James “Gus” Speth just published an article in Yale Environment 360 critical of modern environmentalism. Speth’s argument is particularly notable due to his prominence within mainstream environmentalism. Gus founded the World Resources Institute (WRI), co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and is currently the dean of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Speth is careful to highlight the successes of the past, but argues environmentalism must develop a new politics to succeed. Sound familiar?

A specter is haunting American environmentalism — the specter of failure.

All of us who have been part of the environmental movement in the United States must now face up to a deeply troubling paradox: Our environmental organizations have grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to go downhill, to the point that the prospect of a ruined planet is now very real. How could this have happened?

Before addressing this question and what can be done to correct it, two points must be made. First, one shudders to think what the world would look like today without the efforts of environmental groups and their hard-won victories in recent decades. However serious our environmental challenges, they would be much more so had not these people taken a stand in countless ways. And second, despite their limitations, the approaches of modern-day environmentalism remain essential: Right now, they are the tools readily at hand with which to address many pressing problems, including global warming and climate disruption. Despite the critique of American environmentalism that follows, these points remain valid…

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Alan Greenspan has just testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. From his prepared remarks (PDF) are these comments on the role of risk models and ratings agencies in the financial crisis:

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The U.S. Congress held a hearing yesterday on the role of ratings agencies in the financial crisis. The ratings agencies are supposed to provide independent estimates of the risk of various financial products. It turns out that they have not been so independent or informed. The ratings agencies failed substantively, in their use of complex risk models, but also procedurally, in their conflicts of interest and failure to critically assess investment products.

The following exchange, summarized by Rachel Pulfer in the Canadian Business Online, is really amazing:

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Starting next Monday, October 27, there will be a national dialogue – conducted online – about health information technology and privacy.  While the campaign focus on health care has been on how and who should finance it, the transition from paper to electronic health records is a significant issue that does not attract a lot of public attention.  This dialogue will focus on privacy – how electronic records can or should be restricted and protected from individuals that have no business reading your health information.  The question that will frame the dialogue:

How can we use information technology to improve healthcare, while safeguarding privacy?

Health information technology legislation has been working through Congress, but has stalled, at least in part, due to privacy concerns.  Maybe this dialogue can hit on an idea to break through the legislative impass.

Please share the below far and wide!

Faculty Position
Assistant Professor
Science and Technology Policy Research
CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder

The University of Colorado at Boulder seeks to hire an assistant professor for the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Applicants must have demonstrated expertise in science or technology policy research with emphasis on environment. Specializations of interest include the policy aspects of science, energy, technology, and the human dimensions of climate change, water, and solid earth processes. The successful candidate must have an established interest in interdisciplinary research and teaching, is expected to develop a record of funded research, and must be willing to contribute to both undergraduate and graduate teaching. The position is tenure-track and will be located in any relevant academic department, to be mutually decided upon by the candidate and department. Possibilities include Geography, Political Science, Environmental Studies, Economics, and others.
Required Qualifications: PhD in a relevant field.

To Apply: Applicants should send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, a statement on teaching, a statement on research, and three names to be used for letters of reference to www.jobsatcu.com, job posting number 805664. Questions can be directed to CIRES Human Resources (Dempsey@CIRES.Colorado.edu). Review of applications will begin November 15 and continue until the position is filled.

The Personal Genome Project is looking for a few thousand people willing to contribute their genome to help make personal genome sequencing more accessible and affordable.  The Washington Post recently reported on the project, as did Wired.  I think collaborative experiments and research like this – which could engage with people who aren’t researchers just as easily as researchers – is a good thing and should be encouraged.  As the amount of data we can use to conduct research increases dramatically, collecting and analyzing it – at least in some disciplines – will benefit from the contributions of others – whether its spare cycles on their computer or individual data to help better understand population data.

The problem with the Post piece – which focused on the recent addition of several scientists personal genome data to the publicly available portion of the project – is that it glosses over the critical privacy concerns that must be part of any database that can be accessed by the public, especially those that contain medical information.  Contrary to what you might think from the article, people can participate in the program and limit the exposure of their personal genetic information.  Online does not automatically equal no privacy.  Arguments that suggest privacy no longer exists, or can no longer be preserved, are arguments from technological determinism – that there is nothing we can do about technology and its momentum. If that were true, the utility of technology policy would be next to nothing – something that doesn’t reflect reality.

UPDATED AGAIN . . .

Over at Climate Progress, Joe Romm asserts that climate policies in the EU represent

a very impressive achievement that should serve as an inspiration to the world.

This is an odd conclusion coming from Joe, since he is often going on about the end of the planet if we don’t act yesterday.

Rather than looking dispassionately at the EU as a forward-think policy laboratory, Joe instead chooses to attack the US and make the issue partisan. A more productive approach would be to look to the admirable EU leadership as an opportunity to learn about the practical challenges of emissions reductions, even when there is strong political support.

The following graph (using data from the US EIA here in .xls) needs little interpretation. It shows post-Kyoto per capita carbon dioxide emissions in each of the EU-15 countires as well as the US for 1997 to 2005 (the last year for which data was available, but I don’t think that extending to 2007 would make much difference). The overwhelming majority of countries of the EU-15 saw per capita emissions increase faster that the US. The lesson that one should take is not that the US is succeeding, but rather that the success of the EU has been overstated, and Joe propagates that myth.

Updates after the jump.

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Jennifer Akst is a graduate student at the University of Indiana. She contacted me a few weeks ago about a class project in which she had to write a new story. She chose to focus on the recent Elsner et al. Nature paper that claims to have documented an increasing intensity of the very strongest storms. The paper, like so much in this area, has been subject to some considerable debate in the community. Jennifer’s class project news story was the best piece of reporting on this paper that I saw, and so I asked if I could reproduce it here. See it after the jump.

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The Washington Post reports today on the efforts each campaign has made to deal with the Presidential transition – a period that looks like a long period, but rarely are that many appointments made by the time the new President is inauguration.  The Post article follows up another piece that ran in Sunday’s edition.  Both campaigns have picked advisers for the transition, men with past governmental experience.  The Obama campaign has selected John Podesta, current head of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff during the Clinton Administration.  The McCain campaign will rely on John Lehman, a former Secretary of the Navy and member of the 9/11 Commission.

The point worth noting is the absence of science or technology positions in the Post’s reporting.  Given the series of reports released by The National Academies on the need to make these appointments quickly, and at least one campaign’s indication that they’d read the latest report, this momentum should be seized.  Science and technology advocates should pause for a moment in beating their heads against the wall over the budget and target the campaigns on taking the science and technology appointments seriously and acting quickly.

In the coming weeks a monumental decision will be made that will influence the future evolution of global climate policies. A single country has in its power the ability to alter the course of global negotiations and change the dynamics of a political debate characterized by gridlock. That country is . . .

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