Common Resources

Peak Water, or Peak Water Withdrawals?

A US Geological Survey (USGS) report released last month, “Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2010,” surprised many of us in the water research community. According to the report, about 355 billion gallons of water per day were withdrawn for use during 2010, which represented a 13 percent decrease relative to 2005 […]

Where Falling Oil Prices May Take Us Next

The world economy has seen a 40 percent drop in oil prices since mid-June, partly because of a recent Saudi Arabia decision to not cut oil production in the face of global oversupply. This price drop, should it last more than a few months, raises the issue: Will low prices end or seriously diminish the […]

Land Conservation and Sea Level Rise—Florida Edition

If you’re a fan of crime fiction with a dash of humor, you might have read some of Carl Hiaasen’s books—Skinny Dip, Nature Girl, Paradise Screwed, to name three. If so, you’ve probably noticed Hiaasen’s love of nature, specifically the wild and woolly swamps and back woods of south Florida. In early November, Hiaasen wrote […]

Alternative Compliance Payments under the Clean Power Plan

This is the ninth 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: Could an alternative compliance payment […]

Lifting the Oil Export Ban: A Staged Approach

In the debates surrounding a lifting of the oil export ban, what is sometimes missed is that exceptions—some big, some small—to permit exports have been made for decades. President Reagan issued a finding in 1985 that exports to Canada for consumption in Canada would be in the national interest and such exports began to be […]

US-China Agreement: Benefits of Modest Non-Binding Deal may be Mainly Political

A lot has been written about the new climate agreement between the US and China made at the APEC summit this week. Almost all of it is very positive, framing the agreement as a major policy breakthrough with big impacts on both international climate negotiations and on the climate change problem itself. I confess I’m […]

Carbon Taxes under the Clean Power Plan

This is the eighth 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 allow states to […]

Should we all take a bit of lithium?!

You might have seen the September 13, 2014, New York Times op-ed titled “Should we all take a bit of lithium?” which was the Times‘ 7th most emailed story of the 30 days following its publication. It came to our attention about a week after it was published, when we found a Times-reading friend squeezing […]

Canada–Renewable Energy: Implications for WTO Law on Green and Not-So-Green Subsidies

In the Canada–Renewable Energy/Feed-In Tariff case of 2013, the European Union (EU) and Japan brought a case to the World Trade Organization (WTO) against Canada, questioning the validity of Ontario’s decision to combine a generous feed-in tariff (FIT) with a local content requirement (LCR) promoting the growth of renewable energy-related manufacturing. Under this LCR, the […]

A Look at How the NFIP Differs from a Private Insurance Company

Flood insurance in the United States is offered through the federal National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The 2005 hurricane season sent the program massively into debt to the US Treasury. As the deficit grew, Congress focused its attention on the program’s pricing policies. One focus was on the roughly 20 percent of policyholders who pay […]