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How Much Will Carbon Cost? – The Million Dollar Question
Policy makers and corporate executives alike are interested in quantifying just how much a tonne of carbon dioxide will cost in the future. While it’s intuitive why policy makers, tasked with securing the long-term welfare of a country, are interested in CO2’s dollar value, large corporations are also spending money on predicting the future. Why […] More
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The Future of Solar Electricity: Grid-Connected vs Off-Grid
(Originally published on SolarLove.org) The future in which power company customers transitioning to solar electricity generation can choose to either maintain grid connection or cost-effectively generate off-grid has arrived. The implications of this reality, however, are only just beginning to dawn. Rising on the horizon of a new solar energy era, concerns for stranded assets […] More
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11 Senators to EPA: Strengthen The Clean Power Plan
Eleven U.S. Senators sent a letter on Dec. 9 to EPA chief Gina McCarthy outlining ways in which the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan should be strengthened. At present, the EPA Clean Power Plan regulation aims at reducing climate emissions from power plants by 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and by 30 […] More
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AWEA: Investing in Wind Energy Requires Stable PTC Policy
Strong investing and rising growth in the wind energy industry has been delivering homegrown energy resources to fuel the American economy, and put more people back to work. With help from the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), wind energy projects are helping to keep electricity rates low and widescale development projects coming online. According to […] More
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Understanding The CBD Ecosystem Approach
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is an international convention for protecting the diversity of life on Earth. As opposed to treaties focusing on individual species or biomes, this international treaty encompasses biodiversity on a global scale. It focuses on establishing a global network of protected natural areas, for the purpose of protecting natural capital at […] More
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Educating Students for the World of Tomorrow
It is a question which is of concern to all high school students and to all parents of teenage children. What will I do after school? For some the choice will be obvious; they will have a desire to follow a certain career path, or to enter a specific field of study. However, the majority […] More
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Is the World Bank Destroying Traditional Farming by Enabling Corporate Land Grabs?
A new report from an independent policy think tank raises questions about the harmful effects on smallholders and traditional farmers by the World Bank’s country ranking system, which is claimed to lead to corporate land grabs, which further impoverishes the poor. “The Bank’s “Doing Business” rankings, which score countries according to how Washington officials perceive […] More
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Time for a New Politics of Sustainability
The major defining feature of politics in our current day and age is the division between the political left and right, with the political spectrum popularly being perceived as a progression from communism on the extreme left, through socialism, liberalism, and conservatism, to fascism on the extreme right. The terms left and right are believed […] More
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Demographic Transitions in the 21st Century
One of the critical challenges for the next century is the need to stabilise, and ultimately to reduce the number of human beings on this planet. We are already by far the most abundant large animal on Earth, and our sheer numbers, combined with our extremely wasteful use of resources, is putting increasing strain on […] More
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Economic Analysis of Keystone XL: Jobs, the Environment, and Long Term Outcomes
John Kerry, Secretary of State, is tasked with making some high level recommendations to President Obama regarding the construction of TransCanada’s controversial oil pipeline known as Keystone XL. Environmentalists have weighed in firmly against the project, citing the “dirty” nature of tar sands oil and the high probability that the pipeline will leak and be […] More
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Integral Fast Reactors: Nuclear’s Forgotten Clean Energy Solution
I wrote a post for CleanTechnica on December 6, 2011 concerning something I’d never before heard about, integral fast reactors — you guessed right, nuclear reactors. Titled, “Our Nuclear Trash Heap Needs IFRs,” I wrote about a 2008 book by environmentalist, Tom Blees, “Prescription for the Planet.” When I posted this story, I was soundly […] More
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Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness: a Model for other countries?
Most economies around the world measure their prosperity and progress using a metric economists call the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. It is measured by tracking economic activity on, well, everything. GDP is equal to the sum of the price of all goods and services sold in the country at any given time. We’ve argued […] More