policy
A Letter to the President-Elect of the United States, Part 2
Friday, January 2nd, 2009…Continued
Environmental issues such as conservation and biodiversity are often seen as peripheral to our lives or the problems we face, but nothing could be further than the truth. This world is habitable because of the weathering of rocks and the death and recycling of organisms, because of the filtration, oxygenation, and water capturing functions that [...]
A Letter to the President-Elect of the United States, Part 1
Thursday, January 1st, 2009You and your team doubtless have a long list of priorities, many stemming from the current economic recession; despite this, I hope you find the time to address a few issues, issues which, in the long run, will determine whether we have the time and luxury to address the remainder.
Ideas: Over Regulated or Under Regulated …
Monday, December 29th, 2008There has been a lot of talk recently about whether economic markets have imploded due to over-regulation or under-regulation. Although most pick up that argument with their own particular political biases, it is a difficult question to answer not least because many governments actually act in both directions at the same time. But, [...]
Part Two: WIIFU (What’s In It For Us?)
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Showing that we can afford space exploration, globally speaking, is not nearly the same as showing why we should pay for it. Despite the fact that we can make room for it in our list of priorities if we choose to, there are still many other priorities that are suffering from a lack of (or [...]
Part One: To Space, Or Not To Space?
Monday, December 15th, 2008One discussion that has surfaced repeatedly since the dawn of the Space Age is the worth (and role) of space travel, especially in the context of all the other priorities that demand attention, such as ending world hunger, developing flying cars, and creating a new energy infrastructure. We have no real shortage of challenges and [...]
Development and Official Regulation
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008If we consider development to be the general increase in well being of a population, then we have to recognize that there are times when the increase in one type of measure (real income) is countered by the negative action of another type of measure (disease rates). In these cases, government often steps in to [...]
Progress and Unintended Consequences
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008So, what happens when the very actions that we each individually take to improve our lives in the end cause detrimental consequences to all of us? The sage might say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and she might be right. But, does it have to be that way? Are we [...]
CAFE Standards and Speed Limits, Round 2
Thursday, May 15th, 2008In this earlier article on the new CAFE standards, I found that depending on the assumptions made for the number of future miles driven, restricting the speed limit to 55 miles per hour would be a more cost effective and more energy efficient solution than changing the CAFE standard. That analysis only considered the total [...]
Defining Sustainable Technology
Friday, May 9th, 2008Sustainable technology is an idea that may produce a new level of real progress around the world. But often today, the term is more of a marketing badge that may or may not prove to be true when put to the test. I have written before about sustainable technology and some of the problems with [...]
Producing Enough Engineers in the United States
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008What is the state of the American university system? Does it produce the types of professionals needed to keep the American economy strong and innovative?
We often hear a lot about how our contemporary economy requires plenty of professionals skilled in science and technology to maintain a healthy rate of innovation. There are are many reasons [...]
A Call to an Internet Arms Race
Friday, May 2nd, 2008Progress via a True Global Internet
In our contemporary world, one of the most important factors constraining the growth of societies is lack of information. In some places, infrastructure is not sufficiently developed in communications and electricity and the availability of electronics in the market to even allow people to connect to the information available via [...]
Conservation and the Marketplace
Thursday, May 1st, 2008How Conservation and Efficiency Can Sometimes Increase Consumption
Conservation and efficiency are always good, right? Unfortunately, not always.
Many of us, myself included, consider ourselves conservationists. We don’t buy or take things that we don’t need (for example, lots of extra paper napkins at the restaurant). We consider the energy efficiency of [...]
Hidden Technology Subsidies and System Design Bias
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008When Subsidies are Hard to See
When we think of our governments subsidizing a particular industry we usually envision a nice big check sent to them every year to the tune of millions of dollars from tax revenues. Sometimes, instead, it is that industry that is free from a particular tax that most others have [...]
A Way Out of the Politics of Climate Change, Part 5
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008Stay Focused on the Big picture
This is the fifth article in a five part series.
In this series, we have been outlining a evidence-based, constructive method to address the issue of climate change. While using this method doesn’t eliminate any disputes, it does change them from one of attacking philosophies, which are not easily changed, [...]
A Way Out of the Politics of Climate Change, Part 4
Friday, April 25th, 2008Evaluating Solution Effectiveness and Translating Analysis into Policy
This is the fourth article in a five part series.
To date in this series, we’ve looked at objective measures of how to frame a problem, how to determine the causes of that problem, and consider implementing a robust solution to the problem. In the last article, we [...]
Green Production versus Conservation
Thursday, April 24th, 2008In honor of Earth Day on 4/22 (a little late, I know), let’s consider the relationship between “green” production and conservation.
Our question is does conservation or “green” production result a greater positive impact regarding our use of resources. I am going to take the case of paper, as it is relatively simple product to [...]
A Way Out of the Politics of Climate Change, Part 3
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Evaluating Likelihood and Addressing Uncertainty when Applying Solutions
This is the third article in a five part series.
In the first two articles in this series we looked at identifying a problem and a functional understanding of that problem and then at determining all the causes of that problem. Now, we are going to [...]
A Way Out of the Politics of Climate Change, Part 2
Monday, April 21st, 2008A Root Cause Analysis on the “Failure Mode” of Changing (Increasing or Decreasing) Temperatures.
This is the second article of a five part series.
In the last article I outlined our functional model of the Earth. According to that model to explain why the current temperature of earth is the way it is, we have a primary [...]
A Way Out of the Politics of Climate Change, Part 1
Thursday, April 17th, 2008A Risk Assessment Approach to Climate Change Policy
This is the first article of a five part series.
It is difficult to find a more hotly debated public policy issue today than the one about potential regulatory actions related to global climate change. Much of this debate is emotional focused on various groups’ attitudes toward government action [...]
CAFE Vehicle Standards Compared to Speed Limits
Monday, April 14th, 2008What would more effectively reduce pollution from small vehicles?
Recently, there was a significant political argument in the United States about the costs and benefits of increasing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Increased efficiency, the argument went, would reduce the consumption of fuel, and therefore help restrain fuel prices, also reducing pollution from vehicles [...]
How Do We Define Progress?
Thursday, April 10th, 2008Back in the good old days…
Cultures seem to have their own ideas about what progress truly is and whether it exists at all or is just an illusion. Americans, in general, seem to have faith in progress over time, yet many continue to just as strongly express nostalgia for times past. Others have a more [...]