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Category Archive for 'Resources'

One of the great ones, a former student of mine, gets a hearty shout out from Marginal Revolution today.I’ll leave it for readers to evaluate the ideas Dan summarizes there. Per usual, as much as I think I agree with the general gist of the argument, I think there are also reasons to be worried […]

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Weekend Ponderance

If I told you that global total oil consumption was about 90 million barrels per day, or about 33 billion barrels per year, it would sound big. What if, instead, I said, the entire world consumes only 4,000 olympic sized swimming pools of oil per day? That’s about what “we” do in fact consume. UPDATE: I […]

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Should you be reading someone that claims “this is what economists think,” particularly if said person is not an economist, you may either want to head for the intellectual exits or you might want to politely send a note to the author/speaker asking them for evidence that ALL economists think that. Even better, you can […]

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I follow environmental news quite closely, and picked up this one today: Saving dying lake is priority for Iranian leader So read just a few sentences into the story and you see this: Lake Oroumieh, one of the biggest saltwater lakes on Earth, has shrunk more than 80 percent to 1,000 square kilometers (nearly 400 […]

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We’re staying at a condo right now here in the People’s Republic of the Berkshires. It occurs to me that the rich folks who built second homes here might be environmental Heros rather than demons, at least a little. How? These condos use a lot of lumber that was grown for the purpose of building […]

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Technology and the End of Oil

An acquaintance commented to me the other day that when she sees all of the high tech drilling apparatuses spread all over the world and in the oceans, that is evidence to her that fossil fuels are doomed. Her reasoning seems solid. If we need fancier and fancier equipment to get access to these clearly […]

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Perhaps this post should run on Earth Day. According to economic models of climate change, a warming of the planet will result in a reduction of “our” well being. Before I get to my point today notice that this argument also requires being clear about whether we are considering aggregate effects or individual ones. For […]

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Merry Christmas and Sleep Peacefully

WINTERCOW in 2012: Sorry to be reposting. But again I think the message is worth repeating, especially on this wonderful day. I don’t want you to feel down about it at all. If you would like to see the data from the remaining eleven days, start here. And yes an update is in order. But there […]

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Wasting food seems to be an appropriate concern if there ever was one. After all, if people are hungry and food costs money, throwing away food or not eating food would appear to be unnecessary at best. At worst, food waste is a “stick-it-in-your-face” aspect of Capitalist contempt for the rest of the world. Never […]

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The USA Today reports on its findings regarding the “sustainability” of LEED buildings. A triumph indeed. The saddest part: More than 200 states, cities and federal agencies now require LEED certification for new public buildings, even though they have done little independent and meaningful research into LEED’s effectiveness. LEED can add millions to construction costs […]

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