Climate Change
Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a report on how the City could prepare for the rising sea levels that will result from climate change. A Stronger, More Resilient New York is a 438-page blueprint for climate adaptation that covers everything from coastal protection to built...
06/17/2013
Blog
Here’s a very real impact of climate change: as hurricane season approaches, New York City- a region that never had to worry about hurricanes before- is assessing whether it would be ready for another storm. Prior to 2011, the city never worried about hurricanes because it was well outside...
06/06/2013
Blog
The Guardian has a compelling and distressing profile of the harsh reality of climate change that many already face. The story profiles a village on the west coast of Alaska called Newtok that is surrounded on three sides by the Ninglick River. Over the past years, the river has steadily eaten away...
05/14/2013
Blog
Evan Soltas had a post over at Bloomberg yesterday titled "The Carbon Tax is Overrated." In the place of a carbon tax, he proposes a carbon bond system in which polluters buy bonds that allow them to emit a specified unit of carbon pollution. The price of those bonds would be set at some existing...
04/11/2013
Blog
Last week, over 80,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from an ExxonMobil pipeline in Arkansas. Twenty-two homes were evacuated and the cost of cleanup will be high. So, who will foot the bill? ExxonMobil? Taxpayers? Unfortunately, the answer looks like it will taxpayers will pay for cleanup for a...
04/04/2013
Blog
In the debate over our energy future, I keep coming back to the question of whether or not fracking can be done safely. There is no question that once out of the ground, natural gas burns cleaner than coal but the actual process of fracking to date has documented evidence of water contamination,...
03/22/2013
Blog
Months after super storm Sandy, families are still waiting for permanent housing. Only a quarter of the families registered with NYC’s hotel sheltering program will find permanent housing with the next three months. Between New York and New Jersey, damage from the storm is estimated to cost...
03/19/2013
Blog
One of the arguments used by climate deniers is that the earth is actually in the middle of a cooling period, despite recent record temperatures. In fact, there was a period of cooling but as a new study shows, we are in the middle of a dramatic U-turn and are now experiencing a heat spike. Looking...
03/08/2013
Blog
One way to undermine movement on climate change is to create a false dichotomy that pits advocates against each other. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening now in the fracking battle. Using the term “fractivists,” some environmentalists are blasting celebrities that advocate...
03/06/2013
Blog
China's environmental tax policy is moving in an interesting direction. It was announced yesterday that a new set of tax polices focused on preservation, rather than use, will be introduced, including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. While the specifics have not been released, the government...
02/20/2013
Blog
