Origin XT Blog

I’ve come up with one solution to poverty in Africa, US budget deficits, and global warming. It’s a very simple yet elegant solution, involving the exploitation of the process of photosynthesis. I will break this post into two parts: what will be done, and how that will benefit the world.

What will be done: Move ALL of the world’s polluting factories into Africa–oil refineries, shit processing plants, nuclear waste storage facilities (etc). Relocate ALL tropical timber companies into Africa. Eliminate American farming subsidies, and foreign aid to Africa. Replace coal-fired power plants with gasified-coal plants or nuclear (which can be purchased from Africa). Demand as tribute “peacekeeping troops” from the African beneficiaries who will be taught English, be trained in American combat techniques, and be loaned American assault weapons.

How this will benefit everyone: The efficiency of photosynthesis is severely limited by the scarce abundance of carbon dioxide (thanks to photorespiration). This fact is especially evident in tropical areas where plants receive significantly more sunlight (in the light reaction) than they can store (in the light-independent reaction). Therefore, the amount of CO2 those plants can remove from the atmosphere and thus the amount of O2 they can release are limited ONLY by the limited supply of CO2, meaning that introducing additional sources of CO2 into that environment will not increase overall CO2 concentration in that region, but instead it will significantly speed up plant growth.

The capital investors can help keep the plant material level by planting trees for timber, then chopping them down (to act as constant atmospheric carbon absorbers). In doing so, they are not only helping to keep the natural equilibrium and balance but also profiting from this (in addition to getting cheap wood for the industrial nations). What will the additional CO2 source be, though, you ask? What else can they be? Industrial factories.

Moving those factories to Africa will dramatically decrease the demand of energy in industrial nations, and thus the greenhouse gas emissions. And the land originally used by those factories and power plants (whatever was moved away) can be now filled with tons of trees, which would offset (if not even undo) the waste produced by cars and other miscellaneous polluters that were not moved to Africa.

It will also create jobs (some of which may be somewhat high-tech) in Africa, which will contribute to its human capital (in addition to the physical capital), reduce (or virtually eliminate) its poverty, and ultimately make Africa self-sufficient (so the US does not have to send them money). Just in return, every eligible male African citizen is expected to devote one year of his life (6 months to adequate training, 6 months in duty) to serve as US (screw UN) peacekeeping officers for international tasks. They can handle all of Iraq; they can power humanitarian missions around the world; etc.

The US will have to spend significantly less on its military and foreign aid, and even less on volatile OPEC energy. It will also be self-sufficient in terms of wood, and it will have a happy trading partner. Therefore this would eliminate US budget deficits (by cutting unnecessary costs) and markedly improve (if not eliminate) trade deficits.

The environmental benefits are obvious, so I won’t cover that much. Basically moving factories to Africa won’t mean Africa will spew out more greenhouse gases, but it will eliminate (considering the neutralization factor with more trees) emission in industrial nations. (Sorry, I’m using the US and “industrial nations” interchangeably, but I mean the latter)

Some potential problems: Textile workers in Atlanta will lose their jobs to a much cheaper labor force in Africa. But, so what? New sectors always emerge in the economy, creating new jobs. An economic shift from labor-intensive work to automated-production is an emperical evidence for a successful economy. The whole industrialized world is quickly shifting to a services-oriented economy, meaning the moving of factories will have increasingly decreasing (lol) effect on the economy.

Another problem is more evident: Africa probably will not be content with the industrial world controlling and building crap on their land. To avoid this problem, they would need to be convinced that this plan will be mutually beneficial (I see it as a good deal on their part too), and if they have any rationality, this should not be too hard.

This is an incomplete idea, but the basic skeleton is there. Comment and critique, please.