Environment Archives - Page 60 of 126 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Tax Day and America’s Wars

by Jo Comerford | Apr 13, 2010

Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.

Why is Obama Drilling?

by Frank Ackerman | Apr 7, 2010

Once upon a time, “There’s Only So Much Oil in the Ground” was a popular song that could be heard on the radio. The year was 1974, and Tower of Power, an Oakland-based soul and funk band, was enjoying some commercial success. They made the year’s top 100 with “What is Hip?” In addition to the important topics of being young, hip, and falling in and out of love, they sang about the energy crisis. Following a brief OPEC oil embargo, the price of crude oil (in today’s dollars) jumped from $23 per barrel in 1973 to $41 in 1974. Everyone was thinking about the world’s finite and diminishing supplies of oil. As the song continued, “Sooner or later there won’t be much around.”

Swords Into Solar Panels

by Miriam Pemberton | Mar 4, 2010

Is there another way to create jobs in Owego? I submit that there is.

The Other Nuclear Survivors

by Gwyn Kirk | Mar 2, 2010

The 56th anniversary of the first U.S. hydrogen bomb test was on March 1. Code-named Bravo, the test took place at Bikini Atoll, a ring of tiny coral islands in the central Pacific.

Climate Change’s Secret Weapon

by Khadija Sharife | Feb 24, 2010

The water is crystalline, the sand is whiter than white, and elegantly bent palm trees sway in the breeze. This is how the Seychelles markets itself: as “another world.” Tourism is the mainstay of this heavenly island, averaging 20 percent of GDP and 60 percent of foreign exchange earnings.

Avatar: The Prequel

by Michael Klare | Feb 23, 2010

As it happens, I have a suggestion: skip the sequels on faraway Pandora’s sister worlds, and do the prequel.

Energy and Climate Change: C+

by Daphne Wysham | Jan 22, 2010

When Barack Obama was elected president, many climate activists were thrilled. With the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere reaching dangerous levels, and Democrats controlling the House and Senate, hopes couldn’t have been higher among climate campaigners that Obama would act swiftly to make energy and climate change one of his top priorities.

China: The Prince of Denmark

by Walden Bello | Jan 20, 2010

Almost a month after the debacle at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen (Conference of Parties or COP 15), the question of who scuttled the talks elicits fury and derision.

Will Cash Cool the Planet?

by Daniel Moss | Jan 12, 2010

Call it guilt money, a long-overdue environmental debt payback, or a smart investment in a hurting planet. Whatever it’s called, climate-change repair funds are on the way.

The Art of Extraction

by John Feffer | Dec 23, 2009

The teacher assembles a collection of chocolate-chip cookies and toothpicks. This is how the elementary school children are supposed to learn about the costs associated with coal mining. Each cookie is a mining property. The students each receive $19 in play money, which they use to buy these properties. They examine the cookies closely to determine which ones to buy. They map their cookies. They buy mining equipment in the form of paperclips and toothpicks. Each minute spent extracting a chocolate chip costs $1. The chips that they do not surreptitiously eat can be sold for $2 apiece. When they are finished, the students must restore their property to its original condition using only their tools, a process that also costs money. Only after this labor can they determine their profits — and the costs of the mining process.