太瓦时,太阳能发电则为 60 太瓦时。风能和太阳能发电会占有越来越高的比重,但这还需要时间彻底扭 转目前的趋势。 另一项政策则不太切题。在 2007 年,中国外交部的苏伟表示,从 20 世纪 70 年代到本世纪头十年的中 期,中国的出生人口因独生子女政策减少了 3 亿,到 2005 年,碳排放量因此减少了 13 亿吨(因为生产 商品的过程往往产生温室气体,人越少,消耗商品越少)。按照这个说法进一步思考,可以说,1960 年 后全球生育率的下降为减排做出的贡献更大。那压根不是气候政策。但是,这表明温室气体排放量会受到 非气候变化政策因素的强烈影响。 三个教训值得学习。第一,减缓或逆转森林伐木的政策比预想更重要。树木生长时能吸收二氧化碳,被砍 伐时则会释放二氧化碳。据《科学》一项新研究表明,巴西实行减少森林砍伐的政策后,2005 年到 2013 年间,其排放到大气中的二氧化碳比不实行政策前少了 32 亿吨。年排放量为 4 亿吨。林地转耕地 的温室气体排放量现在仅占全球总排放量的 11%,比 20 年前少了很多,而热带国家森林开伐的节奏放 缓是缘由之一。 导致森林砍伐二氧化碳排放量占比大幅下降的另一个原因在于,二氧化碳的工业排放量持续快速上涨。增 长速度与预期有差异。提高交通工具使用效率以及提高房屋与电器的能源效率的政策比预期更有效。20 世纪 70 年代起,美国为交通工具的温室气体排放以及燃料效率制定了标准。当前的政策可以预测, 2012-2025 年间,二氧化碳排放量将减少 60 亿吨,相当于一年排放 4.6 亿吨。美国交通部估计,总体 来说,这些政策已累计减少二氧化碳排放量 140 亿吨。欧洲针对轿车和轻型货车出台的类似政策,减排 量不如美国(欧洲的交通工具之前更有效率),但依然显著。这些政策也适用于想在欧洲卖车的海外制造 商,这部分影响力无法量化。 他们的时机将会来临 欧盟针对锅炉以及热水器设计的新规定,有望在六年内将年碳排放量减少 1.36 亿吨。中国发展研究中心 及世界银行表示,根据 2010 年的数据,中国国有企业的能源效率目标也减少了相当量的碳排放,并近日 计划扩大这一目标。 以太阳能及风能补贴政策受到的关注度来看,其表现低于预期。欧洲环境署估计,在 2008 年中期到 2012 年,被其称为能源碳强度(主要指可再生能源的增加)引起的变化占欧盟减排量的三分之一。在此 期间,排放量下降 3.5 亿吨。因此,可再生能源政策可以解释约 3300 万以下的减排量,这使得此项政 策不如能源效率政策有效。 数据可能被低估了。另一个由德国环境部估计的数据显示,在 2012 年,仅德国的可再生能源政策产生的 减排量就达 1 亿吨。但是,即使欧盟的估计仅为实际的一半,可再生能源政策的减排效果也远不如其他减
排政策。这些政策的成本也很高。德国的能源转型成本(以新能源为基础的电力系统改革)是每年 160 万欧元(210 万美元)。1990-2010 年间,德国根据蒙特利尔议定书,帮助发展中国家逐步淘汰氟氯碳 化物的总成本仅 24 亿美元。在巴西,奋力对抗森林砍伐的亚马逊基金会主要得到挪威政府的资助,11 余年的成本仅为 7.6 亿美元。 在接下来的几年,所有政策的相对权重会发生变化。德国会逐步废除核能,日本对核能的重视程度也可能 无法恢复到福岛核泄漏之前的水平。虽然在中国,核能政策的权重在不断增强,但其在世界范围内的发电 份额—约七分之——可能下降。水力发电可能也面临一样的遭遇。另一方面,由于成本下降、容量增大 (这几类可再生能源的装机容量在 2012-2014 翻倍)太阳能和风能的份额可能会增加。 本刊邀请来自气候行动追踪组织一群研究排放政策和行动的科学家,估计 2020 年最可能产生最大影响的 政策。他们的结果(如图 2)表示,虽然欧洲依然达不到零碳排放能源系统的要求,欧盟可再生能源制度 的影响力会大幅增强。中国推进可再生能源以及能源效率的政策也很可能产生更多的成效。因此,他们在 想,资助发展中国家温室气体减排措施的联合国清洁发展机制是否可以补偿发达国家的排放量。 任重道远 这些估计都是基于当前的政策。但是,一项合理的新政策将会有重大意义。氢氟碳化物不破坏臭氧层,是 对氟氯碳化物的替代品,也是增长最快的温室气体之一。1990 年后,其排放量增长了 40%。清洁发展 机制曾投资减少一定程度的氢氟碳化物量,但其排放量仍不受限制。Zaelke 表示,如果蒙特利尔议定书 经修正后包含了这些内容,今后 35 年的温室气体排放量将达到 1990-2010 的水平。
以如此低的成本减少约 1300 亿吨二氧化碳排放量意义重大。但是,若要保证 2100 年地 球温度与工业革命时期相比不超过 2C——各国承诺的指标,其工作只完成了十分之一。 如果没有表 1 列出的各项政策,年碳排放量大约为 700 亿吨,而不是 500 亿吨。但即使 碳排放量减少,对于完成既定目标来说,排放量依然很高,而且,碳排放量的总趋势还在 增加而不是减少。聚集在纽约的各国领导,不仅对其气候政策界定不清,行动上也不够积 极。 Air pollution Not breathing easy A Supreme Court ruling forces the government to deal with dirty air BRITISH air is much clearer than it once was: in 1952 one "pea souper" smog in London(see photo) caused the deaths of around 4,000 people in a week. But it is not as clean as it could be. On April 29th the Supreme Court ordered the next government to come up with a plan by the end of the year to reduce the amount of nitrogen dioxide (NO-2), a noxious gas produced by diesel engines, in the atmosphere. The judgment could have big implications for several large infrastructure projects. It also suggests how, after years of campaigning by greener types, dirty air is finally becoming a political issue. Britain has long been exceeding limits set by the European Union on air pollution. In 2014 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs reported that, in the previous year, annual mean limits for NO-2 had been breached in 38 out of 43 sites. Certain roads in London, such as Oxford Street, a busy shopping thoroughfare, have seen some of the highest recorded measures of NO-2 in Europe. The health effects of NO-2 have not yet been calculated for Britain, but are thought to be as potentially damaging as fine man-made particulate matter, says Gary Fuller of King's College London. A report from a government advisory group in 2010 estimated that, if all fine particulate matter (which is mostly caused by car fumes and the wear and tear of tyres on the road) were removed from the atmosphere, it would increase the average life expectancy of those born in 2008 by six months—and for those born in London by nine months. Despite the mounting evidence of the harmful effects of dirty air, there has been little political desire to get it sorted. Responsibility for cleaning up air pollution falls over several different government departments, and may require unpopular decisions to be made about raising taxes or increasing environmental burdens on car companies. And around a third of the dirty air in Britain is swept across from Europe. Politicians could often skirt the issue by pointing out that it was a Europe-wide problem. But the ruling by the
Supreme Court "takes political will out of the equation," says Alan Andrews of ClientEarth, the group of environmental lawyers who brought the case to the Supreme Court. The government will have to clear up the air within the next decade or so, regardless of costs. However, in the next few months Sir Howard Davies, the leader of an independent Airports Commission, is expected to issue a recommendation on where to expand airport capacity in the south-east. The court ruling adds a "potential black mark" to the case for expanding either Heathrow or Gatwick, Sir Howard's two potential options, says Matthew Farrow, the executive director of the Environmental Industries Commission, an industry group. Levels of NO-2 are already above recommended levels around Heathrow, which is next to a busy motorway, and are expected to rise at Gatwick even without another runway. It could also delay plans for a new bridge in East London. This means the next government will have to make some swift decisions about clearing up Britain's dirty air, by introducing several "low-emission zones" to reduce the number of diesel cars and the like. Measures to cut air pollution have been taken before. In 1956, after the smog in London, the government pushed through a Clean Air Act, banning coal fires in people's homes. That decision was prompted by a crisis. The reasons for pushing through this reform may appear to be less dramatic, but they are no less important.
空气污染 呼吸不易 英国最高法院的裁决迫使政府出策解决空气污染问题 回想 1952 年,伦敦全城弥漫着黄色浓雾,一周内导致约 4000 人失去生命。如今,英国的空气质量变好 了许多,但仍有"尽善尽美"的空间。4 月 29 日,英国最高法院责令下届政府年底前制定旨在减少大气中 二氧化氮(柴油机制造的一种有毒气体)含量的方案。这一裁决可能对几项大型基建工程产生巨大影响。 同时,它也展现了环境污染由多届竞选者打出环保招牌,最终上升为政治问题的过程。 按照欧盟设定的空气污染标准,英国已是长期超标。英国环境、食品和农村事务部于 2014 年发布的一项 报告称,2013 年年间,43 个城市中有 38 个城市的二氧化氮年平均含量超标。在伦敦,像牛津街之类的 繁忙购物大街,其二氧化氮含量已多次超过欧洲的最高纪录值。 据伦敦国王学院的加里· 富勒称,英国目前尚未统计二氧化氮对国人身体健康的影响,但据估计,其损害 威力堪比人工合成的微细颗粒物。政府某家顾问团在 2010 年发布的一项报告估计称,如果将大气中的微 细颗粒物(主要来源为汽车尾气以及汽车行驶过程中轮胎的磨损爆裂)全部清除,那么 2008 年出生者的 平均寿命会延长 6 个月,伦敦出生者延长 9 个月。 空气混浊产生的危害日益显著,但政治方面很少显露出治理的意向。因此,净化空气之责便落在了几个不 同政府部门的肩上。增加税收,抑或是增加汽车公司环保负担的政策皆不得民心,但这些部门可能仍需如 此。英国约有三分之一的污浊空气在欧洲扩散净化。政治家们声称空气污染问题需要集整个欧洲之力加以 解决,往往借此逃脱问责。最高法院审理的这一案件,原告为环保律师集体建立的组织 ClientEarth,其 成员艾伦· 安德鲁斯律师认为,最高法院的裁决是为了明确政治方面的意向,迫使其在此后十年左右的时 间里为净化空气而全力以赴。 然而,某家机场委员会(非政府机构)会长霍华德· 戴维斯爵士在未来几个月有望提出解决伦敦东南部机 场扩建地址的方案。环境产业委员会(产业组织)常务董事马修· 法罗称:法院在裁决中还表示,扩建希 思罗和盖特威克机场(霍华德爵士的两大备选对象)的话,很可能损害委员会在法律上的名誉。希思罗机 场与一条繁忙的高速公路相邻,其周围的二氧化氮含量已经超标;而在盖特威克机场,即使减少一条飞机 跑道,其二氧化氮的含量依然会增加。法院的裁决亦会导致东伦敦一座大桥的建造计划延误。 这说明下届政府需要迅速出台相关政策,推行几个"低排放区"计划,削减使用柴油机汽车等高污染汽车的 数量,以此净化国内空气。其实,降低空气污染的措施早在 1956 年就已实行过。当时,政府在伦敦雾霾 消散后力促通过了《清洁空气法》,禁止室内燃烧黑煤,这一政策在危机爆发后的贯彻效果显著。竭力推 行空气治理政策的个中缘由也许少了些离奇色彩,但也需要我们同等视之
Mitochondria and male lifespan Power down Women outlive men. An evolutionary curiosity may explain this Mankiller? WHY past generations regarded women as the weaker sex is a mystery to anyone who has examined the question objectively, for they are far stronger
than men—outliving them in pretty well every society in the world. Partly that is because men are more violent, and their violence is largely directed at other men. But partly it is physiological. Men seem to wear out faster than women do. Yet no one knows why. Madeleine Beekman of the University of Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues, however, have a hypothesis. As they outline in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, they think at least some of the blame lies with subcellular structures called mitochondria (pictured), which provide the body with its power by burning glucose and using the energy thus released to make ATP, a molecule that is biology's universal fuel. Mitochondria are intriguing. They are descendants of bacteria that teamed up with the ancestors of animal and plant cells about a billion years ago. As such, they retain their own genes. And this is where the problems start. To avoid fights between genetically different mitochondria in the same cell, most species have arranged for their mitochondria to come from only one parent— usually the mother. This means, as Dr Beekman notes, that a male's mitochondria are stuck in an evolutionary dead end. They cannot evolve in male-specific ways, because no matter how much good they do a male body they inhabit, they will not be passed on to the next generation. Male and female physiologies are sufficiently similar for this not to be a central problem, but Dr Beekman thinks it may matter at the margins. She observes that one disease, called Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, which is caused by a faulty mitochondrial gene, occurs in only 10% of women whose cellular power-packs include the damaged gene, but in 50% of men whose mitochondria are so encumbered. The gene in question, in other words, is less likely to harm a woman than a man. She then lists a lot of other diseases, including ones far commoner than Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (such as cardiomyopathy, diabetes and several forms of deafness) that sometimes or always have a mitochondrial component, and speculates that some of these, too, may prove to be either more common or more serious in men than in women. As far as her searches of the literature can show, this is not something that has yet been looked into. Part of the reason for this absence of information may be that few doctors think like evolutionary biologists, so they fail to ask the appropriate questions. Dr Beekman's hypothesis may turn out to be wrong. But it sounds eminently plausible, and certainly worth investigating.
粒腺体影响男性寿命 粒腺体阻断 女性比男性寿命长久。欲知为何,请看进化学分解男性健康杀手? 过去,人们认为女性比男性弱,而这对于客观地调查过此现象的人来说是个迷,因为女性比男性寿命长, 很多国家或地区都是如此。在一定程度上,这可能是因为男性要狂暴一些,而且他们的狂暴是针对其他男 性。但也有可能是受生理影响。男性精力耗损要比女性快。个中缘由还没有人知道。 玛德琳· 比克曼是澳大利亚悉尼大学工作者,她跟同事一起提出一种假说。他们在皇家学会哲学学报发表 的一篇论文中指出,男性寿命比女性短的原因可能取决于亚细胞结构,也就是粒腺体。粒腺体通过燃烧葡 萄糖为机体提供能量,利用该能量释放三磷腺苷,三磷腺苷是整个机体的燃料。 粒腺体很有趣。他们是细菌与十亿年前的动物或植物祖先的衍生物。如此便保留住了基因。这就是问题的 开始。从遗传学角度讲,为了避免同一个细胞内不同的粒腺体相互排斥,大多数生物都会选择系属同一个 细胞的线粒体,通常是同一个雌细胞。如比克曼博士所提到的一样,雄性线粒体陷入进化死胡同。雄性线 粒体不能逐渐形成雄性专一方式,因为雄性线粒体在雄性生物体上栖息的多么好,都不能繁衍到下一代。 这和女性和男性生生理机能十分相似,但又不是中心问题。比克曼博士认为,这可能关系到 margin。她 仔细观察了一种名为利伯氏视神经病变的疾病,是有缺陷的粒腺体基因引起的。女性的发病率只有 10%, 女性细胞还包括受损细胞。而男性发病率高达 50%,主要是粒腺体堵塞引起的 。比克曼博士又列举出了 其他疾病,这比利伯氏视神经病变要常见的多(例如心肌病、糖尿病和其他耳聋症),这些疾病有时或经 常含有粒腺体成分。男性患此类疾病的发病率比女性高,男性患者也比女性患者病情严重的多。此篇论文 的研究程度所达程度并不是如此,而且这类问题早已有人考虑过。
关于这些研究缺乏信息可能是因为没有几个医生研究这类问题,比如进化生物学,他们也无法提出合适的 问题。比克曼教授的假说也许是错误的,但是,这种假说看起来很有道理,有研究价值。
Cotton, a global history Spinning tales A fine account of 900 years of globalization Still a player, thanks to subsidies Empire of Cotton: A Global History. By Sven Beckert. GOOD economic history tells dramatic stories of ingenuity and aspiration, greed and national self-interest. Sven Beckert writes good economic history. But why cotton? Mr Beckert's answer is that for 900 years, until 1900, it was the world's most important manufacturing industry. Cotton is relevant now because the story explains how and why an industry goes global. It is a story of wildly fluctuating fortunes, from stunning wealth to dire social disasters. India runs like a thread through this tale. Cotton was being spun in the Indus Valley in 3000BC; Herodotus admired its quality. Spinning and weaving cotton (the word comes from qutn in Arabic) were introduced to Europe by Muslim invaders in the tenth century. In India cotton as a cottage industry was so successful that it established a substantial market in Britain. This had two consequences. The first was technological innovation in the industrial north; spinning machines, the invention of the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny and power looms were the forerunners of the Industrial Revolution. The second, introduced in 1774 to assist English spinners and weavers, was protectionist legislation that made it illegal to sell imported cotton. By 1800 mass-produced British cotton dominated world markets, including in India where the industry collapsed. In the three decades to 1820 innovation helped productivity in Britain's new cotton factories increase 370 times. Mr Beckert, a history professor at Harvard, calls this new economic order "War Capitalism" as it is based on imperial expansion, expropriation of land, and slavery. Slaves and wide open spaces in the southern states transformed America's economy, too. Capital, raised mainly in London, financed the expansion. By the late 1850s, 77% of the cotton consumed in Britain came from America. Profits soared on both sides of the Atlantic. Manchester became a centre of the universe, always feeding on cheap labour, mostly women, who, unlike slaves, were paid a wage, albeit a poor one. (This reviewer's great-aunt was among the first women to earn a guinea a week from piece-work in her Rochdale mill, in the 1920s.) Deprived of raw American cotton when the civil war broke out in 1861, English manufacturers rediscovered India. Railways were built in the newly acquired state of Berar to shift raw cotton for export to Bombay. By 1862, 75% of Britain's cotton originated in India. The industry had gone global; Egypt and Brazil also provided new sources of supply. When news of the Union Army's victories in 1865 reached India, property prices in Bombay collapsed, anticipating the renewed competition that the end of the war might bring. In the event, as peace returned to the American South and former slaves became sharecroppers, the global industry recovered quickly, helped by a surge in demand. In the late 19th century the cotton industry in England began to decline. At the height of the Great Depression in 1932 only 11% of the world's mechanical spindles were operating in Britain, compared with 61% in 1860. The terrible blight that has overwhelmed cotton towns such as Rochdale began then, and has grown worse since. By the late 1960s Britain accounted for only 2.8% of global cotton exports. Today the main sources of raw cotton are China (29%) and India (21%). Supported by grotesque subsidies ($35 billion between 1995 and 2010),
America clings on in third place. Producers sell to the new merchants of cotton: global retailers such as Gap and Adidas. Mr Beckert's story is both inspirational and utterly depressing, a reflection of the white-knuckle ride that has been the characteristic of globalisation through the centuries.
棉花,一部全球史纺织传奇 道尽 900 年全球化历史 由于补贴,(美国)依旧是一大棉花产国 《棉花帝国:一部全球史》。作者 Sven Beckert 一部优秀的经济史需要讲出好的故事,既匠心独具又发人深省,既描写贪婪又涉及国家利己主义。Sven Beckert 的这本书就是如此。为什么写棉花?Beckert 的回答是,在 1900 年之前的 900 年里,棉花产 业一直都是世界上最重要的制造业。如今,棉花还能解释一个产业走向全球的形式和原因。这个故事有关 财富的剧烈变动,从惊人的巨额财富到可怕的社会灾难。 故事中一直充斥着印度的身影。早在公元前 3000 年,印度河流域的人们就已经学会纺纱,希罗多德就曾 赞赏它的质地。当穆斯林在 10 世纪入侵欧洲时,也把纺纱和织布的技术带到了欧洲(棉花 cotton 一词 就源自阿拉伯语 qutn)。家庭手工业形式的棉花生产在印度非常成功,甚至在英国的市场占据了不小的 份额。这造成了两个结果。首先是让北部工业区诞生了许多的技术革新。诸如飞梭、珍妮纺纱机、动力织 机等纺纱机器的发明都是工业革命的先驱。其次,英国为了帮助本国的纺织业从业者而在 1774 年颁布了 贸易保护法,将出售进口棉花认定为违法行为。 到了 1800 年,产量巨大的英国棉花称霸了全球市场,包括棉纺产业已经崩溃的印度。在 1820 年之前的 三十年中,技术创新使得英国棉花工厂的产量提高了 370 倍。身为哈佛大学历史系教授的 Beckert 把这 种新式的经济秩序称为"战争资本主义",因为它是基于英帝国的扩张、征用(殖民地)土地的和奴役(被 侵略地区的人民)。 奴隶和南部开阔的土地同样改变了美国的经济。随着英帝国不断扩张在美国的领土,伦敦从中获得了大量 资本。到了 18 世纪 50 年代末期,英国消费的棉花中有 77%来自于美国。大西洋两岸都获得了大量的 利润。依靠廉价的劳力,尤其是妇女们,曼切斯特成为了这一切的中心。这些劳力和黑奴不同,他们有一 些薪水,虽然并不多。(本书评作者的伯祖母就是 19 世纪 20 年代的罗奇代尔磨房中第一批能从计件工 作中赚到每周一基尼的妇女们的一员。) 到了 1861 年,美国内战爆发,无法从美国得到原棉的英国制造者只好重新开发印度。他们在刚刚占领的 贝拉尔邦建造了很多铁路,用来将原棉运往孟买。1862 年时,英国 75%的棉花都来自印度。此时,这 个行业已经走向了国际化;埃及和巴西也加入了供应源的行列。到了 1865 年,当同盟军赢得内战的消息 到达印度时,孟买的房价一泻千里。这是由于人们都估计美国内战结束将引来新的竞争。结果是,随着美 国南部恢复和平,奴隶成了佃农后,高涨的需求使得全球棉花产业快速恢复了。 到了 19 世纪末期,英国棉花业开始倒退。1932 年大萧条最为严重时期,英国只拥有的全球机械纱锭中 的 11%,而 1860 年时则有 61%。当时,可怕的枯萎病袭击了包括洛奇代尔在内的产棉城镇,而且情 况越变越糟。到了 19 世纪 60 年代末期,英国只占全球棉花出口的 2.8%。 现如今主要的原棉产国是中国(29%)和印度(21%)。由于离谱的棉花补助(1995 至 2010 年间总 计达 350 亿美元),美国仍位居第三。生产者们将产品卖给新一代的棉花商人们:诸如 Gap 和阿迪达斯 这样的国际零售商。Beckert 的故事既振奋人心又让人非常绝望,这是对绵延数世纪的全球化进程中间一 段跌宕起伏的发展史进行的一次沉思。
Air safety Pressing on A spate of accidents will not put Asians off air travel ON DECEMBER 30th Indonesian officials said they had discovered debris and bodies from AirAsia flight QZ8501, which had vanished two days previously, floating in shallow seas near the south-west coast of Borneo. The airliner lost contact with air-traffic controllers while passing through rough weather on a short journey between the Indonesian city of Surabaya and Changi airport in Singapore. The plane was carrying 162 people, most of them Indonesians. As The Economist went to press, no survivors had been found. The crash, most probably an accident, comes at the end of a particularly tragic year in South-East Asia's aviation history. Search parties have not yet found the remains of Malaysia Airlines' flight MH370, which plunged into the Indian Ocean nine months ago killing all 239 people on board. In September pro-Russian rebels shot down another Malaysia Airlines plane, MH17, over Ukraine, killing another 298. These earlier calamities nibbled at South-East Asia's popularity among tourists, especially among sightseers from China. But they have done little to dampen booming demand for air travel among South-East Asians themselves.
The region is one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets. Its 50-odd carriers are awaiting delivery of 1,600 new planes, about the same number as are in their fleets today. Boeing, an American planemaker, thinks regional airlines will need to order more than 3,000 new aircraft over the next 20 years. This growth partly reflects the rapid rise of South-East Asia's middle classes, who are eager to shell out for more convenient ways to navigate the continent's archipelagoes. It has been nudged along by the region's governments, who have promised to liberalise aviation as part of plans for greater economic co-operation. Yet it also reflects growing confidence in airline safety, despite recent disasters. In much of the region rutted roads and fickle seas are a far bigger worry. A recent study of 160 ferry accidents since 2000, costing nearly 17,000 lives, showed that Indonesia and the Philippines were among the most lethal places to board a boat (only Bangladeshi vessels were more deadly). Images of grieving families in Singapore and Surabaya have horrified Indonesians, and the world. But journeys are still safer in the skies.
Race in America The fury of Ferguson Race is America's deepest problem, but multiple small changes can mitigate it RIOTS are rarely so widely anticipated. By 8pm on November 24th, when the prosecutor in Ferguson, Missouri, announced the grand jury's decision not to charge a police officer with a crime for shooting an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, cops in riot gear were already in place and barriers surrounded municipal buildings. Mr Brown's parents and Barack Obama called for calm. Yet soon America's TV screens were full of burning police cars, crowds coughing on tear gas, and young black men throwing bricks and smashing shops. America's history of racial injustice looked as potent as ever. That would be the wrong conclusion to draw. Looking back at the riots in Los Angeles in 1992 that followed the acquittal of four white police officers who had savagely beaten a black motorist, Rodney King, a lot has changed. America has a black president. The LA riots, which left 53 dead, happened in one of America's great cities, and sparked violence in others. This time the focus was a struggling suburb; in Los Angeles black teenagers protested peacefully alongside white ones.
Blacks plainly still suffer prejudice across America: they account for 86% of the vehicle stops made by police in Ferguson. But America's race problem is increasingly one of class. Blacks' biggest problem is now poverty, which is most visible in places such as Ferguson. Like many post-war suburbs across America, Ferguson is stuck between the prosperous white exurbs of St Louis and the city's somewhat revitalized centre. In 1990 its population was threequarters white; by 2010, it had become two-thirds black. The sub-prime mortgage crisis hit it hard. Many of its homeowners still owe more than they own. Solving the problems of places like Ferguson is less about passing more antidiscrimination laws than about rekindling economic growth and spreading the proceeds. But there are also ways of making politics and policing work better that would contribute greatly to racial harmony in America. The police are not an army Ferguson's political institutions have not kept up with its demography. Of the city's six-member council, five are white. The hapless mayor, James Knowles, is a white Republican who was re-elected in 2013 in an election in which fewer than one in eight eligible voters turned out. He is in charge of the police force, in which three out of 53 officers are black. Such disparities feed the belief—held by blacks across the country—that both justice and lawenforcement systems are racist. Police brutality reinforces that belief. If there was one lesson from the attack on Rodney King, it was that police officers should behave like civilians, not an occupying army. Around 500 people were killed last year by the police— though since nobody counts, nobody really knows. In Ferguson, bad policies help to explain why distrust turns to anger. Take, for example, the way the town is financed. In 2013 a fifth of Ferguson's general revenues—some $2.6m, in a city of 21,000 people—were derived from fines and asset confiscation. That is equivalent to $124 a year for every man, woman and child in the city. Paying fines, even for minor traffic offences, can involve queuing for hours. Those who miss court dates can be jailed until they pay, accumulating more fines along the way. Slowly but surely, the justice system has become an elaborate mechanism for criminalising poverty. Smaller cities should stop using their police forces and courts as tax-collectors. Police shootings should be taken much more seriously, and the federal government should stop enabling small police forces to buy military-grade weapons. Proper gun control laws would help: policemen who fear they will be shot are more likely to kill suspects. In their absence, body-mounted cameras might constrain police behaviour. Efforts should also be made to increase voter turnout. Ferguson, like many small cities, holds its municipal elections at odd times in odd-numbered years, when little else is on the ballot. If they coincided with national elections, more people would be paying attention. And attempts to restrict voting—by banning Sunday polls, restricting voting hours and requiring people to produce ID—should be resisted. Such measures will not inspire great speeches. But the fact that the answers to America's racial problems now lie in a more vibrant economy and the nitty gritty of politics and policing is itself a form of progress.
美国种族问题 弗格森市的暴怒 种族问题是美国最根深蒂固的问题,但各种细微的改变可以使之缓解。 人们通常很难预测什么时候会发生暴动。11 月 24 日晚 8 点,当密苏里州弗格森市的检察官宣布大陪审 团的决定:不起诉向手无寸铁的黑人青年 Michael Brown 开枪的警察,穿戴了防暴装备的警察已经整装 待命,并在市政大楼周围安置围栏。Brown 的父母和奥巴马总统要求双方冷静。然而很快地,美国各大
电视的屏幕上都播放了燃烧的警车、人群在催泪弹中咳嗽、黑人青年投掷砖块砸烂商店。美国少数族裔难 求公正的历史似乎又再一次清晰地展现在世界面前。 这种结论是错误的。回顾 1992 年发生在洛杉矶的暴乱,起因是 4 个白人警察残忍地殴打了一个黑人摩 托车手 Rodney King,自此之后很多事情都改变了。美国有了黑人总统。这起暴乱发生在美国最大的城 市之一洛杉矶,导致了 53 人死亡,暴力也蔓延到了其他城市。这一次焦点落在了麻烦不断的市郊;洛杉 矶事件中黑人青年和白人一起和平地进行示威活动。 很明显黑人在美国忍受着偏见:弗格森市 86%被警察叫停的汽车都是黑人驾驶。但是美国的种族问题日 益突出远不止如此。黑人现在最大的问题是贫困,这一点在像弗格森市这种地方很明显。和其他战后的美 国市郊一样,弗格森市被夹在繁荣富裕的圣路易斯白人远郊社区与或多或少获得振兴的市中心之间。 1990 年,该市人口有四分之三是白人;到了 2010 年,黑人已经占了三分之二。次贷危机给它带来的打 击是沉重的。很多房主仍然资不抵债。 解决弗格森市问题的方法不在于实施更多反歧视法案,而应该重新振兴经济增长并增加居民收入。但也有 一些更好的安保工作方法能促进美国的种族和谐。 警察不是军队 弗格森市的政治制度并没有跟上其人口的发展。市政委员 6 个人中有 5 个是白人。James Knowles 这 个倒霉的市长是个白人共和党员,在 2013 年的一次投票参与率不到八分之一的选举中再次当选的。他掌 管市区警力,其中 53 个警官中只有 3 个是黑人。如此的不平衡让全美境内的黑人都相信——不管是司法 系统还是执法系统都是种族歧视的。 警方的野蛮行为也加剧了这种观念。如果说能从 Rodney King 事件中学到什么教训的话,应该就是警察 应该像一个市民而非一个占领军人。去年大约有 500 人被警察杀死——尽管自此之后没有人再统计过, 也没有人真的知道。 在弗格森市,错误的政策导致不信任演变成愤怒。比如该镇的财政政策。2013 年,拥有 21000 人口的 弗格森市五分之一的财政收入——约 260 万美元,是来自于罚款和不动产收缴,相当于人均 124 美元, 无论男女还是儿童都包括在内。即便是为最轻微的交通违规支付罚款也要排数小时的队。那些算错了日子 的人可能会被关起来直到交钱为止,期间还会累积更多的罚款。越来越肯定的是,司法系统已经成为一个 为惩罚因贫犯罪的人们而精心设置的体系。 小城市应该停止把警察和法院作为收税机器的做法。警察开枪应该被更认真地对待,联邦政府也应该阻止 小范围的执法警察购买军队级别的武器。适当的枪支控制法应该会有帮助;害怕歹徒先开枪的警察更有可 能击毙嫌犯。如果不能用以上的办法,随身摄像头应该能限制警察的行为。 除此之外也应该努力增加投票人的参与率。就像其他小城市一样,弗格森市在奇数年会偶尔举行市政选举, 但很少有其他人会参与选举。如果正好时间赶上国家大选,会有更多的人关注。其他限制投票的做法—— 比如禁止周日民意调查、限制投票时间、要求人们出示身份证明等——应该叫停。 这些措施听起来并不激动人心。但现实是,解决美国种族问题的关键取决于更有活力的经济和具体的政策, 而治安管理本身则是一种进步。
Young and workless Youth employment Recent figures confirmed that government labour-market policies, such as the age discrimination act of 2006 and the equality act of 2010, have enabled older workers to stay in the labour market longer. Two-thirds of the increase in employment since May 2010 has been among those aged 50 and over. Younger workers meanwhile experienced the biggest relative drop in employment during the recession and have not yet recovered to pre-2008 levels. Youth unemployment is still higher than pre-recession levels even though participation for the age group is lower. A recent report found that young people might be held back by a lack of "employability" skills including literacy, numeracy and self-management and that a positive, proactive approach to work was lacking. Attitude and ability appear to hinder them more than age.
年轻人与失业 年轻人就业 如上图所示,近期的一些调查数据已经证实了政府的一系列劳务市场政策(如 2006 年的年龄歧视政策还 有 2010 年的平等政策)确实保证了老一辈从业者们能在市场中?生存?更长的时间。从 2010 年 5 月份之 后,就业率增长的人群中有三分之二集中在 50 岁及以上的从业者中。与此同时,年轻的职场人士在经济 危机中则面临相对来说最大的就业困难,就业率一直未能恢复到 2008 年前的水平。在入职年龄降低的前 提下,年轻人的失业率依然还是超过了经济衰退前的水平。
一份近期的报告发现,当代年轻人正因缺少就业技能(包括读写,计数,自我管理,积极性以及工作中的 前瞻性)而受阻。 同时相对于年龄,就业态度和才能也阻碍了他们前进。
Teacher recruitment Those who can How to turn teaching into a job that attracts high-flyers IMAGINE a job where excellence does nothing to improve your pay or chances of promotion, and failure carries little risk of being sacked. Your pay is low for your qualifications—but at least the holidays are long, and the pension is gold-plated. Teaching ought to be a profession for hard-working altruists who want to improve children's life prospects. But all too often school systems seem designed to attract mediocre timeservers. Many Mexican teachers have inherited their jobs; Brazilian ones earn less than other public servants, and retire much earlier. Each school-day a quarter of Indian teachers play truant. In New York it is so hard to sack teachers that even those accused of theft or assault may be parked away from pupils, doing "administrative tasks" on full pay, sometimes for years. You can find outstanding individuals in the worst school systems. But, as lazy and incompetent teachers get away with slacking, the committed ones often lose motivation. In America and Britain surveys find plummeting morale. Jaded British teachers on online forums remind each other that it is just a few months till the long summer break—and just a few years till retirement. No wonder so many children struggle to learn: no school can be better than those who work in it. Yet it is possible to persuade the hardworking and ambitious to teach. Finland pays teachers modestly but manages them well; ten graduates apply for each training place. South Korea recruits teachers from the top 5% of schoolleavers and promises them fat pay cheques. In both countries teachers are revered—and results are among the world's best. Even where the profession is in disrepute, high-flyers can be lured into the classroom. Teach for America, which sends star graduates from elite universities for two-year stints in rough schools, is being copied around the globe. Private employers snap up its alumni—but many stay in teaching. Teach First, Britain's version, has helped raise standards in London and is one of the country's most prestigious graduate employers. Such schemes are small, but show that when teaching is recast as tough and rewarding, the right sort clamour to join. Spreading the revolution to the entire profession will mean dumping the perks cherished by slackers and setting terms that appeal to the hardworking. That may well mean higher pay—but also less generous pensions and holidays. Why not encourage teachers to use the long vacation for catch-up classes for pupils who have fallen behind? Stiffer entry requirements would raise the job's status and attract better applicants. Pay rises should reward excellence, not long service. Underperformers should be shown the door. Standing in the way, almost everywhere, are the unions. Their willingness to back shirkers over strivers should not be underestimated: in Washington, DC, when the schools boss (a Teach for America alumna) offered teachers much higher pay in return for less job security, their union balked. Class action But against the unions is a growing coalition: the leaders in public administration and private enterprise who have been through Teach for America and its ilk. They know what it takes to succeed in difficult schools, and what it would take for success to become the norm. They know that what good teachers want most of all is good colleagues. As they become more
numerous and influential, they need to argue for a new deal for teachers. The good ones deserve it—and pupils do, too.
教师招募 能者胜任 怎样使得教学变成了吸引成功人士的工作 想象一下,一个工作卓越人士无须做什么事情即可提高你的工资或晋升的机会,出现故障被解雇的风险很 小。你的工资低于你的资历,但至少假期长,养老金是"镀金"般有保障的。 教学应该是一个为想要改善儿童的生活前景勤劳的利他主义者的专业。但很多时候学校系统似乎旨在吸引 平庸的趋炎附势之人。许多墨西哥教师继承了他们的工作;巴西那些教师收入低于其他公务人员,并提前 退休了。每所学校一天四分之一的印度教师罢工。在纽约很难解雇教师,即使是那些被指控偷窃或侵犯远 离学生的教师,有时多年全薪做"管理任务"。 您可以在最恶劣的学校系统找到先进个人。但是,由于懒惰和无能的教师逃脱松弛,负责的教师往往失去 动力。在美国和英国的调查发现士气一落千丈。在网上论坛疲倦不堪的的英国老师提醒对方,坚持到漫长 的暑假仅仅只有短短数月,并且直到退休只有短短几年。难怪这么多孩子努力学习:没有学校可以比那些 孩子在这工作得更好。 然而,有可能说服勤奋和雄心勃勃的教导者。芬兰支付教师的薪酬不多,但他们善于管理; 10 名毕业生 申请每次实习的地方。韩国从高中毕业生中排名前 5%里抽取学生进行教师招聘,并承诺他们充沛的工资。 在这两个国家的教师受到崇敬——其结果是世界上最好的。 即使在专业是声名狼藉,成功人士可以被引诱成为教师。为美国而教,使得精英大学的星级毕业生两年都 就职于水平较差的学校,这种情况在全球各地都在效仿出现。人雇主抢购校友,但很多都停留在教学。教 育首先,英国方面,有助于提高在伦敦标准,伦敦是全国最负盛名的毕业生的雇主之一。这些计划虽小, 但是显示当教育被改写为坚韧和奖励,学校将会进行正确排序。 传播革命理念给整个行业将意味着被逃避工作之人和头脑清醒者所珍视并吸引勤劳者珍惜的额外津贴。这 可能意味着更高的薪水——也不太丰厚的退休金和节假日。为什么不鼓励教师利用长假对已经落后的学生 进行补课教育?更严厉的入学要求会提高工作的地位和吸引更好的申请人。加薪应奖励优秀者,而非长期 的工作服务。表现不佳应该被扫地出门。 路上,几乎无处不在是工会组织。他们卸责于奋斗者之上的意愿不容小觑:在华盛顿,当学校的老板(一 个做教师,校友)提供教师高得多的薪酬以换取较少的工作保障,他们的工会犹豫不决。 集体诉讼 但对工会是一个不断增长的联盟:在公共管理和民营企业的领导者经历过为美国和其同类而教授。他们知 道如何才能在困难的学校成功,怎样做才能成功成为常态。他们知道,好教师最希望的还是不错的同事。 当他们变得越来越多,具有影响力,他们需要争取教师的新协议。好人应该得到它,学生们也同样如此。
Urban land Space and the city Poor land use in the world's greatest cities carries a huge cost BUY land, advised Mark Twain; they're not making it any more. In fact, land is not really scarce: the entire population of America could fit into Texas with more than an acre for each household to enjoy. What drives prices skyward is a collision between rampant demand and limited supply in the great metropolises like London, Mumbai and New York. In the past ten years real prices in Hong Kong have risen by 150%. Residential property in Mayfair, in central London, can go for as much as 55,000 (82,000) per square metre. A square mile of Manhattan residential property costs 16.5 billion. Even in these great cities the scarcity is artificial. Regulatory limits on the height and density of buildings constrain supply and inflate prices. A recent analysis by academics at the London School of Economics estimates that land-use regulations in the West End of London inflate the price of office space by about 800%; in Milan and Paris the rules push up prices by around 300%. Most of the enormous value captured by landowners exists because it is well-nigh impossible to build new offices to compete those profits away. The costs of this misfiring property market are huge, mainly because of their effects on individuals. High housing prices force workers towards cheaper but less productive places. According to one study, employment in the Bay Area around San Francisco would be about five times larger than it is but for tight limits on construction. Tot up these costs in lost earnings and unrealised human potential, and the figures become dizzying. Lifting all the barriers to
urban growth in America could raise the country's GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about 1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. Metro stops Two long-run trends have led to this fractured market. One is the revival of the city as the central cog in the global economic machine. In the 20th century, tumbling transport costs weakened the gravitational pull of the city; in the 21st, the digital revolution has restored it. Knowledge-intensive industries such as technology and finance thrive on the clustering of workers who share ideas and expertise. The economies and populations of metropolises like London, New York and San Francisco have rebounded as a result. What those cities have not regained is their historical ability to stretch in order to accommodate all those who want to come. There is a good reason for that: unconstrained urban growth in the late 19th century fostered crime and disease. Hence the second trend, the proliferation of green belts and rules on zoning. Over the course of the past century land-use rules have piled up so plentifully that getting planning permission is harder than hailing a cab on a wet afternoon. London has strict rules preventing new structures blocking certain views of St Paul's Cathedral. Google's plans to build housing on its Mountain View campus in Silicon Valley are being resisted on the ground that residents might keep pets, which could harm the local owl population. Nimbyish residents of low-density districts can exploit planning rules on everything from light levels to parking spaces to block plans for construction. A good thing, too, say many. The roads and rails criss-crossing big cities already creak under the pressure of growing populations. Dampening property prices hurts one of the few routes to wealth-accumulation still available to the middle classes. A cautious approach to development is the surest way to preserve public spaces and a city's heritage: give economists their way, and they would quickly pave over Central Park. However well these arguments go down in local planning meetings, they wilt on closer scrutiny. Home ownership is not especially egalitarian. Many households are priced out of more vibrant places. It is no coincidence that the home-ownership rate in the metropolitan area of downtrodden Detroit, at 71%, is well above the 55% in booming San Francisco. You do not need to build a forest of skyscrapers for a lot more people to make their home in big cities. San Francisco could squeeze in twice as many and remain half as dense as Manhattan. Property wrongs Zoning codes were conceived as a way to balance the social good of a growing, productive city and the private costs that growth sometimes imposes. But land-use rules have evolved into something more pernicious: a mechanism through which landowners are handed both unwarranted windfalls and the means to prevent others from exercising control over their property. Even small steps to restore a healthier balance between private and public good would yield handsome returns. Policymakers should focus on two things. First, they should ensure that city-planning decisions are made from the top down. When decisions are taken at local level, land-use rules tend to be stricter. Individual districts receive fewer of the benefits of a larger metropolitan population (jobs and taxes) than their costs (blocked views and congested streets). Moving housing-supply decisions to city level should mean that due weight is put on the benefits of growth. Any restrictions on building
won by one district should be offset by increases elsewhere, so the city as a whole keeps to its development budget. Second, governments should impose higher taxes on the value of land. In most rich countries, land-value taxes account for a small share of total revenues. Land taxes are efficient. They are difficult to dodge; you cannot stuff land into a bank-vault in Luxembourg. Whereas a high tax on property can discourage investment, a high tax on land creates an incentive to develop unused sites. Land-value taxes can also help cater for newcomers. New infrastructure raises the value of nearby land, automatically feeding through into revenues—which helps to pay for the improvements. Neither better zoning nor land taxes are easy to impose. There are logistical hurdles, such as assessing the value of land with the property stripped out. The politics is harder still. But politically tricky problems are ten-a-penny. Few offer the people who solve them a trillion-dollar reward. 城市土地 空间和都市 糟糕的土地利用方式已经成为世界大都市不能承受之重 马克吐温曾建议说"都去买地吧",但现在他们已经不这么做了。事实上,土地并非真的如 此稀缺:仅一个德克萨斯州就能容纳整个美国人口,而且每户能有一英亩之多。在伦敦、 孟买、纽约这种大都市里,地价飞涨的现实是疯狂的需求和有限的供给共同作用的结果。 在过去 10 年里,香港的房地产价格上涨了 150%。伦敦中心的梅菲尔区的住宅价格能飙 至 55000 英镑每平米(相当于 82000 美元)。曼哈顿,一平方英里的的住宅价格为 165 亿美元。 即便是在这样的城市里,稀缺性也是人为造成的。从法律层面上对建筑的高度和密度进行 限制,降低了供给,也助推了房价。伦敦经济学院的一项最新学术分析表明,土地使用管 理条例令伦敦西区办公用房的价格上涨了 800%,令米兰和巴黎的上涨了约 300%。巨额 资产掌握在现有的土地所有者手中,因为在这里建新办公楼引入竞争、分享收益,是几乎 不可能的事。 一潭死水的房地产市场所带来的社会成本是巨大的,因为它影响了这里的每个人。高昂的 房价迫使务工者搬到更便宜但生产力更低下的地方。根据一项研究结果显示,如果不是因 为对建筑业的严格限制,旧金山湾区的就业应该比现在多五倍;再加上损失的收入和未能 实现的人的潜力,这个数字能把你吓晕。如果能扫清美国境内所有限制城市增长的阻碍因 素,那么国家 GDP 将会增加 6.5%~13.5%,即 10 亿~20 亿美元。这是任何其他政策 都难以产生的巨大影响。 停滞的都市 两个长期趋势致使房产市场变得如此令人抓狂。其一是,城市的复兴成为了全球经济运转 中必不可少的中心环节。在 20 世纪,糟糕的交通削弱了城市的吸引力;到了 21 世纪,数 字革命修复了这一缺陷。像科技、金融这种知识密集型产业只有在人们能互相交流思想和 专业技能的地方才能繁荣兴旺。伦敦、纽约和旧金山这样的大城市,其经济和人口之所以 能复苏,正是得益于此。 然而,这些城市失去了一项它们曾经有过的能力:扩张以容纳所有想要移居进来的人们。 一个不错的理由就是:19 世纪晚期无限制的城市扩张成为了犯罪和疾病的温床。那么第二 个趋势就显而易见了:城市绿化带的泛滥和分区管制。纵观整个上世纪,政府出台了数不 清的土地使用法规,以至于获取一个规划许可比在雨天的下午打出租还要困难。伦敦严格 控制新建任何构筑物,以防止圣保罗大教堂的景观被破坏。Google 计划在其所有的山景 城园区建造房屋,却以"居民可能会养宠物、并且这会令当地猫头鹰的数量减少"为理由遭 到拒绝。低密度社区 Nimbyish 的居民可以拿规划法规做挡箭牌为所欲为,从要求亮度水 平到停车空间再到阻止一切建设。 很多人认为,这样也不错啊。日益增长的人口已经令大城市的道路和十字交叉口不堪重负。 被抑制的房地产价格虽然令一部分人的财富积累受到损失,但对于中产阶级来说仍然是可 以承受的。发展一定要慎重,要百分之百确保公共空间和保护城市遗产:如果把决策权交 给经济学家,他们一定会以迅雷不及掩耳之势把中央公园铺成水泥大道。
然而,这些理由经不起本地规划会议的仔细斟酌。房屋所有权不是人人均等的。很多家庭 被高房价挡在充满活力的地区之外。都市区的房屋所有权比例在日渐式微的底特律都达到 71%,这一数字比日益兴旺的旧金山的 55%要高得多,这可不是巧合。你不需要建造一 片摩天大楼的森林来容纳越来越多在大城市安家的人们。旧金山的面积即便折叠两次,其 人口密度也才只有曼哈顿的一半。 歧路上的房地产 为了平衡不断增长且生产力强的城市中的社会利益与增长所附加的私人成本,人们想到了 分区规范这个办法。但是,土地使用法规已经演变成了一个极为有害的机制:土地所有者 一方面能躺着吃天上掉下来的馅饼,一方面还能光明正大地阻止任何人染指他们的不动产。 现在即使能在健康地平衡公私利益方面迈出一小步,都将获得相当可观的回报。政治决策 者应该把精力放在两方面。 第一,他们应该确保涉及城市规划的决策是自上而下制定的。当决策权在本地政府手中时, 通常对土地使用的限制会更加严格。就单个街区而言,大量都市人口是弊(受阻碍的视野 和拥挤的街道)大於利(就业和税收)。而将住房供应量的决定权交给城市政府,则更能 全面地考虑城市发展所带来的好处。如果一个街区对建设作出限制,就要以另一个街区增 加建设作为补偿,因此城市作为一个整体就可以确保其应有的开发预算。 其次,政府应该对地价征收重税。在大部分发达国家,地价税只占总收入中很小的一部分。 地税是很有效的手段,因为你很难像藏钱一样把土地塞进卢森堡的银行保险柜里以逃避纳 税。对不动产课重税会影响投资,而对土地课重税则会刺激人们开发尚未被使用的土地。 地价税也有利于新来的居民。新建的基础设施能够增加附近土地的价值,然后自动转变成 收入——反过来能补偿基建翻新的费用。 鉴于还有很多前期困难亟待解决,想要实施更好地分区规划或开始征收地税并不是件容易 的事,比如如何刨除土地上面的房产而单独计算地价。政治方面也是个问题,但这些困难 都不值一提,因为这些问题一旦解决,将会带来难以计数的丰厚回报。 Oxford Dreaming cranes It is the biggest construction boom since the Middle Ages IN HIS book "Notes from a Small Island", Bill Bryson, an American author, took exception to some of Oxford's 20th-century architecture. It is, he wrote, as though the city had said to itself, "We've been putting up handsome buildings since 1264; let's have an ugly one for a change." Much of Oxford is beautiful. A quarter of the university is listed. Some buildings date back to 1424. But in the 1960s planners added ugly shopping centres, offices and even college buildings that drain the beauty from the city centre. Now a building programme is under way that aims to avoid such errors, and even reverse a few. Some of the construction is driven by the need to upgrade facilities in order to keep Oxford globally competitive. In 2014 it was ranked Britain's top research university, yet some departments are still housed in converted Victorian houses. Post-war buildings in the Science Area have been demolished. Their replacements will encourage inter-disciplinary work. There is a push, too, for links with business, as pioneered by Oxford's old rival, Cambridge, where builders have also been busy. One new hub outside Oxford city centre, the BioEscalator, promotes commercial research in life sciences alongside academia; another, the Innovation Accelerator, focuses on advanced engineering. Other buildings are being renovated. On March 21st the Weston Library (formerly the New Bodleian) opened to the public. In September a shiny new China Centre opened in the grounds of St Hugh's College. Construction is about to begin on the Beecroft physics building. The boldest newcomer, located next to the new Mathematical Institute, will be the Blavatnik School of
Government (pictured), a glass-and-metal spaceship designed by the architects responsible for the "bird's nest" Olympic stadium in Beijing. Private funding has been crucial, the names on the buildings reflecting those following in the footsteps of Balliol, Bodley and Wadham—from Ukrainian businessmen to British financiers. The university plans to spend another 1.8 billion (2.7 billion) over the next decade, says William James, the pro-vice chancellor for planning. He hints at bigger projects to come. Oxford City Council is building, too, redeveloping Oxpens, a down-at-heel area near the railway station, into homes and offices. It has demolished the monstrous Westgate car park to make way for a 500 million shopping centre. The railway station is getting a 200m refit, with plans for a "continental boulevard" outside to greet some of the 9.5m tourists who arrive in Oxford each year. A second railway station is under construction in the north of the city. Separately, an old branch line that links to the Mini factory in Cowley should open for passengers by 2020. Yet if all this makes Oxford more attractive, it will accentuate another problem. Many people want to live or study there. Commuting to London is rising. Hedge funds are setting up in the city centre. The number of graduate students has doubled (to 10,000) since 2001. And yet the green belt around the city does not permit Oxford to expand, driving house prices higher than anywhere in the country, proportional to income. Local opposition to a development of badly needed graduate student accommodation near Port Meadow, a beauty spot, has led to the biggest town-gown bust-up in years. Oxford has many articulate, conservation-minded residents. It is surrounded by pretty countryside and hemmed in by decades-old planning regulations. Its building boom is impressive. But growth will always be uncomfortable. 牛津 梦中的吊车 这是中世纪以来最大的建造活动 美国作家 Bill Bryson 在书中如此写道"源自一个小岛的记录?。他把牛津地区 20 世纪的一 些建筑物当做特例。他写道,"1264 年以来我们已经建造了许多美观的建筑;为了改变, 来造一个丑陋的吧。" 牛津有许多漂亮建筑。这所大学四分之一的建筑物都名列在册。一些的建筑日期可以追溯 到 1424 年。不过在 20 世纪 60 年代,设计者新建了难看的商业中心、办公楼,甚至学 院建筑都叫城市中心失去美丽。现在有一个建筑计划正在施行,这个计划将避免上述错误, 并且可以挽救些许失去的美好。 有些建筑之所以修建,是为了更新设施以保证牛津大学在全球的竞争力。在 2014 年,尽 管它有些部门还在维多利亚时代的屋子中办公,它还是英国最顶尖的研究型大学。战后科 学区修建的建筑已经拆掉了。继而修建的建筑将促进跨学科研究的发展。将之与商业联系 在一起也是有推力的,牛津的老对手剑桥早就开始这么做了,剑桥的建筑修建活动也在热 火朝天地进行。位于牛津城市中心之外的一个新实验中心,BioEscalator,加强了生命科 学的学术研究的同时也加强了其商业研究;另外,Innovation Accelerator 则将注意力 集中在先进引擎技术上。 其他的建筑正在改造中。在 3 月 21 日,韦斯顿图书馆(前身是新牛津大学图书馆)对公 共开放。10 月在圣· 休学院,将成立一座崭新的中国中心。Beecroft 物理楼也要开始进行 改造。位于新数学研究所旁最大胆的建筑,Blavatnik 政府学院(图示),是由设计建造 北京奥运会建筑"鸟巢"的建筑家负责督造的玻璃-金属建筑。 私人募捐变得十分关键。建筑上的名字如 Balliol、, Bodley 、Wadham 反映了从乌克兰 生意人到不列颠金融家的脚步。牛津大学计划在下一个十年花费 18 亿英镑(27 亿美金), 该计划前副经理 William James 说。他暗示未来将有更大的项目。 牛津城市议会也在建设中。这次将改建 Oxpens 区,把这个临近火车站的糟烂区域改造成 住宅区和办公区。这次改造拆除了巨大丑陋的 Westgate 汽车公园,将修建价值 5 亿英镑 的购物中心。火车站获得了 2 亿英镑的重修费用,计划在火车站外周建成一个"大陆林荫
道",以此吸引每年来牛津旅游的 9500 万游客中的一部分。在这个城市北部,第二座火车 站正在建设中。另外,在 2020 年,通往 Cowley 的 Mini 工厂的一条旧支线也将向游人 开放。 不过尽管所有这些都让牛津更富魅力,这种情形导致了另外的问题。很多人希望在此学习 或者生活。往返伦敦的费用一直上扬。Hedge 基金正落户在这个城市的中心。毕业学生的 数量自 2001 年以来翻倍。环绕这座城市的绿化带限制了牛津城的扩张。这使得房屋价格 相对于收入的比例而言高于全国其他地方。当地人反对发展靠近 Port Meadow 的毕业生 居住区。这本是一个漂亮的景点,这些年已经成为最大的城镇增长点。 牛津有许多口齿清晰、内心保守的居民。它为漂亮的乡村所环绕,也被数十年陈旧的管理 所束缚。蓬勃的建造工程颇具震撼。但增长的同时总是带来不适。 Britain's economy Spurious George The chancellor is poised to put forward a long-term plan for Britain—about the wrong thing THE British government's great boast is its resolve. Fainter hearts might have trembled before the political law that you cannot cut your way to re-election. But the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, forged in the dark days following the financial crisis, formed a plan for the economy and stood its ground. Its reward has been to see unemployment tumble and Britain grow faster than any other big rich country in 2014. It is a rousing refrain. And when George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, gives the budget speech on March 18th, less than two months before a general election that will revolve around the economy, he is sure to utter the words "long-term economic plan" and to affirm his iron commitment to a fiscal surplus for Britain by 2018-19 (see Bagehot). The shabby truth, however, is that the success of Mr Osborne stems from the goals he has abandoned, rather than the guns he has stuck to. And next week, unless his budget plans are more apt, Britain risks paying a heavy price. The government has done sensible things with Mr Osborne as chancellor—not least cutting corporation tax, raising the income-tax threshold and pinching Mark Carney from Canada for the Bank of England. But it has been at its best when it has been at its least consistent, in three main areas. The first is fiscal policy. Five years ago the Conservatives pledged to eliminate almost all of Britain's structural deficit—then estimated at 8.7% of GDP—by the end of their term. They now lead a coalition government that is only half way there. Borrowing this year will probably be about 5% of GDP or £90 billion ($135 billion), £55 billion more than first planned. After two years of weak growth, because of austerity and a European slump, the chancellor pushed back his deadline for closing the deficit. So much for what was then known as "Plan A". Red box, black box That change was welcome and necessary. Sticking to the plan would have meant tax rises or bigger cuts to public spending, or a combination of the two. It would probably have pitched the economy back into recession, and might have wrecked public services. As it is, the state has coped with deep but steady cuts. Crime is down and the sky has not fallen on local government or the National Health Service. A second change of course was equally welcome. After coming to power in 2010, the coalition first stuck to the previous Labour government's plans to slash capital budgets. Public investment—always the easiest bill to cut quickly—fell by 35% in two years. That was foolish. Spending on infrastructure is essential to long-term growth and is chronically low in Britain.
Mr Osborne tempered the cuts in infrastructure spending starting in 2011. Again, his change of heart was good. The biggest and best departure from the blueprint is also the most embarrassing. Before he became prime minister, David Cameron pledged to reduce annual net migration to the "tens of thousands". The coalition government has never abandoned that goal. Yet at the last count net migration stood at a UKIP-maddening 298,000 and rising. Because they are young, healthy, hardworking and enterprising, immigrants have boosted growth and swelled the public purse. A big fall in