climate adaptation10
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Before Paris, Cause for Optimism
If the international community were to fully understand the threat of climate change, and the likely cost of mitigation and adaptation, perhaps we would commit to continued tax breaks and incentives, and propel the renewable energy transition toward completion. In the long run, I am sure this would be less expensive than coping with the…
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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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The Paris Climate Summit: Resources for Journalists
Many experts at Columbia University’s Earth Institute are attending or closely watching the Paris climate summit. These include world authorities on climate science, politics, law, natural resources, national security, health and other fields, who can offer expert analysis to journalists. Here’s a guide to resources that journalists covering the summit can tap.
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Symbolic Politics, the Keystone Pipeline, and Climate Policy in the Real World
The Clean Power Plan, the renewable energy tax credit, and state and local sustainability initiatives may not have the glamor of climate conferences in Paris or the media currency of the fight over the Keystone XL Pipeline, but they are the real, operational policies and programs that actually reduce fossil fuel use and speed 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)…
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Volkswagen Needs to Adopt 21st Century Sustainability Management
While it is true that many nations do not enforce their environmental and occupational health and safety rules, a quick study of economic history demonstrates that the trend is toward more enforcement rather than less enforcement. And even when the government ignores noncompliance with the law, NGOs and consumers notice it.
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Arctic Oil Drilling: Deluding Communities About the Benefits of Resource Extraction
We continue to need resources that the earth provides and someday we may even mine other planets. But communities that rely on mining alone, or even depend on resource extraction as their primary source of revenue, are asking to be left behind in the modern global economy.
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California Takes the Lead on Climate Policy
While current technology could be used to achieve the new climate policy goals, it will be far easier to meet and exceed the new standards if new technologies are developed and implemented. For California, the key will be the rapid development of the electric car.
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The Transformative Potential of Sustainability Education
The transition to a renewable economy requires education at every level. We need students in public and private schools to develop a deeper understanding of the global sustainability crisis, but we also need aspiring professionals and current professionals to develop the expertise needed to begin the transformation in real time, today.
