Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Amid all the complex data and opinion about climate change, the dirty secret is quite obvious, so simple and awkward that it’s rarely discussed. The dirty secret is that, under present conditions, at least in the short-term, alternative energy costs more than fossil fuels.
Cities worldwide are increasingly becoming agents in the fight to mitigate climate change, while simultaneously aiming for other goals, such as improved accessibility and clean air. Indeed, one team of researchers assert that the kind of multi-criteria assessment of social costs and benefits that they employed in their recent study is a useful complement to cost–benefit analysis of climate change mitigation measures.
Recently a member of a mailing list for resource economists asked how to value endangered species given that they are not bought and sold in markets. A common method is to infer prices (“existence values”) by indirect methods such as answers to surveys (e.g., “How much would you be willing to pay to keep tigers from going extinct?”). An issue raised in the online discussion was whether species grow more valuable as they become more scarce and their numbers fall toward zero. If prices keep changing, what is the “right” price?
As this wild year comes to an end, we return to the season of gifts. Here’s the gift you’re not going to get soon: any conventional version of Paradise. You know, the place where nothing much happens and nothing is demanded of you. The gifts you’ve already been given in 2012 include a struggle over the fate of the Earth. This is probably not exactly what you asked for, and I wish it were otherwise — but to do good work, to be necessary, to have something to give: these are the true gifts. And at least there’s still a struggle ahead of us, not just doom and despair.
Welcome to the last ODAC Newsletter, the final news roundup from the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre…2012 saw US oil production grow to its highest level in 15 years, largely because of surging tight oil production by fracking, and many pundits such as Ed Morse of Citi are claiming “peak oil is dead”. So has ODAC been worrying its silly little head entirely unnecessarily for the last five years, and could all our energy troubles soon be over? We continue to think not…
2012: is it really the end of the world? Are the tectonic plates going to tilt, like in the movie, and dump us off? Will the earth crack open and the seas split? Unlikely. You can breathe a qualified sigh of relief. Mayan shamans and scholars tell us that the close of this great cycle of the Mayan calendar is not the cue for apocalypse but rather a new beginning, another turn of the wheel.
So the actual end of the world probably shouldn’t worry us overmuch just yet. But the end of the world as we know it probably should.
•Leaked IPCC Draft Report: Recent Warming Is Manmade, Cloud Feedback Is Positive, Inaction Is Suicidal •What leaked IPCC report really says on climate change •Why Climate Change Denial Is Just Hot Air •States Threaten EPA Over Petroleum Industry Methane Emissions •Ask Bill McKibben Anything
As economic activity and populations continue to expand in coastal urban areas, particularly in Asia, hundreds of trillions of dollars of infrastructure, industrial and office buildings, and homes are increasingly at risk from intensifying storms and rising sea levels.
•Coming soon: 100% renewable power – Chris Nelder •How Data and Social Pressure Can Reduce Home Energy •Use Fatih Birol: Energy efficiency is one of last options after Kyoto •Solar Mamas – movie trailer
The announcement on Thursday that the government is lifting its moratorium on fracking held all the surprise of turkey on the Christmas menu. The decision, which allows the resumption of test drilling by Cuadrilla in Lancashire and opens the way to fracking across the UK, was inevitable following the government’s gas generation U-turn last week…
•Drilling spills reaching Colorado groundwater; state mulls test rules •Shale Shocked: Studies Tie Rise Of Significant Earthquakes In U.S. Midcontinent To Wastewater Injection •Ignore the doom merchants, Britain should get fracking •Shale gas is not a game changer •The fracking dream which is putting Britain’s future at risk
