Author: Steven Cohen49
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Education and Sustainability
o many different types of skills are needed to transition to the renewable economy, some element of our educational process should be devoted to identifying what children like to do and what they are good at. Those may not be the same thing, and it is important for people to identify the useful skills they…
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Federal Environmental Policy Can’t Find the 21st Century
The issue comes down to willingness to pay upfront for improved systems, rather than pay to address environmental emergencies later on, when pieces of the system fall apart. Both water and energy systems carry user charges, but weak, ideologically-bound politicians refuse to allow these fees to grow to pay the capital cost of modern infrastructure.
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The Sustainable City
By concentrating human population in cities, we will make it possible to preserve land for wilderness, ecosystem maintenance and agriculture. People will travel to these places and will experience nature, but only a fortunate few will live close to nature.
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Come on Mr. Mayor, Leave the Central Park Carriage Horses Alone
The mayor seems almost desperate to complete this carriage deal and move on, but in the process is simply giving his enemies more ammunition to do battle with him. In the process, he has managed to antagonize park advocates, pedicab workers, and good government advocates.
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The Clean Power Plan Overcomes Another Attack
The politics of climate change remains contentious, with Democrats more concerned about the issue than Republicans. What is most interesting about the polling data is that young people are far more concerned about climate change than older people.
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There’s Plenty of Blame for Flint, Michigan’s Water Crisis
The federal government sets the drinking water standards in America, even though monitoring and administration is delegated to the states. The federal EPA had the authority and responsibility to intervene. The failure in Flint belongs to all of us and it should lead to some hard thinking about the causes of this completely avoidable environmental…
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A Sustainable Lifestyle and the Changing Nature of Work
In the process of changing the economic role of the city, we need to pay more attention to the impact of our production and consumption on the environment and on all elements of the supply chain that bring goods and services to us. Building systems that reduce environmental impacts is more important than individual consumption…
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The Not in My Backyard Syndrome and Sustainability Infrastructure
As we make the transition to a more sustainable, renewable resource based economy, we will need to build new smart-grid electrical systems, new water infrastructure, coastal resiliency projects, mass transit, public charging stations, and other types of development. This will require innovative efforts to plan, design, build, manage and communicate if it is to succeed.
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Microbeads, Marine Debris, Regulation and the Precautionary Principle
It is clear that the hunger for economic growth and wealth pushes business and governments to ignore environmental impacts that are considered an inevitable byproduct of development. But this fails to account for the costs that will inevitably be borne when the damage must be cleaned up.