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Big Fracking Deal
CPR asked three student groups on campus to discuss the increasingly more visible practice of hydrofracking and its possible effects on the environment, the energy sector, and the American economy.
Environmental
It’s Not Easy Being Green
A trained doctor, Jill says that she views running for office as “practicing political medicine” because “it’s the mother of all illnesses.” Columbia Political Review’s George Joseph talks with Stein what she would do about Wall Street and the economy, education policy, and WikiLeaks if she were one day elected president.
Diplomacy on Ice
Antarctica is home to more than emperor penguins and a few dozen humans with science citizenship barricaded in small hermetic bases. It is also host to an estimated 200 billion barrels of hydrocarbons, alongside large quantities of gold, silver, uranium, and many other rare metals underneath a pristine ice cap still virgin of commercial exploitation. Securing a territory with such a rich underground, in whole or in part, would bless any country with durable energy security and, thereby, increased political independence in the international arena.
That Sinking Feeling
While public concern about global warming has waned in recent years, ever-more scientific evidence shows that climate change is a grave and growing nightmare. Among problematic signs are the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps at an increasing rate, and the corresponding rise in sea levels. While perhaps a distant concern both geographically and temporally for much of the [...]
The Day After Copenhagen
With movies like The Day After Tomorrow depicting the apocalyptic consequences of global warming, the issue of climate change has since transformed from being simply a “Hollywood problem” to a reality we must confront. Global warming deniers have long since been discredited, and an urgency to address climate change has heightened in policy spheres and also in the public imagination. It is the unfortunate fact that climate change is not an issue that can be simply tackled by one well-meaning individual or even one nation. Maintaining the sustainability of our planet is a collective responsibility, because it affects us all. An effective and lasting solution—or, at the very least, a hope of one—can only be reached through global consensus. The Copenhagen climate summit that will take place early this month provides an opportunity for nations to collectively define the direction of climate change policy over the next few decades.
Environmental Justice
In the coming years, will we see environmental preservation as a new approach of state policy directed at preventing and resolving conflict?
The Corn Conundrum
If you are what you eat, then America is corn. It’s in just about everything we eat: soda, ketchup, English muffins, breakfast cereal, cookies, crackers, ice cream, BBQ sauce… hell, even cough syrup. It feeds the cattle that go into your hamburger. And now it’s going into our gas tanks as ethanol.
The Nuclear Option
The nuclear industry, despite a rough patch in the past few decades, may be poised for a major renaissance. As the prices of conventional fuels such as coal and natural gas skyrocket, nuclear power has become increasingly attractive to utilities looking for stable operating costs, environmentally friendly sources of energy, and insurance against geopolitical threats to energy security. Finally, in an era of rising concern over energy security, the nuclear industry is being promoted as a domestic solution to the nation’s demand for imported energy.
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