Category Archives: Environment

"Climate clash threatens EU-US summit"

The Financial Times has managed to be too polite. A more accurate title for this story would be “United States Again Refuses to Commit to Anything Regarding Global Warming.” Now this continuation of the US head-in-the-sand posture might be fine if the Administration hadn’t raised expectations by agreeing to a climate change summit. So its […]

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Is Modern Agriculture Killing Bees?

Now and again, the press has reported on the disappearance of large numbers of bees, and the potentially dire implications, since a large proportion of US agricultural pollination depends on the efforts of bees brought in by beekeepers. Nattering Naybob gave us a disheartening reminder as well as a bit of useful background, which inspired […]

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Biofuels Are Not Good For You

Usually I worry about appearing unduly Financial Times-centric; today, it’s the BBC that gets prominent billing. It looks like American’s preference for the easy way out won’t serve it very well. We reported earlier that Detroit’s enthusiasm for ethanol (so-called E85, which is 85% ethanol, 15% gas) as a way to reduce carbon emissions was […]

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Is Modern Agriculture Killing Bees?

Now and again, the press has reported on the disappearance of large numbers of bees, and the potentially dire implications, since a large proportion of US agricultural pollination depends on the efforts of bees brought in by beekeepers. Nattering Naybob gave us a disheartening reminder as well as a bit of useful background, which inspired […]

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"What Environment Do We Owe Our Descendents?"

I am normally loath to publish someone else’s post more or less in its entirety, but Brad DeLong’s discussion of some of the more persuasive arguments for investing to arrest global warming is first rate. (And candidly, he references an article by Martin Weitzmen on the Stern Review, the UK report that was the first […]

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Doubts About Detroit’s Ethanol Push

A front page story in today’s Financial Times, “Foreign carmakers doubt Detroit’s ethanol,” report on a split of opinon within the auto industry as to which technology to pursue to reduce carbon emissions. US automakers are keenly promoting E85, which is a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline; foreign companies are investing in diesel, […]

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