economics21
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Beyond Market Economics?
Bottled water – “one of the least green and least defensible ripoffs on the market.” Is this a routine quote from one of the usual suspects of anti-bottled water campaigners? Surprisingly, no. It’s from the Economist – the journalistic bastion of free market economics – and is is included in their new special report on…
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Year Without a Summer? Not this Time.
You may have heard about the Year Without the Summer, 1816, when severe climate anomalies linked to the eruption of Indonesia’s Mt Tambora provoked widespread famine, the westward expansion of the United States, the invention of the bicycle, and Frankenstein. So epic, so influential: Tales of the dramatic climate impacts of that fateful year got…
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State of the Planet 2010: Join the Global Conversation
What is the current state of the planet? How do we move forward on a global climate deal? On March 25, The Earth Institute, Columbia University; The Economist; and Ericsson will bring together some of the world’s most influential thinkers to propose innovative solutions to these and other critical questions at our biennial State of…
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Initiatives to Help Haiti Recover
A new set of web pages describes the Earth Institute’s wide-ranging involvement in helping bring relief to quake-battered Haiti, as well as plans for long-term recovery, and associated environmental and economic issues. One major program, the Haiti Regeneration Initiative involves the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Tropical Agriculture…
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China and India officially agree to associate with Copenhagen Accord
This week, China and India agreed to add their names to the list of countries officially “supporting” the Copenhagen Accord. Athough both countries had previously submitted emission reduction commitments to be included in the Accord, agreeing to be listed is a gesture of official endorsement. In their letters to the Secretariat both India and China…
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Urbanization, Deforestation, Reforestation
2009 was noted as the first year that more people lived in urban spaces than in rural areas. The hope that a majority urban population would slow the clearing of tropical forests — our most effective carbon sinks — seems, however, to have been misplaced. The idea was simple: if more people moved into forested…
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Witnessing the Desperation of the Poor
At the moment the Haiti earthquake struck, two Earth Institute staffers were in Port-au-Prince assessing how to make the country less poor, and less vulnerable to natural disasters. Marc Levy and Alexander Fischer of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network were working with the Haiti Regeneration Initiative, a nascent program to repair Haiti’s…
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Using Climate Information for Humanitarian Assistance
Using Climate and Weather Forecasts to Improve Humanitarian Decision Making
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This Year’s Sachs Student Lecture
On Tuesday, November 17, Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, will give his sixth annual student lecture from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in Alfred Lerner Hall on the Columbia campus. The title of this year’s talk is “Choices for America’s Economic Future.” The topics of Sachs’ lectures have varied over the years, but…