22 October 2015, Ralph Nader, The Downsides of Cheap Abundance. In college, Economics 101 is often described as the social science discipline that deals with the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. MIT Economist Paul Samuelson liked to focus on scarcity, or more specifically, the allocation of scarce resources. “Abundance” was always a pretty word with an idyllic connotation for Professor Samuelson. I often wonder why there weren’t a few classes about the real-life consequences of abundance, along with scarcity and people’s material welfare. The present generation of internet technology is a proper subject of study within an economic framework. It might help us understand what is happening to our society. Let’s start with today’s highly-touted information age. At our finger-tips is the greatest free trove of information in human history. We can get it quickly and efficiently. Are we more informed? Are we hungry for more information? Do we read more books in an era of record production of books? Do we know more about what our congressional and state legislators are about? Are we more knowledgeable about history and its lessons? Read More here
Category Archives: PLEA Network
18 October 2015, Climate News Network, Climate changes can kick in below 2°C limit. Sudden shifts in settled climates can occur long before global warming reaches the internationally-agreed safety level, European scientists say. Climate change could arrive with startling speed. New research has identified at least 37 “tipping points” that would serve as evidence that climate change has happened – and happened abruptly in one particular region. And 18 of them could happen even before the world warms by an average of 2°C, the proposed “safe limit” for global warming. Weather is what happens, climate is what people grow to expect from the weather. So climate change, driven by global warming as a consequence of rising carbon dioxide levels, in response to more than a century of fossil fuel combustion, could be – for many people – gradual, imperceptible and difficult to identify immediately. But Sybren Drijfhout, of the University of Southampton in the UK and his collaborators in France, the Netherlands and Germany, are not so sure. They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they “screened” the massive ensemble of climate models that inform the most recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and found evidence of abrupt regional changes in the ocean, the sea ice, the snow cover, the permafrost and in the terrestrial biosphere that could happen as average global temperatures reached a certain level. The models did not all simulate the same outcomes, but most of them did predict one or more abrupt regional shifts. No safe limit. But the future is not an exact science. “Our results show that the different state-of-the-art models agree that abrupt changes are likely, but that predicting when and where they will occur remains very difficult,” said Professor Drijfhout. “Also, our results show that no safe limit exists and that many abrupt shifts already occur for global warming levels much lower than two degrees.” The idea of a “tipping point” for climate change has been around for decades: the hypothesis is that a climate regime endures – perhaps with an increasing frequency of heat waves or windstorms or floods – as the average temperatures rise. However, at some point, there must be a dramatic shift to a new set of norms.Read More here
12 October 2015, Climate News Network, Climate cash flow to poorer nations is still too slow. Rich countries are failing to fulfil pledges to make billions of dollars available to help the developing world tackle climate change. World leaders are not delivering fully on agreements made at successive climate negotiations to channel US$100 billion annually from rich countries to poor in order to tackle and adapt to climate change. An analysis of cash flows by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) − which links the world’s wealthier countries − finds the target due to be reached by 2020 is still far from being met. The OECD says that, at present, the rich countries are channelling on average about $57bn each year to help poorer nations limit carbon emissions and deal with extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Complex business It has spent several months trying to gauge climate-related cash flows from rich to poor countries − a complex business involving analysis of foreign aid budgets, loans from public and private bodies, and other sources of cash. “Our estimates paint an encouraging picture of progress,” says Angel Gurria, the OECD secretary-general. “We are about halfway in terms of time and more than halfway there in terms of finance, but clearly there is still some way to go.” However, whether or not the wealthier countries are making sufficient commitments will be a key item on the agenda at the major negotiations on climate change being held in Paris in late November and early December this year. Read More here
12 October 2015, Yale Environment 360, The Rapid and Startling Decline Of World’s Vast Boreal Forests. Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of the huge boreal forest that spans from Scandinavia to northern Canada. Unprecedented warming in the region is jeopardizing the future of a critical ecosystem that makes up nearly a third of the earth’s forest cover. The boreal forest wraps around the globe at the top of the Northern Hemisphere in North America and Eurasia. Also known as taiga or snow forest, this landscape is characterized by its long, cold and snowy winters. In North America it extends from the Arctic Circle of northern Canada and Alaska down into the very northern tip of the United States in Idaho, Washington, Montana, and Minnesota. It’s the planet’s single largest biome and makes up 30 percent of the globe’s forest cover. Moose are the largest ungulate in the boreal, adapted with their long legs to wade in its abundant marshes, lakes and rivers eating willows, aspen and other plants. In the southern boreal forest of northern Minnesota, moose were once plentiful, but their population has plummeted. Thirty years ago, in the northwest part of the state, there were some 4,000; they now number about a hundred. In the northeast part, they have dropped from almost 9,000 to 4,300. They’ve fallen so far, so fast that some groups want them listed as endangered in the Midwest. Read More here