Here's a great new video laying out the basics of strategic sustainable development. It was created by two MSLS graduates -- Alex Magnin and Jayne Bryant -- for the City of Canning in Australia... hence the kangaroos.
Stay going.
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Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
You're already paying for carbon pollution
Below is a great video from The Climate Reality Project about the price of carbon -- explaining why we need a price on carbon. The consensus is finally building among the economists, politicians, and the public that putting a price on carbon is the most effective and efficient way to minimize the damage of climate disruption.
The EPA's recently announced rules limiting carbon from existing power plants (The Clean Power Plan) is an important step, and one that will help pave the way for a price on carbon. It's design of allowing states to determine how to meet the rules is the right way to go, and I expect it will result in more states instituting a price on carbon -- either by joining RGGI, or connecting with California or the Western Climate Initiative, or instituting their own pricing schemes, like cap & trade or cap & dividend, or a simple carbon tax like British Columbia.
These state-level precedents are what we need in order to get more comprehensive federal legislation, and from there a meaningful international climate agreement, with the US leading the way. Given the recent results of the National Climate Assessment (and many other reports and studies) this needs to happen fast enough for an agreement in Paris in 2015 that goes into effect by 2020.
Check out the video and share. To get this done we need as many people as possible on board and letting their elected officials know they support a more effective and efficient way of paying for carbon pollution -- through a price on carbon. Obama made it clear in this recent interview with Tom Friedman -- we need a price on carbon, we're not going to burn all of the carbon in the ground, and to enable a smooth ramp to clean energy, we need broad public support. Quoting Lincoln, he said: ‘With public opinion there’s nothing I cannot do, and without public opinion there’s nothing I can get done.’ As this piece in the NYT today shows, leadership on climate is finally becoming a political winner, and we need to keep it that way.
Stay going.
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The EPA's recently announced rules limiting carbon from existing power plants (The Clean Power Plan) is an important step, and one that will help pave the way for a price on carbon. It's design of allowing states to determine how to meet the rules is the right way to go, and I expect it will result in more states instituting a price on carbon -- either by joining RGGI, or connecting with California or the Western Climate Initiative, or instituting their own pricing schemes, like cap & trade or cap & dividend, or a simple carbon tax like British Columbia.
These state-level precedents are what we need in order to get more comprehensive federal legislation, and from there a meaningful international climate agreement, with the US leading the way. Given the recent results of the National Climate Assessment (and many other reports and studies) this needs to happen fast enough for an agreement in Paris in 2015 that goes into effect by 2020.
Check out the video and share. To get this done we need as many people as possible on board and letting their elected officials know they support a more effective and efficient way of paying for carbon pollution -- through a price on carbon. Obama made it clear in this recent interview with Tom Friedman -- we need a price on carbon, we're not going to burn all of the carbon in the ground, and to enable a smooth ramp to clean energy, we need broad public support. Quoting Lincoln, he said: ‘With public opinion there’s nothing I cannot do, and without public opinion there’s nothing I can get done.’ As this piece in the NYT today shows, leadership on climate is finally becoming a political winner, and we need to keep it that way.
Stay going.
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Sunday, May 18, 2014
F*&k It
It's hard not to feel how Stephen does sometimes... good to see all elements of the media covering the National Climate Assessment report, however.
While we are very late in taking meaningful action on climate in the US, it feels as though we might be getting to a place where it will be possible. The NCA (despite false balance in media coverage) and the recent study about West Antarctica melting being inevitable has caught people's attention. The EPA rules on power plant emissions coming this summer (reportedly with Obama making it a personal priority) is a real start to controlling carbon pollution. And maybe most importantly, people are starting to experience a taste of what climate change will bring between Sandy, droughts, San Diego wildfires, the polar vortex, and so much more weird weather... it's not just normal plus a degree or two.
We have so much of the technology we need to dramatically reduce demand for fossil fuels and rapidly phase in alternatives. Those alternatives are coming down in price and getting more competitive. There is a groundswell among the youth (and many others!) drawing a line in the sand about the moral injustice climate inaction represents. All in, the stage is very close to set for real change.
It's been very tempting to say "F*&k It" for years, but we may now finally be getting close to a real tipping point.
Stay going.
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While we are very late in taking meaningful action on climate in the US, it feels as though we might be getting to a place where it will be possible. The NCA (despite false balance in media coverage) and the recent study about West Antarctica melting being inevitable has caught people's attention. The EPA rules on power plant emissions coming this summer (reportedly with Obama making it a personal priority) is a real start to controlling carbon pollution. And maybe most importantly, people are starting to experience a taste of what climate change will bring between Sandy, droughts, San Diego wildfires, the polar vortex, and so much more weird weather... it's not just normal plus a degree or two.
We have so much of the technology we need to dramatically reduce demand for fossil fuels and rapidly phase in alternatives. Those alternatives are coming down in price and getting more competitive. There is a groundswell among the youth (and many others!) drawing a line in the sand about the moral injustice climate inaction represents. All in, the stage is very close to set for real change.
It's been very tempting to say "F*&k It" for years, but we may now finally be getting close to a real tipping point.
Stay going.
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Friday, May 16, 2014
Solutions Fridays: Passive House
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| Image source: http://www.passivhaustagung.de /Kran/First_Passive_House_Kranichstein_en.htm |
The basic premise is through smart design, and effective use of passive heating, cooling, and day-lighting techniques, buildings can be comfortable year-round in any climate without large, expensive. energy-intensive heating and cooling systems. They can reduce heating energy demand by 90%.
Learn more about passive house design from the Passive House Institute US.
It's sometimes hard for people to imagine how we could meet global energy demand only with renewable energy -- a big part of what makes that possible is dramatically reducing the amount of energy we use (without reducing quality of life -- and indeed increasing it for a great many people). Passive House design is an exciting way to make that happen.
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| Unity College Passive House (photo: Jonah Gula) |
Stay going.
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Solutions Fridays
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The system "global society in the biosphere" is too complex to predict what exactly a sustainable future will look like, so we need to rely on principles of sustainability to guide us. Still, specific images and ideas for solutions can be compelling in keeping us going on this enormous journey towards sustainability.
There are a tremendous amount of really exciting solutions already in practice today that can help us start to build a more complete picture of what a sustainable future might look like.
To that end, I'm starting a "Solutions Fridays" series, where I will post some basic info or a picture of a different solution on Fridays.
Please leave your suggestions for great solutions to include in this series in the comments.
Stay going.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2014
John Oliver on the National Climate Assessment
You can't take a poll on facts. "Are there hats?" ... priceless.
Stay going.
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Stay going.
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Monday, May 12, 2014
Pluralism in Economics
Last week The International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics (ISIPE) released an open letter (below) demanding pluralism in the discipline of economics. This holds the promise of the beginning of an important phase in the effort to better align economic theory with real world -- particularly in light of what as become clear in recent decades in terms of the cumulative impact of our global economic system on social and ecological systems.
One of the most important challenges of creating a sustainable society is updating our mental models about economic theory -- in the classroom, the academic literature, and the real world. These students will be critical in bringing about that necessary change:
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Change must
come from many places. So now we invite you - students, economists, and
non-economists - to join us and create the critical mass needed for
change. See Support us to
show your support and connect with our growing networks. Ultimately,
pluralism in economics education is essential for healthy public debate.
It is a matter of democracy.
One of the most important challenges of creating a sustainable society is updating our mental models about economic theory -- in the classroom, the academic literature, and the real world. These students will be critical in bringing about that necessary change:
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It is not only the world economy that is in crisis. The
teaching of economics is in crisis too, and this crisis has
consequences far beyond the university walls. What is taught shapes the
minds of the next generation of policymakers, and therefore shapes the
societies we live in. We, 42 associations of economics students from 19
different countries, believe it is time to reconsider the way economics
is taught. We are dissatisfied with the dramatic narrowing of the
curriculum that has taken place over the last couple of decades. This
lack of intellectual diversity does not only restrain education and
research. It limits our ability to contend with the multidimensional
challenges of the 21st century - from financial stability, to food
security and climate change. The real world should be brought back into
the classroom, as well as debate and a pluralism of theories and
methods. This will help renew the discipline and ultimately create a
space in which solutions to society’s problems can be generated.
United across borders, we call for a change of course. We
do not claim to have the perfect answer, but we have no doubt that
economics students will profit from exposure to different perspectives
and ideas. Pluralism could not only help to fertilize teaching and
research and reinvigorate the discipline. Rather, pluralism carries the
promise to bring economics back into the service of society. Three forms
of pluralism must be at the core of curricula: theoretical, methodological and interdisciplinary.
Theoretical
pluralism emphasizes the need to broaden the range of schools of
thought represented in the curricula. It is not the particulars of any
economic tradition we object to. Pluralism is not about choosing sides,
but about encouraging intellectually rich debate and learning to
critically contrast ideas. Where other disciplines embrace diversity and
teach competing theories even when they are mutually incompatible,
economics is often presented as a unified body of knowledge. Admittedly,
the dominant tradition has internal variations. Yet, it is only one way
of doing economics and of looking at the real world. This is unheard of
in other fields; nobody would take seriously a degree program in
psychology that focuses only on Freudianism, or a politics program that
focuses only on state socialism. An inclusive and comprehensive
economics education should promote balanced exposure to a variety of
theoretical perspectives, from the commonly taught neoclassically-based
approaches to the largely excluded classical, post-Keynesian,
institutional, ecological, feminist, Marxist and Austrian traditions -
among others. Most economics students graduate without ever encountering
such diverse perspectives in the classroom.
Furthermore,
it is essential that core curricula include courses that provide
context and foster reflexive thinking about economics and its methods
per se, including philosophy of economics and the theory of knowledge.
Also, because theories cannot be fully understood independently of the
historical context in which they were formulated, students should be
systematically exposed to the history of economic thought and to the
classical literature on economics as well as to economic history.
Currently, such courses are either non-existent or marginalized to the
fringes of economics curricula.
Methodological
pluralism stresses the need to broaden the range of tools economists
employ to grapple with economic questions. It is clear that maths and
statistics are crucial to our discipline. But all too often students
learn to master quantitative methods without ever discussing if and why
they should be used, the choice of assumptions and the applicability of
results. Also, there are important aspects of economics which cannot be
understood using exclusively quantitative methods: sound economic
inquiry requires that quantitative methods are complemented by methods
used by other social sciences. For instance, the understanding of
institutions and culture could be greatly enhanced if qualitative
analysis was given more attention in economics curricula. Nevertheless,
most economics students never take a single class in qualitative
methods.
Finally,
economics education should include interdisciplinary approaches and
allow students to engage with other social sciences and the humanities.
Economics is a social science; complex economic phenomena can seldom be
understood if presented in a vacuum, removed from their sociological,
political, and historical contexts. To properly discuss economic policy,
students should understand the broader social impacts and moral
implications of economic decisions.
While
approaches to implementing such forms of pluralism will vary from place
to place, general ideas for implementation might include:
- Hiring instructors and researchers who can bring theoretical and methodological diversity to economics programs;
- Creating texts and other pedagogical tools needed to support pluralist course offerings;
- Formalizing collaborations between social sciences and humanities departments or establishing special departments that could oversee interdisciplinary programs blending economics and other fields.
Change will be difficult - it always is. But it is already happening. Indeed,
students across the world have already started creating change step by
step. We have filled lecture theatres in weekly lectures by invited
speakers on topics not in the curriculum; we have organised reading
groups, workshops, conferences; we have analysed current syllabuses and
drafted alternative programs; we have started teaching ourselves and
others the new courses we would like to be taught. We have founded
university groups and built networks both nationally and
internationally.
Signed, the member organizations of the International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics.
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Stay going.
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