Midwest Businesses Accept the Challenge: Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Expand the Economy

There is a growing consensus that climate change is one of the most significant environmental issues facing the world today. Current energy use practices in the United States and around the world have been determined to be main contributors to global warming and climate change, which has the potential to disrupt economic and social stability as well as ecological well-being. There has long been a concern that to effectively address the global warming problem we must decide between a healthy environment and economic growth. A recent Congressional briefing dispelled this myth by demonstrating that clean energy products and technologies that reduce greenhouse gases are not incompatible with corporate profits and the creation of jobs

Americans Want Growth and Green: A Smart Growth Policy Agenda

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute co-hosted a Congressional briefing entitled "Americans Want Growth and Green: A Smart Growth Policy Agenda" with the Senate Smart Growth Task Force and the House Livable Communities Task Force. The briefing was held to showcase the results of a national poll and report recently released by Smart Growth America, a new national coalition of more than sixty public interest groups concerned about sprawl. The results of the poll, which was conducted by Beldon, Russonello and Stewart in September 2000, shows that Americans strongly support policies encouraging smart growth strategies. According to Don Chen, director of Smart Growth America, 78 percent of those surveyed said they favored smart growth. In the report, Smart Growth America states that the coalition's goal is to help develop smarter growth strategies that protect open spaces, revitalize neighborhoods, keep housing affordable and make communities more livable

National Energy Security: Implications for National Energy Policy

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) co-hosted a Congressional briefing to examine the nation's current energy system and its vulnerabilities, as well as some of the steps and solutions to providing the nation and the economy a more secure and reliable energy system. The nation's energy system is inextricably linked to national security and economic growth. As a result of recent events, new discussions have emerged regarding power plants and energy infrastructure as potential targets for terrorist attacks. Such an attack would cause major disruptions in power generation and possibly pose great risk to human life

Renewable Portfolio Standard and System Benefits Fund: Opening Markets to Clean, Domestic Energy Sources

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute sponsored a Congressional briefing on two federal legislative proposals: the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and the System Benefits Fund (SBF). These complementary energy policies are designed to help level the playing field and encourage investments in new renewable energy resources and energy efficiency technologies. Developing clean energy technologies stabilizes and diversifies the nation's domestic energy resources, improves electricity reliability, decreases pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and promotes rural economic development. A federal Renewable Portfolio Standard and System Benefits Fund provide significant opportunities for the nation to move toward a more sustainable and secure energy future fueled by abundant, domestic, and clean energy sources, as well as fostering great gains that can be made through improved energy efficiency

Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Program and Alternative Fuel Vehicle Projects

The United States has been plagued with air quality problems for decades. Congress began to formally address these problems in 1970 with the passage of the Clean Air Act. The federal government has used a variety of approaches to address air quality problems and among the many strategies has been the use of alternative fuels. The United States also became acutely aware of the need to reduce foreign oil dependence during the oil crises in the 1970s. In response to these crises, Congress passed a number of legislative initiatives including the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1980, the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988, and the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Again, alternative fuels were to play a key role, this time in addressing the need to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years of American Dialogue on Sex, Gender, and the Nuclear Family

This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; and (2) examine the interplay between this body of scholarship’s primary foci (e.g., gender, sexual identity, and family dysfunction) and the evolving cultural climate in which its subject, Cat, is perennially reinterpreted and restaged. In other words, my thesis reframes Cat as a series of inherently American—and potentially unanswerable—questions posed by Williams to his viewers; it then investigates the artistic and critical responses generated by sixty years of public engagement, or “dialogue,” with those questions. Ultimately, each case study will illustrate my central premise: that the value of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof lies in its ability to resonate, both in production design and reception, with the social, sexual, and domestic challenges of the period in which it is produced