Month: November 2012
Climate Adaptation Heroes
Megan’s piece highlights that government may not be up to the job of helping us to adapt to “the new normal”. As the token economist here, permit me to celebrate competition as a friend of climate adaptation. Suppose that a coastal city doesn’t figure out how to adapt to climate change. The shocks to …
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CONTINUE READINGRewarding Climate Adaptation Heroes
Earlier this week, Mother Jones posted a piece on how the public rewards politicians for disaster response instead of disaster prevention: Politicians get much more credit for their reaction to disasters like Sandy than they do for trying to ensure disasters don’t cause so much damage in the first place. The post cites a 2009 …
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CONTINUE READINGQuote of the Day — or the Year — or the Century
Eric Pooley, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, on Hurricane Sandy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.” Any questions? UPDATE: Our commenter and friend Maya …
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CONTINUE READING“United We Stand”: National Unity in the Face of Disaster
During the Republican primaries, Governor Romney proposed curtailing or even eliminating the federal role in disaster response, leaving the response efforts to the states or the private sector. Why does this seem viscerally wrong to so many people today (enough so that Romney first refused to answer any questions about it and then abandoned it …
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CONTINUE READINGWhatever Happened to Environmental Politics?
Mayor Bloomberg’s endorsement of President Obama on climate-change grounds is depressing because it is so surprising. It tells us something quite bleak that 1) someone had to make clear the relevance of climate to Hurricane Sandy; and 2) someone doing so came as a shock to people. Indeed, through the campaign, climate has been essentially …
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CONTINUE READINGWill Hurricane Sandy Affect Post-Election Actions?
Eric just noted that Bloomberg’s endorsement of President Obama marks the first significant moment in the campaign where climate change is front and center. He also suggests that climate change and its relationship to Hurricane Sandy could now actually affect the presidential race. A related and perhaps even more important question is whether the hurricane and its …
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CONTINUE READINGHow Climate Change Might (Finally) Affect the Presidential Race
There’s been a lot of debates over whether Hurricane Sandy and the damage that it caused in the Northeast was in part the result of climate change. But Sandy appears to have had at least something of an impact on the role that climate change has had in the Presidential race. Up till now, climate …
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CONTINUE READINGSaving Public Transit: The Role of Technology
New technologies are quickly changing how we provide and interact with public transit. From Smart Phone applications that chart transit trips, new software that enables ride and bike sharing, or stations that function as “mobility hubs” with new ways to provide rider access, these technologies hold the promise to greatly enhance our existing transit systems. …
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CONTINUE READINGSuper PACs, the Presidential Election, and the Public Good
This is going to be a very close election — close enough that, if Romney wins, a key factor will be Citizens United and related judicial rulings that have helped create the Super PACs. Figures collected by the LA Times show that since April 15, Super PACs have spent over $216 million to defeat Obama …
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