Showing results for "In the World" in Environmental Economics

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world - and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?

A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than...

Solving the world’s biggest problems - from climate catastrophe and pandemics to wildfires and corporate malfeasance - requires, more than anything else, coming up with new ways to manage the powerful interactions that surround us. In The Spirit of Green, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus describes a new way of green thinking that would help us overcome our biggest challenges without sacrificing economic prosperity, in large part by accounting for the spillover costs of economic collisions.

The industrial age made possible by fossil fuels will surely decline as these fuels run out. In The Ecotechnic Future John Michael Greer alerts the listener to possible changes future generations may face as these dwindling fuel supplies lead first to a deindustrial age, then to a society which salvages the remnants of our current plenty, and eventually to a time in which people may learn to live in balance with the environment: an ecotechnic society.

China’s meteoric rise to economic powerhouse might be charted with dams. Every river in the country has been tapped to power exploding cities and factories - every river but one. Running through one of the richest natural areas in the world, the Nujiang’s raging waters were on the verge of being dammed when a 2004 government moratorium halted construction. Might the Chinese dragon bow to the "Angry River"? Would Beijing put local people and their land ahead of power and profit? Could this remote region actually become a model for sustainable growth? Ed Grumbine traveled to the far corners of China’s Yunnan province to find out.

In QE44, Andrew Charlton exposes the rift that will shape our future progress versus planet; rich versus poor. Who, then, will save us? Charlton shows there are two leading candidates: economists and environmentalists. Each says they know what is best for our grandchildren. Yet environmentalists see economists as merchants of greed with a blind faith in markets. And economists see environmentalism as an indulgence for the middle class of richer nations; those who enjoy the lifestyle afforded by economic growth, but take its source for granted.