Region: International

Literally Trashing the Environment

No, not another rap on Joe Biden.  The world literally wastes an awful lot of food, notes the International Herald Tribune: Between 1.2 billion and 2 billion tons of the 4 billion tons of food produced around the world every year never gets eaten, according to a new survey by a group of British engineers. …

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5 Things You Need to Know About Africa

Africa is going to be an increasingly important area in the future, if only because a higher percentage of the human race will be living there.  Here are some key things you should know about sub-Saharan Africa: Population growth. The African population will reach 1.2 billion by 2025, and 1.9 billion by 2050.  Currently, 40% of the …

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Napoleon Bonaparte, Zoning Administrator

This semester, I am teaching Land Use, and in the casebook I came across this evocative and meaningful quote from Tony Arnold: The real law of land use regulation exists mostly in zoning codes and regulatory procedures, as well as in the actions or decisions of local land use regulatory bodies.  Consider all the zoning, …

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Should Environmentalists Worry About Chuck Hagel?

Reports out today indicate that within the next few days, President Obama will appoint former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to succeed Leon Panetta as Defense Secretary.  Even though Hagel himself is a Republican, the GOP has already promised a fight, ostensibly on the entirely specious grounds that Hagel is anti-Israel. Hagel…hmmm…where have environmentalists heard that …

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John Kerry & Climate Change

Whatever else it might portend, Kerry’s appointment as Secretary of State is certainly good news environmentally.  The New Republic put it well: Kerry, long an advocate for the U.S. to lead on climate change prevention, has compared the threat posed by poor international effort to confront climate change to that of war. In an August …

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Lastest IPCC assessment of future climate changes leaked in draft form

We knew the coming Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, which I discussed briefly here, would make waves–just not this soon.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produces these assessments every five to seven years.  They are the most rigorous and prominent summaries of the science of climate change, crafted by leading scientists from many nations and used …

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International Trade in Renewable Power Equipment

In the absence of global carbon pricing, how will the growing world economy decarbonize?   We all hope that emissions per dollar of GNP will decline faster than GNP grows but how does this happen when explicit incentives to decarbonize aren’t embraced?   The magic of international trade offers one possibility.   In this recent …

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A Plea from Doha

As Jonathan has noted, the international climate negotiations now underway in Doha, Qatar are receiving little media attention and are not expected to result in a major political breakthrough. And, most of the time, it’s difficult for those not in the melee to parse the speeches, interventions, and positions taken by countries at these talks, …

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Renewing Britain’s Clean Energy Vows

The British are ramping up their efforts on renewable energy.  The NY Times reported a few days ago that the new plan will “gradually quadruple the charges levied on consumers and businesses to help support electricity generation from low-carbon sources, to a total of about £9.8 billion, or $15.7 billion, in the 2020-21 fiscal year, …

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Heating Up the Eurozone

The EU has issued a new report about climate impacts.  The picture is mixed, with some good news (warmer winters in the Northern and Eastern Europe) but bad news in other respects.  The report has this to say about some disaster risks: Increases in health risks associated with river and coastal flooding are projected in …

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