Pursuing Geoengineering for Atmospheric Restoration

Geoengineering is fraught with problems, but research on three approaches could lead to the greatest climate benefits with the smallest chance of unintentional environmental harm. The authors propose a model for thinking about geoengineering based on the concept of restoration, suggesting the term “atmospheric restoration.” Under this model geoengineering efforts are prioritized based on three principles: to treat the cause of the disease itself, to reduce the chance of harm, and to prioritize activities with the greatest chance of public acceptance. Based on these principles, the authors propose three forms of geoengineering that could provide the greatest climate benefits with the smallest chance of unintentional harm to the environment. Forest protection and restoration is an opportunity available now. The other two, industrial carbon removal and bioenergy linked to carbon capture and storage, need extensive research to make them effective and to reduce their costs. These options will be cheaper than most forms of geoengineering and will provide many additional benefits, including improved air and water quality, national security, balance of trade, and human health. Our climate is already changing, and we need to explore at least some kinds of carbon-removal technologies, because energy efficiency and renewables cannot take CO2 out of the air once it’s there. Some scientists increasingly argue that we need to do research on sunshade technologies as a backup plan if climate change starts to accelerate dangerously. This argument has merit. However, the sooner we invest in and make progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions today and promote ways to restore the atmosphere through carbon-scrubbing technologies in the future, the less likely we are ever to need global sunshades. The principle of atmospheric restoration should guide us in curing climate change outright, not in treating a few of its symptoms

Cierre y clausura : construcción de un ideal femenino en la literatura latina : domum servavit, lanam fecit

Fil: Salzman, Patricia B.

A Policy Maker’s Guide to Designing Payments for Ecosystem Services

Over the past five years, there has been increasing interest around the globe in payment schemes for the provision of ecosystem services, such as water purification, carbon sequestration, flood control, etc. Written for an Asian Development Bank project in China, this report provides a user-friendly guide to designing payments for the provision of ecosystem services. Part I explains the different types of ecosystem services, different ways of assessing their value, and why they are traditionally under-protected by law and policy. This is followed by an analysis of when payments for services are a preferable approach to other policy instruments. Part II explains the design issues underlying payments for services. These include identification of the service as well as potential buyers and sellers, the level of service needed, payment timing, payment type, and risk allocation. Part II contains a detailed analysis of the different types of payment mechanisms, ranging from general subsidy and certification to mitigation and offset payments. Part III explores the challenges to designing a payment scheme. These include the ability to monitor service provision, secure property rights, perverse incentives, supporting institutions, and poverty alleviation

A Global Assessment of the Law and Policy

Through building waves of legal scholarship and litigation, a group of legal academics and practitioners is advancing a theory of the public trust doctrine styled as the “atmospheric trust.” The atmospheric trust would require the federal and state governments to regulate public and private actors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to abate climate change

Introduction: Governing Wicked Problems

“Wicked problems.” It just says it all. Persistent social problems—poverty, food insecurity, climate change, drug addiction, pollution, and the list goes on—seem aptly condemned as wicked. But what makes them wicked, and what are we to do about them? The concept of wicked problems as something more than a generic description has its origins in the late 1960s. Professor Horst Rittel of the University of California, Berkeley, Architecture Department posed the term in a seminar to describe “that class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.

Mineral Estate Conservation Easements: A New Policy Instrument to Address Hydraulic Fracturing and Resource Extraction

In a few short years, hydraulic fracturing has transformed the oil and natural gas industries and changed the landscape of energy policy, while generating major conflicts over local land use decisions. Individuals and communities have turned to the law to restrict oil and natural gas production with mixed success. While little explored, there is also potential for private efforts to restrict fracking. We propose a novel tool, the Mineral Estate Conservation Easement (MECE), to provide landowners with the ability to restrict hydraulic fracturing and other oil and gas subsurface activities in areas of particular social or ecological vulnerability. The article assesses whether a MECE is compatible with current state conservation easement acts, whether it would qualify for a tax deduction, and legislative actions that would strengthen the status of MECEs. Overall, we find that MECEs hold great potential as a private land use tool to restrict hydraulic fracturing in specific settings. While its legal status is well supported in most jurisdictions, in others uncertainty remains, though this could easily be remedied in most cases with minor statutory or regulatory amendments

Geelong region survey of business trends 2014

The Deakin Business School and the Geelong Chamber of Commerce undertook a survey of business confidence and industry activity in the Geelong region in 2014. The main objectives of the research were to measure current and future business confidence, activity, and profitability and to provide information relevant to the needs of businesses and industry for planning and other purposes. Information wascollected by an on-line survey of 1,571 businesses with 194 usable responses representing a 12.3% response rate. The findings are relevant to responses frombusinesses registered with the Geelong Chamber of Commerce and the Geelong Central Marketing group. The report contains information about business activity, perceptions about the future of business in Geelong and the barriers that have to be addressed to ensure success

Using Veterans’ Technical Skills in an Engineering Laboratory

After years of dissatisfaction with student knowledge and ability to use electrical test and measurement equipment (T&ME), a veteran with significant expertise using this equipment was placed in a Circuit Analysis Lab. This paper reports on this trial and its assessment results. Based on the overwhelming success of this program, this one-semester trial was extended for a second semester