Region: National
Reducing Coronavirus Fatalities: A Cost-Benefit Analysis
Q: From an economic perspective, what’s it worth spending to curb the pandemic? A: A lot.
At an extremely rough estimate, it would be worth spending about $4 trillion to cut the coronavirus death rate in half.
CONTINUE READINGDoes Being Conservative Have to Mean Ignoring Risks?
Florida’s Ron DeSantis doesn’t seem to think so.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis shows that it’s possible to be a staunch conservative and still be honest about the risks of climate change and the coronavirus.
CONTINUE READINGHow Hot Will Things Get?
Identifying a realistic worst case scenario is complicated.
How hot will the world be in 2100? The answer partly depends on how much carbon we dump in the atmosphere between now and then. It also depends on how sensitive the climate system is to those emissions. Scientists have used 4.5 °C as the high end of the likely possibilities. That estimate derives from …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat the Administration Failed to Learn from Past Disasters
There are some basic rules about how to respond to emergencies. They were ignored.
An epidemic and a hurricane require different responses. But the organizational challenge of confronting an emergency is a constant. Here are some basic rules the Trump Administration failed to heed. Ensure in advance that sufficient supplies will be quickly available. When Hurricane Katrina hit, the government did have supplies, but they were located hundreds …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Right Wing’s Views of Coronavirus and Climate Change
There’s a common theme: “nothing to worry about, folks.”
It’s interesting to see what conservative think tanks are saying about the coronavirus and compare it with their views on climate change. There are some common themes — both problems tend to get downplayed, along with any possible need for major government action. Like Trump himself, the conservative think tanks seem unable to process scientific …
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CONTINUE READINGPublic Lands Watch: Revisions to NEPA regulations
Trump Administration proposes drastic revisions to regulations that implement bedrock environmental law
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is one of the most important statutes for public lands management in the United States, even though it actually is not specific to public lands. NEPA requires federal agencies to analyze and publicly disclose the significant environmental impacts of proposed agency actions, consider alternatives to those proposals, and seek …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Easy, No-Fuss, Climate Fix for that Big First Day in Office
No, not rejoining the Paris Agreement, though that’s a good idea too. Something else.
This is kind of like one of those recipe things you see: putting a gourmet meal on the table in five minutes. But it’s more like: the one ingredient that will make all your recipes come out better. More seriously, what I’m about to propose is very conventional, easily integrated into agency procedures, and a …
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CONTINUE READINGUnderstanding wastewater utility views on innovation and regulation
by Luke Sherman, Alida Cantor, Anita Milman, and Michael Kiparsky
The same underlying technology has been used in the municipal wastewater sector for 100 years. New technologies that treat effluent more efficiently and effectively exist, yet deployment of those technologies has been slow. The limited adoption of new technologies in the wastewater sector raises questions about how to encourage innovation. Popular narratives around innovation sometimes …
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CONTINUE READINGRisk, Uncertainty, and COVID-19
What do we actually know at this point about the dangers?
Like many environmental hazards such as toxic chemicals, the coronavirus is fundamentally a problem in risk management. And like issues such as climate change, the problem involves scientific data, modeling, and a good deal of uncertainty. With climate change, the key parameter is climate sensitivity. For diseases the key parameter is called R0, which measures …
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CONTINUE READINGMaxing Out NEPA: Environmental Review of Early Solar Geoengineering Field Research
Done right, environmental review can reach what worries people most about climate engineering
A few months ago, Congress earmarked $4 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to research: stratospheric conditions and the Earth’s radiation budget, including the impact of the introduction of material into the stratosphere from changes in natural systems, increased air and space traffic, proposals to inject material to affect climate, and the …
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