Climate Denial and the Republicans: The Poor Man’s Anticommunism
Why is the Republican Party so wedded to climate denial? As Dan has noted, not a single Republican candidate in the 2010 Senate elections could acknowledge the reality of climate change. Shortly after taking the majority in the House, the House Energy and Commerce Committee declared climate change to be a hoax. But this seems to be at odds with both the facts and with conservative ideology. After all, there are policies that good conservatives could support to mi...
CONTINUE READINGAn Inconvenient Treaty
Should the U.S. join an international treaty to limit carbon emissions? The little-known answer: we already have. No, this wasn't a secret Obama Administration initiative. The treaty was signed by none other than President George H.W. Bush. The treaty is called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC. The word "framework" can mislead people into thinking that the UNFCCC does nothing more than set the stage for further negotiation. I...
CONTINUE READINGClimate 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 its quality of life will manifest themselves and mobile, skilled people will leave and home prices will fall. Detroit is poor because the skilled choose not to l...
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 study, Myopic Voters and Natural Disasters, by Andrew Healy of Loyola Marymount University and Neil Malhotra of Stanford University, which analyz...
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 Kuttan points us to this video, "animating" the issue: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW3b8jSX7ec]...
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 on Wednesday)? The answer may partly be a perception that events like Hurricane Sandy are just too big for most state governme...
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 ignored as a political issue. Why is that? Obviously, the reason is complicated, and much of it concerns the Great Recession....
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 aftermath will make any difference post-election about whether we actually decide to create national c...
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 change has been a missing topic in the official debates and in the campaign in general. But now, NYC Mayor Bloomberg (who up to this point had refused to endorse Obama or R...
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. Judi Masuda, Transportation Demand Programs Manager at the City of Santa Monica, describes how technology can inte...
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