We were traveling by car to Palestinian Susya, deep in the dry, patchy terrain of the South Hebron hills, to observe low-tech sustainable energy projects to help villagers meet their basic needs. The road petered out — we’d gone too far — so we turned back toward another Susya, an Israeli settlement of about 100 families. Israeli Susya — established in 1983 about 40 road miles south of Jerusalem — has paved roads, tall pines and two-story homes with skylights and red roofs, running water, and phone and electric lines. Just off the road we saw a car and a scattering of tents ... Read More
Botanist Brings Trees to the Israeli Desert
July 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The desert sky was an odd brooding gray as we pulled into McDonald's, the arches looming bright and preternaturally yellow out of the dusty landscape. By the time we'd finished our McKebab sandwiches — much better than you might expect — it was raining: a steady, drumming, respectable rain. It almost never rains in Israel's Arava Valley, the driest, hottest and southernmost part of Israel. I was about to meet a desert botanist, Elaine Solowey, so I was anxious to hear what she'd say. I assumed she'd be excited about the rain and wax rhapsodic about making the desert bloom and all ... Read More
Pricing Carbon to Reduce Emissions, Create Dividends
May 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Cap and trade is dead — long live the Green Dividend. That was the consensus of a conference on pricing carbon held late last year at Wesleyan University that produced the "Wesleyan Statement," a kind of working manifesto on carbon-pricing principles. According to the resulting statement, an effective pricing strategy would be "upstream" (i.e. paid by the supplier), calibrated to reach emissions levels recommended by climate scientists, and steadily rising so that businesses and individuals can plan. Speakers advocated a direct, transparent price on carbon as an economic incentive ... Read More
The Social Cost of Carbon
February 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
While federal climate legislation ground to a halt in July, the U.S. government began regulating carbon dioxide through the Environmental Protection Agency's mandate to uphold the Clean Air Act. CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, was declared an "air pollutant," which therefore fell within the EPA's regulatory reach. Whether this has any meaningful impact turns on a little-known data point called the "social cost of carbon." It is, says economist Frank Ackerman, "the most important number you've never heard of." The social cost of carbon, or SCC, is the value in today's dollars of the ... Read More
Settling a Beef With American Cattle Productions
November 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Why did Chuck Lacy and Ridge Shinn charter two 747s to fly 87 bovines from New Zealand to New England? For healthier beef. Lacy and Shinn are founders and principles of Hardwick Beef, a leading distributor of 100 percent grass-fed beef in the Northeast. In building their business, they faced a challenge: most beef cattle in the U.S. are bred to fatten up quickly under industrial farm conditions, which means standing around in feedlots and eating corn and other grains for concentrated periods of time. But after decades of selection for these traits, few cattle fattened up nicely and ... Read More