Energy & Environment: Markey Wants Answers on Rare Earths
• Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., "is pressing the Obama administration for information about alleged Chinese restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals used in defense and energy technologies, warning of threats to U.S. interests," The Hill reports.
• "Three months after BP capped its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico, the state of Louisiana is still building a chain of sand berms off its coast to block and capture oil even as federal officials and many scientists argue that the effort will prove pointless," the New York Times reports.
• An Idaho couple has "sued the state to stop the shipments by Imperial Oil and ConocoPhillips" to an oil sands site in Canada, "arguing that the" truck loads delivered there "would threaten the integrity of Idaho's historic portion of U.S. 12, as well as the safety of communities that depend on it as the main road in and out of the area," the Times also reports. "National environmental groups and climate change activists are supporting their efforts, seeing a broader opportunity to stall development of Canada's oil sands, which they denounce as a dirty source of energy. "
• "Combating climate change has long taken a back seat to coal production in West Virginia, but in the hard-fought House race in this state's 1st district, global warming hasn't even made it onto the bus," The Hill reports. "In interviews on Thursday, both the Democratic and Republican nominees for Congress voiced skepticism of the science behind global warming, and the Republican, David McKinley, flatly called concerns about climate change 'an attack on coal.'"
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Graciela Chichilnisky
Biography provided by participant
Graciela Chichilnisky is the architect of the Kyoto Protocol carbon market and the author of the recently published book Saving Kyoto, and a Professor of Economics and Mathematics at Columbia University in New York.
Chichilnisky has worked extensively in the Kyoto Protocol process, creating and designing the carbon market that has become international law in 2005. Working closely for several years with negotiators of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the organization in charge of deciding world policy with respect to global warming, Professor Chichilnisky acted as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Prize for their work in this area. In 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed by 163 nations, Dr. Chichilnisky authored the Protocol language that led to the creation of the carbon market.
Chichilnisky is the creator of the formal theory of sustainable development, providing axioms and developing the notion of sustainable development in economics in 1992. A special adviser to several UN organizations and heads of state, her pioneering work uses innovative market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions, conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services and improve the lot of the poor. The author of fourteen books and 224 scientific articles published in the preeminent academic journals covering economics, finance and mathematics, Professor Chichilnisky is an active researcher and writes and speaks extensively on globalization and the global environment, is professor of Economics and Mathematical Statistics and a University Senator at Columbia University in New York, and the Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University in Australia. Dr. Chichilnisky studied at MIT and UC Berkeley, holds two Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics and in Economics respectively, and taught at Harvard, Essex and Stanford Universities.
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