August 28, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
China is choking under a thick covering of contaminants produced from burning carbon-based fuels for industrial production, power-generation, and transport. Environmental degradation is so rampant that much of the northwest of the country is being lost to rapidly expanding deserts. And desertification threatens the already shaky balance between China’s available arable land and its skyrocketing demand for cheap food. Policy makers and market theorists in China and abroad should be thinking about whether that desert can produce something to help China escape the mounting environmental and public health cataclysm.
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July 18, 2008 :: admin :: 4 Comments
Ladies and gentlemen: There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment.
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July 17, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 2 Comments
Former US vice-president Al Gore is calling on the nation to marshal its resources and divorce itself from the combustible fuels economy. Gore says the US can produce all its energy requirements from renewable resources within 10 years, if concerted action is taken. The bold initiative is designed to drive debate on the topic and move discussions about how to deal with high fuel prices toward the new opportunity they provide for funding renewable infrastructure development.
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July 12, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 3 Comments
The chairman of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Stephen Johnson, says the Clean Air Act is “ill-suited” to fighting the greenhouse effect, and that Congress should pass laws mandating the regulation of carbon emissions, with global warming in mind. The move may lead to a more comprehensive regulatory regime, but as the Guardian newspaper notes: “Last year’s Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court ruling had found that greenhouse gases can be regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act. The decision pressured the EPA to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks.”
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July 10, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 3 Comments
T. Boone Pickens has started what USA Today reports will be “the biggest public policy ad campaign ever” to promote a national economic shift from oil to renewable fuels, primarily wind. The campaign is centered on the PickensPlan website, which shows the oil tycoon explaining how and why the US can and must break its dependence on foreign oil —for which American consumers pay $700 billion per year— by transitioning to an energy economy founded on exploiting the massive wind resources of the Great Plains.
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June 24, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: One Comment
The New Scientist magazine this week heralds a ‘plan B for biofuel’, making the case that starch-based ethanol fuels, like corn ethanol in the US, may drive up food prices, but a new generation of biofuels will sidestep the problem and help ethanol live up to its promise. “The corn required to fill an SUV tank with bioethanol just once could feed someone in Africa for a year” reports the UK-based magazine, but most biomass is not the starch currently being used to create bioethanol.
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June 18, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 2 Comments
The International Energy Agency has called for a major increase in the price at which carbon emissions are traded in carbon-offsetting schemes designed to reduce emissions. The IEA, as reported by the Financial Times, has called for carbon offsets to be priced closer to $200 per ton, in order to bring carbon-trading schemes in line with the costs of reducing emissions. EU carbon offsets are currently priced at roughly $43 per ton.
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June 10, 2008 :: jr3o :: No Comment Yet
On the same day that oil futures jumped a record $10.75/barrel, gaining 8% in one day, the US Senate voted on major carbon-capping legislation that would reduce US carbon by 66% by the year 2050, the International Energy Agency proposed drastic increases in the cost of carbon offsets, designed to reduce the overall amount of carbon emissions in a given market, through trading.
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November 18, 2007 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Due to the science we already have, the laws we have to govern our own activity and to force government to act for the public health, we face the real possibility of being forced, in American courts, in the future, to pay for damage done to the most affected populations in other parts of the world, as a result of inaction by our government. And if not in court, then as a matter of the de facto urgencies of international political stability.
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