Tag Archives: climate change

Two Can’t Miss Sessions in San Diego Next Week Well, I can’t miss them because I’m in them.  You can, but why would you? Climate Crisis Mitigation: Implementing a Green New Deal and More Union for Radical Political Economics: Paper Session Friday, Jan. 3, 10:15am–12:15pm Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego – La Jolla B “Financial Bailout Spending Would Have Paid for Thirty Years of Climate Crisis Mitigation: Implementing a Global Green New Deal and Marshall...

The American Prospect has a new issue out on climate change, and I highly recommend the article by Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs does an excellent job explaining why we do not need a World War II style mobilization to decarbonize the United States economy.  We can achieve a high level of decarbonization by 2050 at a modest aggregate cost (Sachs guesses 1 to 2% of output) by replacing existing power plants, vehicles, furnaces, etc. with green technologies at the...

by Eric Kramer The Case for Carbon Taxes, Part II:  Political Sustainability In a prior post, I argued that carbon taxes are not vulnerable to political subversion by hostile courts and regulators, and that this is an important advantage of carbon taxes over traditional regulation based on mandates, and also an advantage over subsidies.  Once they are passed, carbon taxes can work more or less on auto-pilot to drive a clean energy transition, unless they...

The problem of plastic waste seems insurmountable. The good news is plastic recycling is on the rise and that is good for the circular economy. In parts 1, 2 and 3, we delved into the role of the waste management and recycling industry and how material sorting technologies can help. Part 4 is all about the increased use of recyclates as an essential part of properly closing the plastic cycle. [embedded content] The plastics industry is facing a great many...

As I mentioned, this 4 part presentation is being done by Sesotec GmbH, a company which manufactures recycling equipment. Even so the information given by Sesotec is to the point on the topic of pollution by man made packaging and products which can be sued again and again and in some cases up to 8 times. Fair warning as the pitch comes with regards to Sesotec’s abilities. Around 70 years after the first plastic product hit the market, a world without...

Chaos Theory And Global Climate Change I am currently attending the Southern Economic Association meetings in Fort Lauderdale, where the street facing the hotel was underwater during the most recent hurricane to pass through. Anyway, I saw a talk today that took me back to when I first learned about chaos theory, actuallly in the early 1970s before the word “chaos” was used for it. I learned about it and the butterfly effect, aka sensitive dependence on...

OK so I don’t really have a post to go with the title. I just googled methane fuel cells. As usual, some engineers promise that they have solved the problem. The claim is that, with a new catalyst, methane (and oxygen of course) can be used to generate electricity at the temperature of an auto engine (500 c). They do not promise that the fuel cell is stable and especially don’t promise that it is stable if the fuel isn’t pure methane but rather...

As you can read for yourself, this is the second part  of the series. This part will introduce the EU’s proposed solution to plastic waste material of which Sesotec is to be a part of the solution. Since I am using Sesotec’s information, I will be stating their name as owner’s of this information from time to time. Some 70 years after the first plastic products hit the market, a world without plastic waste still appears far off. We need a different...

Reuters: Italy will become the first nation to require all schoolchildren to study climate change and sustainable development. Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement: “The entire ministry is being changed to make sustainability and climate the center of the education model. All state schools would dedicate 33 hours per year or almost one hour per school week to climate change issues from the start of the next...

In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly.... Project SyndicateThe Growing Threat of Water WarsJayati Ghosh | Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi