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The economy is an ecosystem, and industrial policy will help that ecosystem

Back in the 1980s, writers such as Robert Reich were advocating what was called an “industrial policy” — that is, the government should intervene in the economy and explicitly help a particular industry or set of industries in order to make them more competitive. Yes, I know this sounds like “picking winners,” except that governments […]

What U.S. leaders could learn from a 13-year-old

Under the blunt title “Ethanol is Stupid,” a letter in the Concord Monitor makes a cogent case against corn-based ethanol: Most ethanol is made from corn. However, that corn must be supplied in enormous quantities, and corn is used in much food for humans and animals. If we use corn for fuel, more will need […]

Air in 46 U.S. metro areas exceeds allowable soot levels

Over 100 million people in the United States, nearly one-third of its population, live in metro areas that violate federal standards for daily soot pollution on at least some days, the U.S. EPA said this week. However, missing from the EPA’s list of officially sooty areas — and thus exempt from further enforcement actions to […]

Falling out of love with cars

Jon Rynn suggested that this comment to another thread be posted, so, by request, a repeat for the holidays! I would have posted it yesterday but we had a long power outage as a winter storm caused a transformer to blow up, putting several thousand of us without power. It was a fitting problem to […]

An antidote to Kunstler?

Sharon Astyk has graced these pages. She is the anti-Kunstler. Whereas JHK can get people gritting their teeth and swearing by quoting "Reader’s Digest," Sharon has a way of making everyone feel warm and friendly … even when she is writing or saying things every bit as grim as anything from JHK. I saw her […]

New NOAA head will have plenty of work to do

President-elect Barack Obama’s appointment of Jane Lubchenco, an Oregon State University marine biologist, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could be a major positive step for protecting America’s fisheries. In recent years, NOAA has ignored scientists’ advice when it comes to setting quotas for some of our most vulnerable fish species, favoring commercial […]

We got tanked at the Architecture for Humanity holiday fete

What happens when your nonprofit asks for a donation of nine bottles of vodka for its "recession special" holiday party and gets nine cases of Grey Goose instead? We crashed Architecture for Humanity‘s offices last week to find out. The organization has become a media darling for harnessing open source, Web 2.0 technologies to bring […]

Hadley Center study warns of ‘catastrophic’ 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path

Dr. Vicky Pope, head of climate change predictions at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, writes in the UK Times that In a worst-case scenario, where no action is taken to check the rise in Greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures would most likely rise by more than 5°C by the end of the century. It may be […]

Weak dollar and economy are an opportunity for land conservation

It’s an interesting time to be running any sort of nonprofit, but especially so for those that specialize in buying and conserving land. The market crash has staved off development pressures in most parts of the country as new housing starts are slumping, putting on hold the constant race to buy parcels with important conservation […]

Where will we find infrastructure funding under cap-and-dividend?

I’m not sure I qualify as a cap-and-dividend advocate — I’m mostly an advocate of not feeling the need to rank every flavor of carbon policy, whose heavily negotiated fate rests in the hands of our brave, capable legislators — but I at least qualify as a fan. If I were king, my carbon edict […]