Articles by Geoff Dabelko
Geoff Dabelko is director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. He blogs here and at New Security Beat on environment, population, and security issues.
All Articles
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Reflections by moderate Republicans from environmental days of yore
I'm attending the kick-off event of Duke University's new Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, a science-policy shop within the extremely well-endowed Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. The crowd is large and august, with moderate Republicans from a different age of US environmental politics taking center stage.
Russell Train, the second EPA administrator, told stories of exploiting Nixon's political interest in environmental issues (he wanted to neutralize a potential wedge issue if Muskie had been the 1972 nominee) to get some of the country's landmark legislation through. Bipartisanship was the name of the game then, a stark contrast to today. Video of Train's talk (as well as Jared Diamond's and Richard Osbourne's of Duke Energy) is available here.
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NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof makes a reasonable Katrina-to-climate link
Nicholas Kristof does the Katrina-to-climate link in a reasonable way in Sunday's New York Times. He gives props to Portland for taking technologically available and cost-saving steps to reduce their emissions to just above 1990 levels. It really shouldn't surprise us that it is the state and local levels that are the environmental innovators. It is just usually one state to the south in California where local conditions (read thermal inversions in LA) eventually beget US environmental regulations.
Kristof also provides extensive links at the bottom of the piece, something more pontificators should do.
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On the advantages and disadvantages of E85
So say some Americans turning from gasoline to E85, "a fuel cocktail that consists mostly of grain alcohol, or corn-based ethanol, with a splash of gasoline." The New York Times provides a quick walk through the advantages and disadvantages of E85 which first and foremost these days is the cost. But today's Mideast headlines also have some consumers talking about how they would rather their dollars go to American farmers than OPEC coffers. Infrastructure remains something of an issue -- according to the Times, only 500 or so of the country's approximately 180,000 gas stations carry E85.
And just a factlette that never ceases to surprise -- we import more oil from Canada than any other country.
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Putin cracks down on environmental orgs
Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking an increasingly dim view of environmental NGO activity, whether from within Russia or from neighboring Baltic or Nordic neighbors. In rhetoric eerily similar to what we hear in this country, Putin rails against ecological objections holding up development projects. Going a step further, Putin's government is criminalizing more and more environmental data-gathering and harassing Russian NGO activists. Putin's latest warning "against the financing of political activity by any channel" is cited in an August 2 Agence France Presse story. AFP says "the warning came amid a hardening official stance in Moscow toward non-governmental organisations -- a policy, analysts say, that reflects Kremlin worry about the influence of foreign-funded organisations in the peaceful revolutions that shook Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine last year."
If you are interested in a good news-clipping listserv on Russian environmental issues, subscribe to the Russian Environmental Digest Files through the Transboundary Environmental Information Agency, which focuses on the Baltics and Russia.
