Common Resources

Resources Magazine: Praying for Wind: Pollution Solution?

Before the wheels touched down last March at Beijing’s spectacular airport, we could smell the pollution. Burning eyes, raspy throats, and persistent coughing got our attention faster than smart phone apps which registered particulate levels (PM 2.5) off the charts—15 times worse than the World Health Organization’s acceptable standard. We were lucky. The levels had […]

EPA’s Methane Announcement: Connecting Some Dots

EPA issued a long-awaited statement today on its intentions to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas extraction, processing and transmission sectors 40-45 percent of 2012 emissions by 2025. While EPA had begun to tackle emissions from new wells, and plans to continue down this road in the future (albeit by regulating methane directly […]

Brazil Takes a Turn for - What?

A recent Bloomberg View article (“Brazil Puts a Denier in Charge of Climate Change,” January 7) draws a sharp contrast between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s September UN General Assembly reference to climate change as “one of the greatest challenges of our times” and a just-announced appointment to her cabinet. A slightly edited version of my […]

Prioritizing Policies for Biodiversity Conservation: A new RFF Press Book

Poverty, political instability, and natural disasters are just a few of the problems facing Latin America and the Caribbean. So it’s not surprising that policymakers devote limited resources to conserving the region’s biodiversity—even if it is, by all accounts, exceptionally rich and valuable. But that’s exactly why those scarce conservation resources need to be deployed […]

Treatment of New Natural Gas under the Clean Power Plan

This is the tenth in a series of questions that highlights RFF’s Expert Forum on EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Readers are invited to submit their own comments to the questions and/or the responses using the “Leave a Comment” box below. See all of the questions to date here. RFF asks the experts: Should EPA modify how it […]

The Future of the Endangered Species Act: Challenges, Opportunities, and Partnerships

Over the last year, RFF began hosting a series of meetings between the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), NGOs, and the business community to discuss future species listing and recovery decisions under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). One goal is to take stock of the ESA’s many strengths and successes over the 40 years […]

New York State Fracking Ban: Gov. Cuomo Follows “Precautionary Principle”

New York State’s Governor Cuomo today issued a ruling, backed by a long awaited report on the public health implications of “high volume hydraulic fracturing for shale gas development,” to ban the practice in New York State. The report is as important for what it does not find as what it does. It does not […]

Falling Oil Prices and US Economic Activity

Weak demand and abundant supply are behind the recent trend in oil prices, which have fallen by more than $50 per barrel since June. This event is not unprecedented—in fact, the conditions associated with the 2014 crude price drop are very similar to those surrounding a similar drop during 1985 and 1986. In both cases, oil conservation […]

Resources Magazine: Developing Policies to Combat Invasive Species

Global trade—and now global warming—are making the problem of invasive species ever more challenging. From surveillance to cooperative management, Rebecca Epanchin-Niell explores options to control these damaging invaders. In 1909, Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki presented the US government with 2,000 young cherry trees to be planted around Washington, DC’s tidal basin. The gift was part of a […]

Fracking in Focus: A Look at Voluntary Environmental Information Disclosure and Firm Size

The potential environmental risks posed by fracturing fluids—usually some mixture of chemicals and water—make hydraulic fracturing a highly controversial industrial process. These risks have prompted many stakeholders to request chemical disclosure reports on the fluids used by well operators. The oil and gas industry has responded by creating a fracturing chemical registry website—www.FracFocus.org—that allows operators […]