Towards a science of climate and energy choices

The linked problems of energy sustainability and climate change are among the most complex and daunting facing humanity at the start of the twenty-first century. This joint Nature Energy and Nature Climate Change Collection illustrates how understanding and addressing these problems will require an integrated science of coupled human and natural systems; including technological systems, but also extending well beyond the domain of engineering or even economics. It demonstrates the value of replacing the stylized assumptions about human behaviour that are common in policy analysis, with ones based on data-driven science. We draw from and engage articles in the Collection to identify key contributions to understanding non-technological factors connecting economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions, describe a multi-dimensional space of human action on climate and energy issues, and illustrate key themes, dimensions and contributions towards fundamental understanding and informed decision making

Shale gas policy in the United Kingdom: An argumentative discourse analysis

Shale gas has become an energy policy priority in the United Kingdom in light of profitable extraction activities in the United States. Since 2012 the Coalition Government has created key economic drivers to encourage shale exploration, whilst growing activism in affected site communities has stirred significant media and academic commentary. This study examines the growing national debate as a matter of discourse, adopting an argumentative discourse analytic approach to assess data collected from stakeholder interviews (n=21) and key policy actor statements quoted in broadsheet newspapers. We explore three dominant "storylines" emerging in relation to shale gas policy: (1) "cleanliness and dirt" concerns the relative framing of the environmental benefits and harms of shale gas; (2) "energy transitions - pathways and diversions" concerns geographic metaphors of transitions to carbon intensive and low-carbon energy systems; and (3) "geographies of environmental justice" concerns divisions of economic benefit distribution, environmental impact and procedural fairness. We find that central government policy rhetoric emphasises economic development, regulatory oversight and distribution of benefits to site communities, whilst minimising discussion of the implications of shale gas for anthropogenic climate change. The role of these discourses in influencing shale gas policy is discussed

The Effectiveness Of Capital Investments In The Protection Of The Natural Environment

Among the most important reserves for increasing the effectiveness of social production are the intensification and rationalization of the use of natural resources in combination with measures for the protection of the environment. The rational use, conservation, and reproduction of natural resources and a solicitous attitude toward nature are becoming a component part of the program for the construction of communism in the USSR.

Economic Measures in the Rational Utilization of Water Resources

The entire course of the economic reform presently being carried out urgently poses the problem of increasing the effectiveness of utilization of the richest natural resources that our country has at its disposal. A necessary prerequisite of all measures and, in particular, of those aimed at the solution of this problem is the economic evaluation of natural resources being used at the present time and those which will be brought into economic circulation in the near future. Under these conditions, the search for and development of a methodological basis for the economic evaluation of natural resources is a natural phenomenon. Such a basis must be uniform for various types of natural resources and must be a kind of yardstick for concrete methods and ways of making economic assessments of them, taking into account the specific features in the use of one or another natural resource.

Technological change and public policy : a case study of the winde energy industry

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-96).by Jeffrey M. Loiter.M.S