Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s major policy reform proposals, on everything from new taxes on soda pop to amending the 70-year constitutional prohibition on foreign investment in Mexico’s petroleum sector, have swept through that nation’s congress with breathtaking speed.
Hosted by Sarwar Kashmeri, the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions podcast series will headline issues together with the leaders whose decisions today will mold the foreign policy of tomorrow. Each podcast will tackle a different Great Decisions topic in the 2014 series, a list of which can be found here. Tackling climate change has unearthed a […]
I was at this year’s Urban Green Expo in New York and vastly enjoyed William McDonough’s keynote presentation. He is an architect, designer, sustainability expert (from way back), and co-guru of the visionary Cradle to Cradle framework for building and living. McDonough’s talk had several key themes: * there are no wastes, only nutrients; * […]
Bonn is home base for the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and it’s where meetings are taking place this week to advance international agreement. With Copenhagen in the rear-view mirror and Cancun up ahead, there is a lot of discussion going of technical matters, and lots of side meetings […]
I was interviewing a world-class expert on energy and the environment yesterday for a project I’m on, and the discussion came around to many environmentalists’ distrust of cap-and-trade and other modes of “market-friendly” environmental activity. I was reminded of the video from Nathaniel Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund’s Director of Economic Policy and Analysis. (It is […]
The World Bank, quite rightly, has devoted a tremendous amount of time and money on water projects in recent years, according to the “NY Times” here. I highlighted World Water Day at the blog a few weeks ago and noted then some of the many critical shortfalls in clean water and proper sanitation that beset […]
Are the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers listening? It’s pretty plain at this late date that many, many leading companies in manufacturing, mining, finance, insurance and other industries recognize the threat of climate change to their businesses and the opportunities for growth with sustainability. The World Business Council for Sustainable […]
I had the good fortune to be involved with some very smart activists back in the 1980s who were working on acid rain. One of these was the Environmental Defense Fund’s senior scientist Michael Oppenheimer. Michael’s been at Princeton for a number of years and among his many projects, he co-curated the compelling climate change […]