Lynne Kiesling Check out this cool new data center plan — locate the servers under a cathedral and use the waste heat to warm the cathedral and the neighboring buildings! This is an established system called district heating, which uses a network of steam or hot water pipes to heat distributed buildings.
Lynne Kiesling Grant McCracken always has insightful interpretations of various human/social phenomena, and in this recent post he offers one that he calls “concatenating capitalism“. In discussing “eco-entrepreneur” Joshua Onysko and his work developing his Pangea Organics products, Grant makes a decidedly beyond-Schumpeterian observation about the role of entrepreneurs in transforming the economy and the …
Lynne Kiesling The International Energy Agency has put a quantitative estimate on an effect that we all suspected — this year’s economic recession is contributing to a reduction in global carbon emissions. They estimate that 2009 carbon emissions will be 2 percent lower than 2008, with 75% of the reduction attributable to the economic slowdown …
Lynne Kiesling As the demand for hybrid vehicles increases, the consequences of that increased demand flow through to markets for their inputs, some of which are finite natural resources themselves. Increased hybrid vehicle production raises the demand for rare metals, increasing their prices and threatening short-run shortages. Among the rare earths that would be most …
Unintended Consequences, Hybrid Vehicles Edition Read More »
Lynne Kiesling The New York Times has a spiffy interactive map showing all of the House votes from Friday’s Waxman-Markey bill vote, as well as the entire roll call.
Lynne Kiesling The New York Times has an interesting article on how the growth of carbon markets enables us to quantify the environmental value of forests. The researchers found that paying to conserve the forest was more valuable than plantations as long as poorer nations could earn $10 to $33 for each metric ton of …
Lynne Kiesling The U.S. Climate Action Partnership group issued its blueprint for climate policy earlier this week, to lots of comments. This excellent Environmental Capital post summarizes the discussion that’s taken place this week. I wonder if that fact that it has upset almost all commentators means that it’s a pretty reasonable compromise; I will …
Lynne Kiesling One topic that has gotten some attention in 2008 is “food miles”, or the estimate of the environmental impact of the total resource use and transportation required to get food from grower to consumer. One argument for eating more locally-produced food is that it reduces the transportation impact; however, in making that argument …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve been enjoying this new research from environmental economist Chris Costello and his two co-authors, Steven Gaines and John Lynham: “Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?”: Recent reports suggest that most of the world’s commercial fisheries could collapse within decades. Although poor fisheries governance is often implicated, evaluation of solutions remains rare. Bioeconomic …
More Definitive Evidence That Property Rights Improve Fishing Yields and Sustainability Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Martin Feldstein has a column in today’s WSJ (subscription required) in which he recommends that the government issue tradeable gasoline rights (TGRs) instead of either raising CAFE standards or imposing a gasoline tax. In a system of tradeable gasoline rights, the government would give each adult a TGR debit card. The gasoline pumps …
Martin Feldstein in Wsj on “Tradeable Gasoline Rights” Read More »
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