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.'"
Contributor
Rob Stavins
Biography provided by participant
Stavins holds a variety of posts at Harvard. He is a business and government professor, serves as director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, and is co-director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements. He is also chairman of the Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Group.
Stavins is a university fellow at Resources for the Future, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the editor of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, and a member of the Board of Directors of Resources for the Future and the Board of Academic Advisors of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. He is also on the editorial boards of Resource and Energy Economics, Environmental Economics Abstracts, B.E. Journals of Economic Analysis & Policy, and Economic Issues and is an editor of the Journal of Wine Economics. He served as a lead author of the second and third assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Stavins directed Project 88, a bi-partisan effort co-chaired by former Sen. Timothy Wirth and the late Sen. John Heinz, to develop innovative approaches to environmental and resource problems. Prior to coming to Harvard, Stavins was a staff economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. He holds a B.A. from Northwestern University, an M.S. in agricultural economics from Cornell, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
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