Politics

The Waxman-Markey bill: a good start or a non-starter?

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As carbon cap-and-trade legislation works it way through Congress, the environmental community is intensely debating whether the Waxman-Markey bill is the best possible compromise or a fatally flawed initiative. Yale Environment 360 asked 11 prominent people in the environmental and energy fields for their views on this controversial legislation.

Whither America without China?

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Someday, someone is going to ask me what happened to the United States – wasn’t it once one of the biggest economies in the world? I’ve already got my answer ready – we sold ourselves to other countries for flat-screened tvs and other plastic toys. And weirdest of all, for a long time, we actually thought we got the better of the deal.

Maintaining Our Prosperity

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Australia’s new Energy White Paper will be crucial in dealing prudently and effectively with the immense challenges facing Australia as the era of cheap energy and the economic system based upon it comes to an end. We are now in the early stages of an unprecedented economic failure – the terminal decline and probable collapse of global Capitalism.

Julian’s tragedy

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It is, of course only a novel, but it offers a good rationale for us to enter politics. Nobody can predict what shape the future will take, and even if we can be pretty sure the present world is going to collapse, its demise will take time and it can be succeeded by a lot of things, not all of them pleasant…Yet we can work to cushion the decline and make sure that whoever will succeed us will inherit the best of what we have…This is not a very rewarding job and it is as likely to fail as to succeed. Sometimes it will leave you with a bitter aftertaste and even victories will sometimes feel empty, but it certainly beats replaying Julian’s tragedy.