Energy & Environment: The Latest From New America

An Energy Efficiency Trading System

adminn — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:42:00 -0500

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

Reducing the economic and environmental risks of excessive energy use must become one of America's most important national goals. The most promising way forward is to reduce energy demand by spurring a revolution in energy efficiency. Indeed, efficiency is America's largest and most cost-effective potential energy resource.

Phasing in tough new energy standards for America's biggest energy users and making energy efficiency tradable -- much the way we now trade oil and natural gas… more

Financial Markets Do Impact the Environment

adminn — Sat, 01 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The relation of financial flows and the environment has received much less attention than the impacts of trade, energy programs, sprawl, or pollution creating projects. Perhaps that is not surprising since activities in each of those areas are known to have direct and usually detrimental impacts on environment through changes in land use, soil degradation, pollution emissions, and contributions to global warming, etc. In contrast, both international and domestic financial markets appear relatively clean and detached from environmental impacts -- dealing in paper or electronic transactions, consuming few resources, creating little waste.

A welcome break from this tradition was the… more

Sustainable Enterprise

Economic Growth — Fri, 28 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The fundamental challenge for human institutions in the 21st century is to create and maintain a sustainable combination of economic, social, and natural environmental conditions in an increasingly global and commercial civilization.

This challenge is not now being met. The world economy so far is failing to meet even the basic needs of a large fraction of the human population, or to protect its natural resources and the ecosystems that produce them, even as it creates unprecedented wealth and amenities for a few. The reasons for these failures lie in both economic and political institutions.

An emerging… more

The Role of Regulation in Mitigating the Impact of International Capital Flows on the Environment

adminn — Wed, 23 Oct 2002 00:00:00 -0400

The large scale movement of capital in the form of financial flows and foreign direct investment is a relatively recent phenomenon despite the fact that international trade has been an important part of commerce throughout the industrial era. Such flows have constituted a major and perhaps defining part of the process of globalization over the past two decades. At the same time, the environmental problems created by industrialization have also grown to have global range, particularly as they are replicated around the world, largely as a result of international capital and technology flows. What were once local problems of resource… more

Making Markets Pay for Stewardship

Economic Growth — Sun, 10 Feb 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Executive Summary

Some of the most promising ways to bring about rural poverty alleviation and conservation around the world involve innovative ways to increase the control that the rural poor can exercise over their natural resource base and to pay them for their sustainable stewardship of environmental functions and services. These approaches can make use of market instruments through innovative ways of valuing environmental goods and services, establishing … more

Stopping the Giveaway of Canada's Forests

Economic Growth — Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 -0400

Canadian provincial governments have a long-standing policy of subsidizing their lumber mills, to the detriment of the U.S. lumber industry, U.S. landowners and the environment. Recently, a coalition of Canadian lumber companies, some lumber consumers, and others have aimed to change the longstanding U.S. policy of combating those subsidies. Under the veil of protecting consumers, this group aims to terminate the current U.S.- Canada agreement, which contains the damage from Canada’s forestry regime, and ensure that no action is taken to offset the subsidies. With the U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA) due to expire in March of 2001, a spirited… more