Safe vs. Fair: A Formidable Trade-off in Tackling Climate Change

Global warming requires a response characterized by forward-looking management of atmospheric carbon and respect for ethical principles. Both safety and fairness must be pursued, and there are severe trade-offs as these are intertwined by the limited headroom for additional atmospheric CO2 emissions. This paper provides a simple numerical mapping at the aggregated level of developed vs. developing countries in which safety and fairness are formulated in terms of cumulative emissions and cumulative per capita emissions respectively. It becomes evident that safety and fairness cannot be achieved simultaneously for strict definitions of both. The paper further posits potential global trading in future cumulative emissions budgets in a world where financial transactions compensate for physical emissions: the safe vs. fair trade-off is less severe but remains formidable. Finally, we explore very large deployments of engineered carbon sinks and show that roughly 1000 GtCO2 of cumulative negative emissions over the century are required to have a significant effect, a remarkable scale of deployment. We also identify the unexplored issue of how such sinks might be treated in sub-global carbon accounting.Climate Policy, Burden Sharing, Negative Emissions

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences_Email Regarding Articles on COVID-19

Email thread featuring messages from Michael Socolow, Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Journalism to Timothy M. Cole, Associate Dean for Academics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Jonathon Jue-Wong, Administrative Coordinator, The Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost regarding articles Professor Socolow authored

A Profitable Public Sphere: The Creation of the New York Times Op-Ed Page

This stud y utilizes archival and other primary materials to describe the development of the New York Times op-ed page. This innovative forum for commentary, which premiered in September 1970, is examined through the lenses of Jiirgen Habermas\u27 public sphere theory and eco­ nomic concerns in the American newspaper industry. The page provid­ ed a significant source of revenue and diversified social, cultural, and political news analysis. Times executives sought to serve the public interest while considering corporate profits

UNDERSTANDING LONG-TERM ENERGY USE AND CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS IN THE USA

We compile a database of energy uses, energy sources, and carbon dioxide emissions for the USA for the period 1850-2002. We use a model to extrapolate the missing observations on energy use by sector. Overall emission intensity rose between 1850 and 1917, and fell between 1917 and 2002. The leading cause for the rise in emission intensity was the switch from wood to coal, but population growth, economic growth, and electrification contributed as well. After 1917, population growth, economic growth and electrification pushed emissions up further, and there was no net shift from fossil to non-fossil energy sources. From 1850 to 2002, emissions were reduced by technological and behavioural change (particularly in transport, manufacturing and households), structural change in the economy, and a shift from coal to oil and gas. These trends are stronger than electrification, explaining the fall in emissions relative to GDP.Carbon dioxide emissions, decomposition, environmental Kuznets curve, USA, history