Stern

The Ecological Rift

by Bryan Walker October 25, 2011

Why do we continue with business as usual when we know that it is leading us to disastrous climate change? According to the authors of The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth it is because our capitalist economic system is driven by forces which cannot stand back and weigh the consequences of their drive. [...]

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Grim news on emissions

by Bryan Walker May 30, 2011

The Guardian, with the exception of the foolishness of its analysis of the climategate emails, is one of the world media’s bright spots when it comes to recognising and communicating the realities of climate change. It carried grim news yesterday. Environment correspondent Fiona Harvey reported International Energy Agency (IEA) unpublished estimates that greenhouse gas emissions [...]

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Earth: The Operators’ Manual

by Bryan Walker April 7, 2011

Richard Alley’s splendid abilities as a communicator are well displayed in his new book Earth: The Operators’ Manual. Written as a companion book for a forthcoming PBS documentary he hosts, it provides a lively review of the science of climate change and of the renewable energy sources now able to be employed. The general reader who [...]

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Garnaut: no reticence on risk

by Bryan Walker March 14, 2011

I appreciated the candidness with which economist Ross Garnaut introduced and concluded his recently released update on the science of climate change, one of a series of updates to his 2008 Review which have been commissioned by the Australian government. In the introduction he explains how he began his original Review with no strong views and [...]

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Stern at the frontiers of knowledge

by Bryan Walker January 16, 2011

“The cost of cutting back emissions is more than we estimated, but that is because the consequences of climate change are already here.” These words of Nicholas Stern’s are included in the announcement that he has just been awarded the 400,000-euro BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the climate change category. He elaborates: “Emissions [...]

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Friday’s dust

by Gareth August 20, 2010

The weekend’s coming, and so I’m clearing out some of the stuff that’s cluttering up my web browser. NIWA recently posted an excellent explanation of the carbon/greenhouse gas relationship in pastoral agriculture, taken from the July issue of their magazine, Water & Atmosphere: Why isn’t grass in, methane out, carbon neutral? Click on the image [...]

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Oxfam: poor countries need funds to adapt

by Bryan Walker September 19, 2009

Climate change is already having disproportionate effects on the populations of many poor developing countries, a situation which will only get worse as the global temperature rises. Such countries do not have the resources to develop the adaptation measures they are going to need. Nicholas Stern devoted considerable attention to this question in The Global Deal, where [...]

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Stern words in Beijing

by Bryan Walker September 13, 2009

Nicholas Stern has been in the news again lately.  He spoke to students at the People’s University in Beijing on Friday with characteristic directness. He pointed out that although China is still a long way behind countries like the US and Australia in per capita emissions there are places in China where the picture is different. [...]

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Blueprint for a global deal

by Bryan Walker June 2, 2009

It is two and a half years since the landmark Stern Report to the UK government was released. It called climate change “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen” and concluded that the benefits of strong and early action to reduce emissions far outweigh the economic costs of not acting. At 700 pages it [...]

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