Get Energy Smart! NOW!

This guest post by the very thoughtful BruceMcF focuses on the public transit / rail version of the need to look beyond stove-pipes to full values for a true cost-benefit analysis. Just like so many fossil fuel costs are externalized (pollution, whether causing cancers or climate change), so too are many transit benefits. Those investing […]

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Economy versus the Environment. This is a slogan for many when they consider the challenges of dealing with Climate Change and the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2007, McKinsey issued Reducing US Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost? that provided a a significant contribution to this discussion. McKinsey’s conclusion: at an […]

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The global economy’s life-blood (even if it has been on life support) truly doesn’t flow through the CAC 40 or Wall Street, but is pumped from the ground and into our chemical plants, manufacturing processes, and transportation. We should, as a global society, be working to “keep the grease in the ground” for a variety […]

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My father-in-law has brain cancer.  He is a good man. He is the type whose hands are (sadly too often) filled at the end of a stroll with trash he picked up on the way. He has helped others in need, whether friends (doing all too many renovation and repair projects) to strangers (a pencil […]

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Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago Geosciences, has published An Open Letter to Steven Levitt, the nation’s Super Freakiest Economist. To put it simply, Pierrehumbert owns Levitt. By now there have been many detailed dissections of everything that is wrong with the treatment of climate […]

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There are many things being lost in the discussion of the cost-benefit equation when it comes to mitigating global warming. When doing cost-benefit analyses, organizations like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are constrained to consider just one quadrant of what could be considered (in simplified form) the four-quadrant cost-benefit analysis […]

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Just over the weekend, my inbox was filled with a discussion attacking climate science with assertions that “none of the models predicted the current cooling period” and, therefore, the entire concept of Global Warming rests on very shaky grounds. Sigh … Those involved in that discussion have now received links to an excellent article by […]

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Earlier this afternoon, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) held a press call to discuss climate legislation.  There were those who were holding their breath, seeing Alexander as moving toward supporting the legislation if it met his desires when it came to nuclear power development.  Based on this press event, it seems that they might be holding […]

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Much noise is made over varying calculations associated with climate legislation. There is the disinformation fed from fossil foolish interests misrepresenting the situation. And, there are official studies from government institutions like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that seek to do honest analysis but which are working within financial and […]

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The incisive Natasha Chart of Campaign for America’s Future has a must read discussion of the standard economist’s failures when considering large scale, complex social and environmental issues like climate change. It’s remarkable how often economists ignore physical reality. Whether they’re suggesting that economies can act as perpetual motion machines or suggesting that resource availability […]

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