Banned in China: know your air
The powerful film (with English subtitles) on pollution – initially hailed, then banned, by Chinese officialdom:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM
From New York Times story on the ban:
On Friday evening [the day the film was banned], Xinhua, the state news agency, posted on Twitter, which is also blocked here, that “President Xi Jinping vows to punish, with an iron hand, any violators who destroy ecology or environment, with no exceptions.” That night, the United States Embassy air monitor in Beijing rated the air “hazardous.”
Read more here.
POSTSCRIPT: Chinese officials are not the alone in trying to suppress bad news on the environment. Check out the latest from Florida, here.
Let them eat toxic waste?
A video made by UMass-Amherst students compares wealth-based to rights-based principles for allocating environmental quality:
Dividends for all?
From Peter Barnes on PBS Newshour, discussing his new book With Liberty and Dividends for All:
Dividends from common wealth, by contrast, unite society by putting all its members in the same boat. The income everyone receives is a right, not a handout. This changes the story, the psychology and the politics.
Read more here.
Jobs, what jobs?
Movement Generation skewers pipeline “job creators”:
Source: http://www.movementgeneration.org/keystone-xl-has-a-job-for-you-video-resource-page
Rent in a warming world
Econ4’s James Boyce explains what rent’s got to do with climate change:
Read his piece here.
Energy efficiency takes off
Some good news from the energy efficiency frontlines:
[I]nvestment in energy efficiency is large and growing: $300 billion in 2011 by companies and governments in 11 countries. That is the same as total investment in electricity generation from oil, gas and coal, though less than investment in renewable electricity plus renewable-energy subsidies. But it saves more in emissions of carbon dioxide than all the spending on renewables, and pays for itself.
Read more here.
Carbon bubble
Sean McElwee and Lew Daly write about the disconnect between valuing oil and gas reserves and valuing the future of our planet:
A whopping two-thirds of reserves listed on markets are potentially worthless.
Steve Waygood, head of Sustainability Research at Aviva Investors, a global asset management company, sums up the conundrum: “Valuations of the oil and gas sector still assume that they will be able to take all proven and probable reserves out of the ground and burn them. Based on credible data we cannot be allowed to do that…” So in much the same way that pre-Great Recession housing prices were based on the assumption that their values would continue to rise and homeowners would pay off their mortgages, the valuation of oil and gas companies is based on the assumption that they will be able to extract resources that must remain in the ground.
Read their piece here.
Tax students, or polluters?
From Robert Reich’s blog:
A basic economic principle is government ought to tax what we want to discourage, and not tax what we want to encourage.
For example, if we want less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we should tax carbon polluters. On the other hand, if we want more students from lower-income families to be able to afford college, we shouldn’t put a tax on student loans.
Read his post here.
Grow the good, shrink the bad
Econ4’s James Boyce writes that we need better measures of economic well-being, better public policies, and better language:
We need to move beyond the stale “pro-growth” versus “anti-growth” rhetoric of the past. It’s time to raise a new banner: Grow the good and shrink the bad.
Read more here.
Unlocking our climate wealth
Econ4’s James Boyce on how to translate good principles into good practice:
Source: http://tedxtraversecity.com/videos/
