In addition, I think “Natural Resource and Environmental Economics” at the Fletcher School is a great class to take if you’re interested in climate change, energy, and environmental policy in general. If you’re a UEP student, you could look into taking it instead of the required UEP economics course (although I did not do this…).

Boston (CBS) – Experts say the threat of a rising sea level is very real to downtown Boston’s buildings and future development. Some business owners are already preparing for trouble.

Lisa Van Der Pool of the Boston Business Journal reports this poses a threat to Boston real estate that could cost millions.

The key is that not only is the threat real, but it’s really growing. Because of several different factors, like melting glaciers and climate change, the sea level is expected to rise gradually in the coming decades, putting buildings on Boston’s waterfront at severe risk of being flooded.

The forecast calls for the sea level to rise 2.5-feet to 5-feet between the next 40 to 90 years. The worst fear is that the sea level will rise and a severe storm will hit, and not only downtown Boston will flood, but surrounding areas like Cambridge will flood too.

Boston businesses are taking this very seriously and paying attention to it. The Boston Harbor Association had a meeting about the rising sea level in November.

A recent report from the World Wildlife Fund found that rising sea levels could put $463 billion in Boston assets at risk by 2050. A new development, a $3 billion Seaport Square project on Boston’s waterfront, is expected to have protections against severe flooding, and according to the BRA it’s the first time that such a large project is putting in such protections.

Obviously it’s going to be building owners and developers who are really concerned about this type of thing, but some environmental experts are worried that because the average time to own a large building in downtown Boston is less than 10 years, that some owners might not be willing to invest in protection against current buildings.

“…[F]rom the perspective of global warming, it doesn’t matter whether Washington uses less coal if China and Korea use more of it. Greenhouse gas emissions anywhere contribute to global warming everywhere. So, if Washington is serious about fighting global warming, should it ship coal to Asia?

State officials in Washington aren’t willing to ban the practice. Still, the coal export debate in Washington represents a hard test of how far a state should extend its environmental principles into global commerce — and a test of whether states can take meaningful action against global warming without national or international help.”

“So the joke begins like this: An economist, a lawyer and a professor of marketing walk into a room. What’s the punch line? They were three of the five “expert witnesses” Republicans called for last week’s Congressional hearing on climate science.

But the joke actually ended up being on the Republicans, when one of the two actual scientists they invited to testify went off script.

Prof. Richard Muller of Berkeley, a physicist who has gotten into the climate skeptic game, has been leading the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, an effort partially financed by none other than the Koch foundation. And climate deniers — who claim that researchers at NASA and other groups analyzing climate trends have massaged and distorted the data — had been hoping that the Berkeley project would conclude that global warming is a myth.

Instead, however, Professor Muller reported that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend ‘very similar to that reported by the prior groups.’”

“Think Energy Efficiency isn’t Working? Think Again”
http://www.grist.org/energy-efficiency/2011-04-02-think-energy-efficiency-isnt-working-think-again

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/03/30/Senate-to-vote-on-stopping-emissions-rules/UPI-62971301472000/

http://e360.yale.edu/digest/us_loses_ground_in_clean-energy_investments/2873/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/science/earth/11climate.html