Culture & Ethics
Logging, tropical forests, and biodiversity — what we don’t know
Cross-posted at The Berkeley Blog. A new paper in Conservation Biology (subscription required) from researchers at UC Berkeley and elsewhere provides an important reminder that we often don’t know as much as we think we do about ecological systems and the effects of human actions on those systems. Lead author Benjamin Ramage and colleagues evaluated …
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CONTINUE READINGCan Universities Be The Future Home of Environmental Journalism?
Consider me somewhat skeptical of the arguments, well-presented by Jayni, that The New York Times’ killing of the Green blog will somehow enhance the paper’s environmental coverage. It reminds me a little of the attempts of law schools to teach ethics not with a specific class but with the suffusion method: it’s an easy way …
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CONTINUE READINGA Great New Appointment: Edith Ramirez as FTC Chair
President Obama has appointed Edith Ramirez to chair the Federal Trade Commission; since she already serves on the FTC, this thankfully does not require Senate confirmation. It’s a terrific appointment. I have known Edith for about 15 years now; we served together on the board of the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, one of …
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CONTINUE READINGDworkin Does Dallas
The death of Ronald Dworkin last week was not merely an event for legal philosophers, but really for anyone concerning with the law, for Dworkin might have been the pre-eminent legal theorist of the last century. The legacy of his ideas is too broad and deep for a blog post, but his notion of law-as-integrity …
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CONTINUE READINGGreen Guinea Pigs and the NY Times
There is an interesting debate playing out between Tesla’s boss (Musk) and the NY Times. A prominent NY Times reporter (Broder) took a Tesla electric vehicle for a spin and wrote a negative review. Anticipating the nasty PR consequences, Musk has gone nuclear. Here is an article providing links. In my academic work and my …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change’s Bipolar Personality
Climate change is literally bipolar, impacting both the northernmost and southernmost parts of the globe. But the pace and effects of warming differ at the two poles. At the northern end of the world, impacts are already dramatic. The Economist has a special feature on the Arctic, which provides an especially clear explanation of why the …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Talmud and the Endowment Effect
The endowment effect is one of the most important aspects of behavioral economics. It postulates that losing something is worse than gaining something is good. One can easily see it applied to various aspects of property law: it is worse to lose a piece of property that you think is yours than to gain a …
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CONTINUE READINGA New Feast for Environmental Policy Wonks
The Winter 2013 issue of the always-invaluable Journal of Economic Perspectives is just out, and it is a treasure for environmental policy people. It features a symposium on tradeable pollution permits, with contributions from among others William Pizer and Robert Stavins. It not only reviews the history of tradeable permits in air pollution, but also …
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CONTINUE READINGLiterally 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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CONTINUE READINGStephen Colbert is a National Treasure
Like Tom Tomorrow. Click here for his must watch clip from Monday’s show. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423268/january-28-2013/the-word—the-new-abnormal Colbert nails conservative views on climate change. First, deny. Second, when the facts belie denial, accept but refuse to acknowledge human contributions. Finally, throw up your hands and say that even if it’s human-caused we can’t do anything about it …
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