France Is Unhappy as Tunisian Refugees Move North

The upheavals in Tunisia and Libya have already produced tens of thousands of refugees, as I have already noted. Those going to Europe have mainly shown up in Italy, since that is the closest country and is the shortest trip across the Mediterranean. Recently, the Italian government has granted many of these people temporary residence status, which allows them to leave Italy and go to many of the other European countries. If you have been to Europe since the creation of the European Union you know that you are not asked for your passport as you go from one country to the next. You can travel freely throughout much of Europe once you get past that first gatekeeper. This has created some problems for France, according to the BBC:

Italy's decision to grant Tunisians 20,000 temporary residence permits, allowing free travel in the passport-free Schengen zone, has angered France.

Last week, French officials temporarily stopped trains with migrants crossing the border from Italy into France.

The decision sparked anger between Italy and France, with Italy accusing its neighbour of overstepping the treaty on border-free travel.

Earlier this month, Italy and France agreed to launch sea and air patrols to try to prevent the influx of thousands of people from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Many Tunisians have close ties with France - a former colonial power - with friends and relatives in French cities.

This is a reminder that that there can be many long-term demographic ripple effects from "regime change" anywhere in the world.

Celebrating Earth Day

April 22nd has been Earth Day for the past 41 years, with a focus on the sustainability of human existence on our planet. That speaks directly to the interaction of population and the environment. The emphasis has generally been more on the latter than the former, but they are clearly both very important. ABC News has a nice story on reducing your carbon footprint, keeping in mind that where you live will importantly determine the nature of your footprint, and what you can do about it.
My own involvement in Earth Day goes back to the very first one in 1970. As a PhD student in Demography at the University of California, Berkeley, I was invited to address what turned out to be a very large outdoor gathering on the campus of California State University, Fresno. My talk was "Who Lit the Fuse on the Population Bomb?" and of course the answer was "look in the mirror":

Europeans and Americans are responsible for the world's population problems. It all began 200 years ago in the early days of European and American economic development...[you know the rest of the story if you've read my book]

I used the opportunity to push for change, keeping in mind that in 1970 the average woman in the United States was giving birth to 2.5 babies, virtually all of whom would survive to adulthood. Fertility was on the way down, to be sure, but it wasn't clear in 1970 whether or not that was a long-term trend.

We should definitely advocate for the immediate removal of all discriminatory barriers in education and in the professions [remember that this was the first year that women had been admitted as undergraduates at Princeton]. If you can get a woman out of the house and reward her with financial gain and social and economic prestige, then the social and economic costs of having additional children are going to increase for that woman and she is far more likely than ever before to prefer a small family.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Soot May be Causing Some of the Arctic Melt

It is bad enough that global warming is having a marked effect in the Arctic. It now appears that the buildup of soot may help explain why the Arctic is actually warming up even faster than the rest of the planet. An international team of scientists, including Americans from NOAA, is literally digging into this issue.

Soot, or black carbon, is produced by auto and truck engines, aircraft emissions, burning forests and the use of wood- or coal-burning stoves.

"The Arctic serves as the air conditioner of the planet," explained Patricia Quinn of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the research participants. Heat from other parts of the Earth moves to the Arctic in the circulating air and ocean water, and at least some of that warmth can radiate into space.

At the same time, some of the incoming heat from the sun that tends to be absorbed in other locations is reflected by the ice and snow, allowing the polar regions to serve as cooling agents for the planet.

But that may be changing.

In recent years, the Arctic has been warming more rapidly than other regions and, Quinn pointed out, the "warming of the Arctic has implications not just for polar bears, but for the entire planet."

Cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is the backbone of any effort to combat warming, both globally and within the Arctic, Quinn said.

Good and Bad News About Fighting Malaria

First the good news: Researchers in the UK and US have developed a genetically-modified (GM) mosquito which, when released in the wild, may be able to change the genetic structure of mosquitos in just a few generations in a way that could reduce the risk that they would spread the malaria parasite.

Research groups have already created "malaria-resistant mosquitoes" using techniques such as introducing genes to disrupt the malaria parasite's development.

The research, however, has a great challenge - getting those genes to spread from the genetically-modified mosquitoes to the vast number of wild insects across the globe.

Unless the gene gives the mosquito an advantage, the gene will likely disappear.

Scientists at Imperial College London and the University of Washington, in Seattle, believe they have found a solution.

Professor Andrea Crisanti, from the department of life sciences at Imperial College London, said: "This is an exciting technological development, one which I hope will pave the way for solutions to many global health problems.

He believes it could be possible to introduce genes which will make the mosquito target animals rather than humans, stop the parasite from multiplying in the insect or produce all male offspring which do not transmit malaria.

Professor Janet Hemingway, from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said the work was an "exciting breakthrough".

Now, the bad news, which helps to illustrate why the good news is so important:

A global health fund believes millions of dollars worth of its donated malaria drugs have been stolen in recent years, vastly exceeding the levels of theft previously suspected, according to confidential documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The internal investigation by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria comes two months into a new anti-corruption program that the fund launched after an AP report detailing fraud in their grants attracted intense scrutiny from donors.

Malaria infects more than 250 million people every year, killing about 1 million, the vast majority of whom are children in Africa. Because there is a huge demand for malaria drugs, which are widely available at pharmacies and on private markets, they are easier to sell than drugs for other diseases like AIDS, which are mainly handed out at health clinics.

Immigration Discussions Ramp Up Yet Again in the US

The media have been somewhat cynical about the intent of the meeting on immigration reform held today at the White House, since the meeting comes just as President Obama is about to launch his re-election campaign. While running for election, he had promised Latinos that he would help to fix the immigration problem, but little has been done thus far. Predictably, the meeting was a call for action, not a meeting at which proposals for reform were actually put on the table.

"The president asked the group to commit to moving forward to keep the debate about this issue alive, to keep it alive in the sense that it can get before Congress, where the ultimate resolution of it will have to be obtained," said Bill Bratton, the former police chief in Los Angeles and New York City. "The idea being to go out into our various communities and to speak about the issue."

Obama promised to continue working to build a bipartisan consensus around immigration and said he'd lead a "civil debate" on the issue in the months ahead, the White House said in a statement. But he also said he won't succeed if he alone is leading the debate.

Obama has said repeatedly that he is committed to overhauling the system but also has argued that he can't make headway without Republican support. He does not have enough Democratic votes in the Senate to muscle any legislation through and Republicans now control the House.

He has called for a policy that focuses on border security, accountability for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and requiring illegal immigrants to acknowledge they broke the law, pay back taxes and penalties, and learn English before they can begin the process of qualifying for legal status and eventual citizenship. Republicans oppose a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, calling such a program "amnesty."

None of this suggests that immigration reform will be happening any time soon. Greg Weeks today quotes Esther Cepeda on how the US government is now dealing with immigration:

It seems that at least for the foreseeable future Washington's message to Arizona and other states who want to take immigration matters into their own hands is: You're not allowed to deal with illegal immigration yourselves, only we can. And we will. Sometime. Maybe. Stand by.