In this morning’s newspaper, on the hard-nosed national security types looking at ecosystem services as a core issue (sub/ad req): Environmental problems, from water shortages, pollution and climate change to disease and food scarcity, are at the core of national security, Passell argues. “They’re all related to the same set of problems,” Passell said in …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: The Ecology of National Security’ »
I’ve been skeptical of reports that the recession is bottoming out, because until recently my data did not support it. For some time, the Inkstain Cheap Shit From China Index (CSFCI) has been stuck at zero. But on Tuesday, I noted on my morning bike ride the first shipping container out behind the Uber Walmart …
I’ve been relatively successful over the years in ending my newspaper’s practice of getting snowfall totals from ski areas when we’re doing storm stories. I reason that the ski areas a) are built in places that get an unusually large amount of snow relatively to their surroundings, which makes the number misleading, and/or b) have …
No. But a story by Mark Hume in the Globe and Mail illustrates the delicacies of transboundary water questions, and by coincidence is one of two interesting examples of the problem that scrolled across my monitor this morning. Hume’s story details objections by residents of British Columbia to a dam being contemplated in Washington state …
Continue reading ‘Will Canada and the U.S. go to war over water?’ »
Here’s what a housing bubble looks like. Housing prices. Red is Arizona, green is Nevada, blue is us here in New Mexico. The three states track together since the 1970s (off to the left of what’s displayed in this graph). Prices in Arizona and Nevada shoot up beginning around 2004, then collapse pretty dramatically. Click …
The European Union has released its latest greenhouse gas emissions report, and on paper it looks good. Emissions are 9.3 percent below 1990 levels. But if you look closely at the data, there is perhaps less reason for optimism than the number, on its face, suggests, as Roger Pielke Jr. notes, the largest reductions in …
When environmental push comes to economic shove, European Union ministers seem willing to back down on the EU’s tough environmental regulations to help limit the economic damage caused by “leakage” (production moving out of the EU to unregulated countries), according to this story: EU ministers responsible for industry, trade and research are due to agree …
Continue reading ‘The Greening of Europe Taking a Back Seat to the Economy?’ »
Today’s edition of Inkstain Economic Indicators is not good. There’s a new bike trail through my neighborhood, so I no longer cut behind our Mega Wal-Mart Giganto Store, but I took a detour today to see what’s up. The paved pads behind the store have always been a good economic indicator. When there are a …
I have the typical attention span of a journalist, and once the gas price spike turned into whatever the opposite of a spike is, I rushed off to the next front page thought, but really, gas prices have remained interesting: But for full context, also this: Sorta hard to see without referring to the underlying …
Continue reading ‘Gas Prices Creeping Up, Demand Still Down’ »
One of our great difficulties, whether the subject is climate change or the economy, is the problem of decision-making in the face of uncertainty. We want to know the right answer, and the lack of one makes us uncomfortable. But, as Win Quigley points out, sometimes that’s just the way it is: Every economist and …