Sustainability96
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Electoral Politics and Environmental Sustainability
The political consensus for sustainability that could emerge might be based on increased funding for the science of renewable energy, battery technology, energy efficiency and smart grids. It could also include incentives for private sector investment to commercialize new energy technologies, and tax expenditures that make it easier for consumers to adopt these new technologies.
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Garbage: The Back End of the Renewable Economy
Many cities around the world are implementing innovative measures to deal with waste, and are increasingly incorporating waste management into sustainability plans. Some cities are setting positive examples through aggressive recycling and zero waste programs.
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How Sustainable is Vertical Farming? Students Try to Answer the Question
Vertical farming is touted as a solution to the drawbacks of traditional agriculture, but how sustainable is it really? A team of students attempts to design a certification system to assess the sustainability of vertical farms.
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Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Quiet Green Revolution
In many respects, Cuomo’s approach to sustainability mirrors the approach taken by Mike Bloomberg when he was New York City’s mayor. Sustainability is viewed as a tool of economic development and environmental goals are integrated into the goals of economic development.
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From Good Intentions to Deep Decarbonization
The most important issue is whether countries will achieve their 2030 targets in a way that helps them to get to zero emissions by 2070. If they merely pursue measures aimed at reducing emissions in the short term, they risk locking their economies into high levels of emissions after 2030. The critical issue, in short,…
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From Copenhagen to Paris: Moving From Talk to Action on Climate Change
Globally, individual nations have volunteered greenhouse gas reduction targets in anticipation of the Paris meetings. Unlike Copenhagen, where calls for mandatory reductions and transfer payments to the developing world caused the collapse of any potential agreements, the world community seems more realistic as it approaches the Paris meetings.
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Growing the Global Economy Without Destroying the Planet
We need to focus our attention on the existing systems of management and influence now in place and attempt to turn them toward sustainability. This includes national, state and especially local governments, corporations and nonprofit organizations.
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Climate Through A Different Lens: Poverty, Inequality, Sustainability
Technology has brought us low-cost global communication, and also enabled a global economy. It has also brought us closer and further from each other. We now know more about other cultures. We also see the differences, and sharpen our sense of inequities. Perhaps, this, rather than a control of greenhouse gases, needs to be the…
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Getting Sustainability on the Agenda of Our Dysfunctional Federal Government
What is needed politically and in reality is a positive vision of a sustainable society. In the case of this country it will need to be built on the traditional values that have always attracted people to America: freedom, rewarding individual achievement, a love of the new and novel, innovation, and acceptance (even if reluctantly)…
By studying thousands of buildings and analyzing their electricity use, Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson has been able to uncover ways to significantly cut energy consumption and emissions. Watch the Video: “Engineering a Cooler Future Through Smarter Buildings“