Blog
The Obama Administration rightly prioritized prevention as a key strategy to reduce health care costs within the Affordable Care Act. However, prevention needs to extend beyond the confines of the health care system. Reducing our exposure to public health threats -- such as air pollution and toxic chemicals within consumer products -- remains an area where the administration can make a great deal of progress in the next four years.
You go to a climate crisis with the politicians and political system you have, not the ones you need. So if we are serious about moving the United States forward in addressing global warming in the next four years, we need to work within the boundaries of what’s politically feasible today while working to shift those boundaries to allow bolder action in the future.
What you see on the cable news channels today is what we are increasingly likely to get in a warming world.
Transitioning the world’s largest economy from fossil fuels to clean energy requires time, money and – yes – the taking of risks. But the potential benefits for our health, our environment, and future generations are incalculable.
Leinberger says that, when it comes to walkable development, “[w]hat was perceived as a niche market is becoming the market.” The potential of that market to develop, however, will be limited unless the nation can invest more of its transportation funding in the types of public transportation infrastructure that can act as seeds for new walkable urban places.
Frontier Group added new information and perspectives this summer to debates on issues ranging from global warming to health care to land conservation, capturing the attention of decision-makers and the media and forwarding efforts to address these critical issues in ways that advance the public interest.
The Obama administration yesterday announced new fuel economy and global warming standards for cars and light trucks. By 2025, new passenger vehicles will average 54.5 miles per gallon and global warming emissions will be dramatically lower. Combined with the Obama administration’s earlier improvements to fuel economy standards for vehicles from 2012 to 2016, these new standards from 2017 to 2025 are the largest single step the U.S. has ever taken to reduce its global warming pollution. By 2025, the cumulative emissions savings from these new standards will be equal to total U.S. global warming emissions in 2010.
The great irony is that energy efficiency policies – many of them similar to those proposed by Romney in his earlier incarnation – are playing an important role in stabilizing energy demand and reducing emissions right now. They're working.
If the United States were more like Germany, we would be generating as much as a third of our daily electricity needs from the sun on a typical summer day. We could do this with today's technology. And it would make a massive difference in preventing emissions of global warming pollution, helping to protect our communities and secure our future. Our latest report shows that solar energy systems could meet 10 percent of electricity needs and 6 percent of water heating energy needs by 2025 in Oregon, and calls for the state to enact policies to accelerate solar energy development.
Kudos to the state of Iowa for using a “clawback” provision in its economic development subsidies. Iowa, like many states, gives subsidies to businesses to relocate or expand in the state. In exchange for such a subsidy, a business promises to create jobs or stimulate economic activity. However, the business typically doesn’t face any consequences if it fails to achieve what it promised. Not so in Iowa.
The London Olympic security debacle serves as a good reminder of the dangers of privatizing public services.
The recent NOAA/Met Office report points – I hope – toward another change, in which climate scientists use the tools at their disposal to answer the questions that are important to people as they confront the issue of global warming, including: What does global warming mean for me, my loved ones, and people in my neighborhood?
As Massport is discovering – and as thoughtful transportation experts have recognized for decades – riders aren’t the only ones who benefit from transit service. Transit benefits society by reducing pollution, fostering economic growth, and curbing demands on other parts of the transportation system. Since drivers and society derive great benefits from transit service, it is perfectly justified to ask them to contribute to its continued operation.
Major manufacturers are acknowledging that the era of “cheap oil” is over. The shift from an underlying paradigm of material abundance (“use it up, we’ll get/make more”) to one of resource scarcity is long overdue.
Students at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management have created a useful tool to help consumers shopping for a new car evaluate the financial—and environmental—benefits of purchasing a more efficient vehicle.
We’re seeing change happening across a swath of issues we’re working on, with major implications for the future. This spring we’ve been working to document emerging trends and unpack their meaning to help set a course forward in a world that is going to look very different, sooner than we might think.
Land conservation should not be seen as a “frill” to be put on the back burner when times are tight. Rather, it should be seen as a critical and ongoing component of the work state governments do to protect the health and welfare of their people and the vibrancy of their economies.
The natural gas industry would like nothing better than for the United States to make a series of investments in infrastructure that will keep us locked into natural gas-dependence for decades – just as we did, fatefully, in the power plant building boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. That, I fear, would be a big mistake, and not just for the environment.
Last week, I updated some information I collected in 2008 on health care spending. As expected, the cost of health care has continued to rise and it consumes a larger share of GDP than ever before, but the figure that really jumped out at me is the share of government revenue that is spent on health care.
The deployment of existing renewable energy technologies, according to the IEA report, is the only thing currently happening at the speed and scale necessary to address the climate challenge.
Pages
