Environmental Refugees and Global Warming

ScienceDaily summarizes a recent paper in the International Journal of Global Warming:

"While a strong link between environmental changes and migration is clearly visible, it needs to be considered that these environmental factors are mostly also paired with socio-economic factors like poverty and demographic changes like population growth or conflicts and institutional factors, among others," the team concludes.

One of the reasons people like Indur Goklany have been saying things like this for years:

The primary long-term solution to climate vulnerability is for all countries to adopt institutional frameworks, including decentralised government, that encourage innovation, foster enterprise and enable individuals to develop strategies and technologies to cope with changing circumstances.

Incentivizing energy efficiency

John Timmer at Nobel Intent writes:

When it comes to reducing carbon emissions, most of the attention has focused on new technologies like renewable power and electric vehicles, as well as their associated costs. But study after study shows that we can save both energy and a significant amount of cash through the use of energy efficiency technology that's already on the market. A Policy Forum in today's issue of Science suggests that the bottleneck isn't so much technological or economic as it is behavioral, and argues that the US needs to start performing tests of behavior-oriented programs.

Bonds, Climate Bonds

In a recent article in Government: Business, Foreign Affairs and Trade John Mathews and Sean Kidney outline the idea of climate bonds to fund the transition from fossil fuels to green energy.

The role of private finance in effecting the transition to a low-carbon economy -- what will be the biggest economic transformation in history and estimated in one recent report to be more than three times the size of the whole industrial revolution -- is the crux of the issue.

Putting the emphasis on private financing allows a different perspective. In place of always talking about the ‘costs’ of climate change mitigation, we can talk instead about investment opportunities.

Math explains biodiversity?

Via Science Alert:

"Australian scientists have announced a major new finding that helps explain how natural systems like coral reefs and forests maintain the richness of their mix of species."

Their study also illustrates the importance of biological corridors:

"Corals and rainforests spread their offspring across surrounding fragments of available habitat. By dispersing offspring unevenly – on winds, current or carried by other creatures – across patchworks of reefs or forest fragments, the richness of biodiversity is perpetuated."

Nicaragua-based Paso Pacifico** has been restoring wildlife habitat and conserving biological corridors for five years. If you're interested in biodiversity, you may want to pay attention to their work.


**Full disclosure: this blogger does work for Paso Pacifico.

Wild Balkans

I used to work with some wild Balkans, but that's not what this post is about...

"The Balkan Peninsula...where ancient forests and vast wetlands harbor pristine wilderness, and sheer cliff walls and desolate plateaus preserve a seemingly unchanged past."

We're going to have to tune in to see this show on Nature on PBS.

Long tails, tribes, and pluralism

An oldie but goodie from Chris Anderson on the WIRED blog network

Here's my take on what the Long Tail is doing to pop culture. Rather than the scary fragmentation of our society into a nation of disconnected people doing their own thing, I think we're reforming into thousands of cultural tribes, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests. Whether we think of it this way or not, each of us belongs to many different tribes simultaneously, often overlapping (geek culture and Lego), often not (tennis and punk-funk).

Copenhagen: our wake-up call

In the Washington Post today, Bjorn Lomborg says "it's time to give up our Rio-Kyoto-Copenhagen fantasy and get real about combating global warming."

Clearly we need "to radically ramp up green-energy technologies -- to the point where we can increase our reliance on them by several orders of magnitude."

Who should invest? Who should be in charge? What's the best way to ensure practical, actionable solutions?

Inevitably, investors, innovators, and entrepreneurs will wake up. Will policy makers stay out of their way?