With Greece on the verge of default, we’re about to learn how little has really changed since governments around the world wrote the last round of bail out checks to prop up failing financial institutions. Just as the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market rippled into nearly every corner of the global financial system, [...]
In the soon-to-come world of triple-digit oil prices, distance will cost money. All of a sudden geography will become a lot more important to trade patterns than it has been in the ever-shrinking global economy. That’s about to have a profound impact on where we source goods. The cost of shipping goods from Mexico or [...]
Just because the Waxman-Markey bill is roadkill on the Senate floor doesn’t mean the US doesn’t already pay a heavy price for its carbon emissions. If you doubt that, try getting your local power utility to build a new coal-fired generating station. Between 2006 and 2009, applications for 83 new coal plants were either turned [...]
Greening our economy isn’t just about what we produce—it’s also about what we consume. Sending smokestack industries off to distant shores in search of cheap labor markets to make the things we consume may lessen the carbon footprint of our own economies, but it sure doesn’t do much for the global footprint. And since there [...]
It wasn’t sheer coincidence that last year marked two pivotal events in the world’s vehicle industry. In 2009, China became the largest car market in the world, while in the same year there were four million fewer vehicles on the road in the United States. In a world where the supply of economically viable oil [...]
It’s not its carbon trail that stands in the way of the Alberta tar sands’ picking up the supply ball dropped by deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. After all, tar sands fuel is no dirtier than coal, and Americans haven’t let that fossil fuel’s carbon trail stand in the way of its generating [...]