Parliament of Australia, Senate Select Committee on Fuel and Energy / by Brian Fisher, Concept Economics http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/fuelenergy_ctte/senate_ets_report_020209_final.pdf Australia is the latest place to question the idea that climate-change legislation will be a free lunch, or nearly so. In a report commissioned by the Australian parliament, independent consultants found that the government’s optimistic cost estimates for … Continue reading »
Posted on February 2, 2009 …
2007 Service Annual Survey : Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation
US Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/svsd/www/services/sas/sas_data/sas56.htm [Press release] …This sector…provides expenses and revenues for remediation services, waste management, investigative services, landscapers, locksmiths and telemarketers.
Monaco Declaration
Second International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World Monaco – October 6-9, 2008 http://ioc3.unesco.org/oanet/Symposium2008/MonacoDeclaration.pdf More than 150 leading marine scientists from 26 countries are calling for immediate action by policymakers to reduce CO2 emissions sharply so as to avoid widespread and severe damage to marine ecosystems from increasing ocean acidification—the “other CO2 problem”. … Continue reading »
Global Glacier Changes : Facts and Figures
UNEP / DEWA/GRID-Europe http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/ For global temperature time series we have GISTEMP, NCDC and HadCRUT. Each has worked hard to assimilate global temperature data into reliable and accurate indices of global temperature. The equivalent for alpine glaciers is the World Glacier Monitoring Service’s (WGMS) record of mass balance and terminus behavior. Beginning in 1986, WGMS … Continue reading »
The Green Grid : Energy Savings and Carbon Emissions Reductions Enabled by a Smart Grid
Electric Power Research Institute http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/uploads/1/SGNR_2009_EPRI_Green_Grid_June_2008.pdf The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has completed an analysis showing that deployment of a “smart grid” could potentially reduce annual U.S. energy consumption by 56 to 203 billion kWh in 2030, corresponding to a 1.2 to 4.3% reduction in projected retail electricity sales in 2030. In addition, a smart … Continue reading »
Addressing the Risk : Making Environmental Insurance Available for Brownfield Sites in New York City
Brownfieldsinsurance.org for New Partners for Community Revitalization, Inc. http://www.npcr.net/env_ins/NPCR_AddressingRiskforWebvF2.pdf [From background] In the past, the City had swaths of vacant land that it made available to meet its public purpose needs. Now, virtually all of that city-owned inventory has been used up. There is still vacant and underutilized land in NYC, but most of it … Continue reading »
Natural Gas : Major Legislative and Regulatory Actions (1935 – 2008)
US DOE, EIA http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/ngmajorleg/ngmajorleg.html [Website] This special Web-based report presents a chronology of some of the key Federal legislative and regulatory actions that have helped shape the natural gas market, with particular emphasis on policy directives from 1978 to October 2008. Separate reports provide brief descriptions of specific legislation, regulations, or policies, and their impacts … Continue reading »
Environmental Effects of International Trade
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Univ. / by Jeffrey Frankel http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP09-006/$File/RWP09-006_Frankel.pdf [From summary] The report surveys the state of our knowledge regarding the effects of trade on the environment. A central question is whether globalization helps or hurts in achieving the best tradeoff between environmental and economic goals. Do international trade and investment allow countries … Continue reading »
