Environment & Climate Change

6 Items

ethanol refinery with corn field in foreground

AP Photo/Stephen Groves, File

Analysis & Opinions - The Wall Street Journal

Will Using More Biofuels Be Good for the Environment? Two Experts Square Off.

| Jan. 21, 2023

In its push for greener energy, Washington is giving biofuels a boost. But just how green are they? Daniel Schrag, Co-Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, argued the case for biofuels, opposite Carlisle Ford Runge, who argued against them.

Muriel Rouyer, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook and Robert N. Stavins

Belfer Center/Benn Craig

Analysis & Opinions - Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship

Transatlantic Environmental Policy

| June 03, 2019

As part of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship’s (PETR) 2019 European Election event series, Muriel Rouyer, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Robert N. Stavins, A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development, discussed transatlantic advances in environmental policy, as well as the role the issue of climate change would play in the EU parliament vote taking place on May 23-26, in a conversation with Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of PETR on April 30th, 2019.

Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel speaks at a joint news conference at the White House in February

Michael Kappeler, EPA

Analysis & Opinions

Merkel's Moment of Power and Partnership with America is Right Now

| Feb. 16, 2015

The Future of Diplomacy Project Executive Director, Cathryn Clüver, writes about German leadership and the chance for increased U.S.-German partnership in the face of multiple crises. In this article for Quartz, Clüver argues that dramatic events unfurling around TTIP, ISIS, and Ukraine could spell the "start of a turning tide" in U.S.-German relations under the guidance of "the most powerful woman in the world," German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Los Angeles Times

Analysis & Opinions - Los Angeles Times

Don't Count Out Malthus

July 30, 2007

The great demographer and economist Thomas Malthus was 23 years old the last time a British summer was this rain-soaked, which was in 1789. The consequences of excessive rainfall in the late 18th century were predictable. Crops would fail, the harvest would be dismal, food prices would rise and some people would starve. It was no coincidence that the French Revolution broke out the same year.

Nine years after that summer, Malthus published his "Essay on the Principle of Population." We would do well to reread it today. Malthus' key insight was simple but devastating. "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio," he observed. But "subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." In other words, humanity can increase like the number sequence 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, whereas our food supply can increase no faster than the number sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5