Region: International
What to Expect This Year in Terms of Climate Action
Although there will be many flashing lights and loud noises, 2011 will primarily be a year in which various events that are already in play evolve toward major developments in 2012. Litigation. The one exceptional major development in 2011 will be American Electric Power (AEP) v. Connecticut, the climate nuisance case that the Supreme Court …
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CONTINUE READINGOceans: the biggest loser from our international failure to address greenhouse gas emissions?
In this op-ed from Monday’s Los Angeles Times, UC San Diego scientists Tony Haymet and Andrew Dickson succinctly and directly summarizes the threat that ocean acidification poses to our world, and plead for reductions in carbon emissions. (My colleagues have blogged about ocean acidification before, here and here among other places.) Unfortunately, as my …
CONTINUE READINGState Dep’t: Legally binding emissions limits not happening “anytime soon”
I wasn’t on the beach in Cancun at the latest international climate summit, but like lots of folks I followed its (pseudo) progress. It wrapped up on Saturday with a package of incremental agreements on important issues (LA Times has a good analysis here), but once again without getting far on the 10,000 gigaton question: Will …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat If They Gave a Climate Summit and Nobody Came?
Last year about this time, everyone was excited about Copenhagen. UCLA Law School even sent its own delegation. President Obama was going to come. It was the biggest thing in climate since Kyoto — maybe bigger, since now the US had an administration that believes in science. Now? Not so much. The coverage of Cancun …
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CONTINUE READINGChina Needs the Straddling Bus More Than We Do
Jonathan just blogged about the very cool concept of the straddling bus, designed to go over automobiles and reportedly being built in China starting next month. His blog coincides with lots of attention focused on the mother of all traffic jams occuring right now outside of Bejing: a 60 mile long, multi-day jam comprised mostly of …
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CONTINUE READINGToo Cool to Avoid Blogging — The Straddling Bus
Critics of subways often argue, correctly, that they are very, very expensive. They argue much less correctly that they aren’t worth it from a cost-benefit perspective. (I’ll believe when they add in the subsidies for roads and automobiles, price auto traffic like they do with rail, and stop using tendentious examples to criticize high-speed rail). …
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CONTINUE READINGTravel Is Broadening–2010 Edition
Having just returned from a trip to Northern Europe, a couple of experiences resonate with me that, I hope, are worthy of sharing here. The first relates to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, British Petroleum, and the distinct ways in which BP’s role and responsibility for the spill are viewed, depending on one’s geographical roots. …
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CONTINUE READINGNot Working on the Railroad
Thies, where I was staying on my American Jewish World Service delegation trip to Senegal, is about 36 miles from the Senegalese capital, Dakar. That might not seem like a lot, but with typical Global South infrastructure, it is: often it can take more than 2 hours to get from one place to another. Plodding …
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CONTINUE READINGGoing Nuclear in Finland
A new film explores how Finland is planning to dispose of its nuclear waste. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXif1MThJ6k]
CONTINUE READINGPost-Mortem on Copenhagen
Der Spiegel has a story based on tapes of the behind-the-scenes meetings of world leaders. The headline says it all: The Copenhagen Protocol: How China and India Sabotaged the UN Climate Summit. As usual, the French assessment was the most eloquent: The words suddenly burst out of French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “I say this with …
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