Backyard Politics, National Policies: Understanding the Opportunity Costs of National Fracking Bans

Some local communities in the United States, particularly in the Northeast, are scrambling to oppose natural gas production enabled by hydraulic fracturing (or fracing, fracking, or hydrofracking) in shale formations. Local opposition to the impacts of fracking is understandable, but recent proposals for national bans ignore a key, more potent threat. Due to a mismatch between the benefits and costs of fracking, on the one hand, and the distribution of political and legal influence, on the other, the voices of those opposed to extraction may drown out the more distant voices of those suffering from the widespread future effects of coal—the primary fossil alternative to gas. Energy policy processes must recognize the opportunity costs of banning gas, including the consequences of continuing to rely on coal as our primary electricity source. The negative environmental impacts of natural gas extraction must be addressed, and our focus on gas ought not to divert attention from the need to develop more sustainable energy alternatives. However, policymakers should not adopt the myopic view advocated by some anti-fracking activists. Rather, policymakers should formulate energy policies that fully weigh the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action and consider the interests of those under-represented in the policy process.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Electricity Markets $64,000 Question

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Covariant Phase Space Formulations of Superparticles and Supersymmetric WZW Models

We present new covariant phase space formulations of superparticles moving on a group manifold, deriving the fundamental Poisson brackets and current algebras. We show how these formulations naturally generalise to the supersymmetric Wess-Zumino-Witten models.Comment: 15pp., LaTe

Hamiltonian Reduction and Supersymmetric Toda Models

New formulations of the solutions of N=1 and N=2 super Toda field theory are introduced, using Hamiltonian Reduction of the N=1 and N=2 super WZNW Models to the super Toda Models. These parameterisations are then used to present the Hamiltonian formulations of the super Toda theories on the spaces of solutions.Comment: 15pp., LaTe

The Solutions of Affine and Conformal Affine Toda Field Theories

We give new formulations of the solutions of the field equations of the affine Toda and conformal affine Toda theories on a cylinder and two-dimensional Minkowski space-time. These solutions are parameterised in terms of initial data and the resulting covariant phase spaces are diffeomorphic to the Hamiltonian ones. We derive the fundamental Poisson brackets of the parameters of the solutions and give the general static solutions for the affine theory.Comment: 11pp, phyzz

Branes at angles and calibrated geometry

In a recent paper, Ohta and Townsend studied the conditions which must be satisfied for a configuration of two intersecting M5-branes at angles to be supersymmetric. In this paper we extend this result to any number of M5-branes or any number of M2-branes. This is accomplished by interpreting their results in terms of calibrated geometry, which is of independent interest.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX2e (Minor correction in next to last paragraph of section 5.2