Uncategorized

Nukes in France

It's a Wall Street Journal kind of week. On the front page of today's edition is a story about nuclear energy in France. I've got no big take-home lesson from it, but some bits are interesting in their own right.

First, some incisive framing:

France's experience spotlights a daunting aspect of today's energy crunch: The world will have to face hard choices long before science comes up with definitive answers. There's mounting evidence that global warming is happening and that finding big new pools of oil is getting harder. But it's not yet clear how serious global warming will be or whether petroleum is running dry. If politicians and businesses act and these concerns prove overblown, they could waste vast sums of money. If they postpone action and the facts validate today's concerns, the future choices could be a lot harder.

Yup.

And here's something I didn't know. To kickstart its nuke industry in the '70s ...

The power is yours

Interested in how governments make the tough call between environmental risks and consumer costs when it comes to energy generation? Wish you could be in on those decisions? Now you can! Sorta.

Check out the BBC's energy calculator, which lets you (hypothetically) adjust the UK's energy use -- whether from nukes, fossil fuels, or renewables -- and find out the potential impact. Once your calculations meet projected UK needs for 2020, you can submit your choices, which the BBC will tally and analyze for trends.

Think it'll be as easy as reducing demand and increasing renewables to 100 percent? Not so easy when you see how much that'll raise costs -- for everyone, including low-income families already struggling to pay for electricity. So how would you keep the UK's lights on in 2020, if you had the power?

What will an Atlanta parks project mean for low-income residents?

Atlanta is embarking on a massive redevelopment project to transform a mostly unused railroad into a 22-mile, in-town loop of walking trails, bike paths, public transit, and more than 1,200 acres of parks. Sounds great. But Atlanta activist Na'Taki Osborne worries that for the city's poor and moderate-income residents, there might be a catch.

Zoned Out

Over on Environmental Economics, there's an interesting review of what looks like an interesting book: Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land Use, by Jonathan Levine. It directly addresses some of the questions raised in this much-discussed post on new urbanism.

Here's how it starts:

Let My People Flow

Water privatization falling out of favor The privatization of water systems took off globally in the ’80s and ’90s; now it seems to be going the way of ankle zippers and acid-washed denim. At last week’s World Water Forum, delegates voted to issue a decree supporting government responsibility for providing safe drinking water. As if […]

Mumbai-Bye, Birdie

India’s vultures on verge of extinction thanks to cattle medication India’s once-abundant vulture population has plummeted an astonishing 97 percent in the past decade, and conservationists worldwide charge the Indian government with not acting quickly enough to save them. The culprit is diclofenac, a cheap painkiller used to treat sick cattle in South Asia; it […]

Klamath Is Hard!

Judge orders Bush admin to shift water to Klamath River salmon Endangered Klamath River coho salmon — what’s left of them anyway — scored a victory yesterday, as a federal judge ordered the Bureau of Reclamation to increase river flows in drought years and the National Marine Fisheries Service to develop a biological study that […]

Finding Nemo, seaweed, and condoms on a small tropical island

Now, I am not a veteran snorkeler, but the underwater views I had last week were truly amazing. I was diving off a tiny (11 hectare) island in the Philippines where orange Finding-Nemo clown fish danced around my hands and the table coral must have been 10 feet in diameter. Cobalt blue starfish spread their arms across the spiky coral forests.

But this is not a post on a vacation, although the hour I was in the water felt like a holiday. No, snorkeling on the edge of the Gilutongan Marine Sanctuary was the highlight of a site visit to an integrated population, health, and environment program on this tiny island. We were a group of fifty invaders visiting Cebu City, the Philippines, for the 2nd National Conference on Population, Health, and Environment.

What had been just a marine-conservation program a few years ago has become a dynamic mix of efforts: children's immunizations and pre-natal checkups, family-planning services, clean-water provision, and alternative-livelihood strategies including tourism and seaweed farming.

Blood and Gore in the WSJ

Speaking of the Wall Street Journal, the co-founders of Generation Investment Management -- Al Gore and David Blood (Blood and Gore!) -- have a commentary therein neatly summarizing the case for integrating social, moral, and environmental concerns into the market. They even use the WSJ's favored dry, technical business-speak to do it. It begins thusly:

WSJ on Canadian tar-sands oil

The Wall Street Journal is running a magisterial survey of the Canadian tar-sands issue. Sadly, I don't have time to say anything about it, and you can't read it (unless you're a subscriber).

But at least throwing this link up relieves some of the bloggy guilt.