Year: 2009
Regulatory Fees in California: Killing Two Birds with One Stone?
The meltdown of the State of California’s budget raises a host of questions about governance, taxes and politics in the state and beyond. One of those questions implicates other concerns regarding the design and implementation of effective environmental regulation. As my father used to say, “Sometimes cheap is too expensive,” an adage that is borne …
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CONTINUE READINGThe China Syndrome
After her trip to China, Speaker Pelosi was upbeat about the Chinese attitude toward climate change, YahooGreen reports: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday expressed high hopes of cooperation between the United State and China, the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, ahead of
CONTINUE READINGHummer to China
At the close of last week’s Congressional delegation trip to China to discuss, among other things, climate change commitments, Rep. Edward Markey had this to say about the upcoming Copenhagen talks and efforts to convince the Chinese to agree to GHG caps (as reported in the NYT): “This is going to be one of the most …
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CONTINUE READINGSave the Tuna!
Amid concerns about the possible exhaustion of tuna stocks, Science reports on a positive step: Representatives of Western Pacific island nations last week put the finishing touches on a series of bold new measures aimed at saving the world’s last great tuna stocks. Last May, the group decided to bar fishing in two huge pockets …
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CONTINUE READINGNew and Noteworthy in the Eco-Blogosphere
For the environmental world at large, here are some noteworthy posts: Africa needs substantially scaled-up finance, technology and capacity-building to combat climate change 2009 Hurricane Names to Watch for, as Season Begins After a record-breaking 2008 hurricane season, the first storm has formed before the official June 1 start to the 2009 season. The hydrogen …
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CONTINUE READINGNorth Korea and the Environment
Like most people, I knew that North Korea was short on food. What I didn’t realize is that this is largely due to environmental degradation. According to a 2004 U.N. report,”Major crop yields fell by almost two thirds during the 1990s due to land degradation caused by loss of forest, droughts, floods and tidal waves, …
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CONTINUE READINGReturn to Chernobyl
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU5yrdofbw0&feature=player_embedded] This is from a site dedicated to developments at Chernobyl.
CONTINUE READINGNo Butts About It
The New York Times has reported on a stealth environmental crisis, one that the public has heretofore regarded as the mere detritus of a serious public health controversy. But discarded cigarette butts constitute a major environmental crisis as well, and public attention to that crisis is long overdue. In its recent story, the Times notes …
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CONTINUE READINGEntropy to the Max!
I’ve been learning from my ERG colleague John Harte about a statistical technique called MaxEnt. For many environmental problems — most notably climate change — we are not only unable to provide a reliable estimate of harm, but we don’t even know the shape of the probability distribution. MaxEnt is a way of constructing a …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Refugees
The NY Times had an important article yesterday about the issue of climate refugees. Because climate change poses an existential threat to some nations and a threat to international stability elsewhere, it appears that the U.N. is inching closer to making climate change a security issue under the jurisdiction of the Security Council. Since the …
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