Wednesday-Night

23 January 2008
We are delighted that at the suggestion of Consul General Mary Marshall, U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins will be joining us for (part of) this Wednesday Night’s Salon. Ambassador Wilkins’ visit is particularly timely given that the Republican Primary was held in his native South Carolina on Saturday, however, we understand that he […]

With thanks to the Huffington Post
The financial turmoil is like an elephant in a dark room
By Martin Wolf, Financial Times
Global macroeconomic imbalances played a huge part in driving monetary policy decisions. These, in turn, led to house-price bubbles and huge financial excesses, particularly in securitised assets. Now policymakers are forced to deal with today’s symptoms […]

DHS Defies Congress By Going Forward Now
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 22, 2008
Defying Congress, the Department of Homeland Security is pushing to tighten identification requirements at U.S. land borders starting Jan. 31, when it no longer will allow Americans or Canadians to enter the country by presenting a driver’s license or declaring their […]

January 22, 2008
Europe Cutting Biofuel Subsidies Redirects Aid to Stress Greenest Options
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Governments in Europe and elsewhere have begun rolling back generous, across-the-board subsidies for biofuels, acknowledging that the environmental benefits of these fuels have often been overstated.
But as they aim to be more selective, these governments are discovering how difficult it can […]

January 22, 2008

Masdar City will be constructed in the desert on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. The aims are to use only renewable energy sources, and to eliminate 99% of the waste stream. This artist’s impression shows wind turbines on the edge of the city and public transport links running through.
(Reuters) ABU DHABI - Gulf […]

January 20, 2008
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN
(NYT Magazine) Ben Bernanke’s first exposure to monetary policy was reading the works of Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate. That was 30 years ago, when Bernanke was a graduate student at M.I.T., and he has been studying central banking ever since. By the time President Bush nominated him to run […]

January 18, 2008
Cleo Paskal
No country is ready for natural disasters. In fact, some of the world’s richest nations are the worst prepared. Cleo Paskal presents a guide to mitigating the huge human and security cost of our changing climate.
Environmental change is a sustained and pervasive attack on the status quo. Nothing can be taken for […]

January 17, 2008
(Christian Science Monitor) Even as some states are mandating ethanol as part of the fuel mix, new research suggests that some biofuels are less ecofriendly than they seem.
Creating fuel from plants seems like a win-win proposition. It reduces dependence on foreign oil, and it […]

16 January 2008
We have a special treat for all those interested in a triple-e topic: ethics, the environment and economics, which may at first glance appear to be an odd troika.
This package comes in the form of our friend and Wednesday-Nighter, Professor Peter G. Brown, author of THE COMMONWEALTH OF LIFE Economics For a […]

Economics for a Flourishing Earth
1. Taking Darwin Seriously. Our ethical systems are largely a-scientific; they took on much of their shape before the scientific revolutions of the last 500 years. Though science does not and should not determine our ethical beliefs, neither should those beliefs be uninformed by science. One consequence […]