Living the Change

Eminent Domain & Economic Development

Urban Flaneur — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:10:00 GMT

Local executive and legislative offices become often contentious with each other and with the public over redevelopment projects all across US cities and communities. Governments all around the world are legally allowed to use the power of “eminent domain”, government’s legal authority to seize private property for a public purpose, or what we often hear as “economic development.” In most cases, the only remaining and negotiable item to be discussed is the compensation for the private property owners for their property.

According to Wikipedia:

The U.S. Supreme Court has largely given the public use requirement an expansive interpretation and has allowed takings of private property for reconveyance to other private parties, or in some cases by private parties directly, on the theory that the new owners will put the taken land to more lucrative uses that are likely to generate more tax revenues. This is known as "economic redevelopment." It uses eminent domain to enable acquitre and then convey land to commercial development or redevelopment to increase tax revenues. The Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), affirmed the majority decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court and allowed such takings, was heavily publicized in the media. This increased awareness of eminent domain post-Kelo, inspired a great public outcry. Several states have enacted or are considering state legislation that would drastically restrict the state's own power of eminent domain. The Supreme Courts of Illinois, Michigan (County of Wayne v. Hathcock)(2004)[1], and Ohio (Norwood, Ohio v. Horney)(2006) have recently ruled to disallow such takings under their state constitutions.

I understand that in growing and expanding cities like NYC, local governments must play a role in fostering such growths by creating appropriate opportunities for economic development. But how and who decides the need for government intervention? Some cities, like Anaheim, stayed away from abusing the powers of eminent domain by deciding to respect the rights of private property and readjusting the policies so that the market economy can dictate any changes to land use. In other words, when Anaheim was faced with the decision to redevelop parts of their City, their Mayor and City Council decided to make their rezoning process and other land use policies more transparent and flexible for the public.

In NYC, many business and homeowners are fighting the Mayor’s eminent domain powers and the NYC Economic Development Corporation. Here are some interesting blogs:

http://duffieldst.blogspot.com/2007/07/organizing-against-eminent-domain-abuse.html

http://www.nolandgrab.org/

What’s also interesting is that according to a study by the Institute for Justice, “in 24 years, 2,532 projects were carried out in 992 cities that displaced one million people, two-thirds of them African American.” Eminent domain and economic development often results in the displacement of minority businesses and minority homeowners. Part of our democratic idealism pushes our government to practice equitable policies and assist the underserved, not displace them.

Do you think governments should use eminent domain? Take this poll.

How Foreign Governments Impact Domestic Race Relations

Urban Flaneur — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:47:00 GMT

Today, I had the pleasure of having lunch with a high-ranking diplomat from an Asian country who spent several years in the states and he had quite an opinion about domestic politics and race relations. His main message to me was how he despised the neighboring Asian countries and how disappointed he is at the immigrants in the states (particularly NYC) for not having pride and moving towards excessive collaboration with other Asian races. In other words, his countrymen and countrywomen are at an identity crisis and according to him, we are losing our sense of identify and should have more pride.

This diplomat went even further deriding a local Asian politician because that politician did not belong to the same Asian background. I wonder if he would carry the same level of disrespect and distrust for a non-Asian politician …

Now, because I come from a very diverse background and education, and excelled in heterogeneous environments all my life, this kind of bigotry has little effect in my outlook in life. However, these diplomats with high-ranking status have significant impact and influence over the first and older generations, and consequently have an impact on how the first generations raise the next cohort of generations. Instead of appreciating and learning from diversity, foreign government officials come here to divide us and fuel a certain level of animosity and even hatred.

Taking this to another level (perhaps to the point of conspiracy theory), what if foreign government officials are asked to come here to perpetuate and instigate divisive race relations? After all, the creative spirit that is the backbone of this country’s preeminent status comes from individuals’ ability to collaborate and learn from different cultures. Two heads are always better than one.

Gun Control, Mental Health and Programmatic Failures

Urban Flaneur — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:02:00 GMT

April 19, 2007

I am still in disbelief and in shock about the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech. I am also enraged that a mentally disturbed individual inhumanely gunned down 32 innocent people. Trying to move forward from this, I am compelled to start this blog to collect as many insights from the grooted community about the critical areas that policymakers and community leaders must focus on for near- and long-term planning.

First, a response to the perpetual argument by the NRA – “not guns that kill people, it’s the people that kill people” and other arguments such as that media sensationalizes gunplay and disregards the times when guns save lives … It is the role of government and societal structure to provide the safest environment for the citizens. Protecting the public good is the first priority of all levels of government and there isn’t a more urgent societal need than gun control. This society must let go of the notion that it’s a “gun culture” and must start implementing stricter gun sale policies.

Secondly, I remember when I started my career in advertising, I was assigned to do the market potential for anti-depressants among Asian populations, particularly in the female Asian demographics. The rationale for this was the company’s recognition for profit in the Asian population. They realized that due to cultural reasons, many Asian families did not treat mental disease as an illness; instead, they saw it as a sign of weakness. In fact, mental illnesses are ranked first among all illnesses that cause disability in the US and many Americans do not believe their condition can be treated (www.afsp.org)

I hated the notion of exploiting the need for a social good to make profit so I switched my career path and found myself in public service. And now, I have a well-rounded picture of what the need is when it comes to mental health in minority & Asian populations: It’s about accessibility, education and outreach.

As we move forward from this, we need to mourn for the tragic deaths of innocent victims and start mobilizing our attention towards what policymakers and community members must do to prevent any more future tragedies. We need better policies and programs that fund grounded nonprofits that can reach the underserved communities. We need better understanding within ethnic cultures of mental illness. And we need our federal and state elected officials to stop playing the numbers game and accept the fact that we need to take away the guns that are fueling violence and crime in this country.

Is money the solution to all societal problems?

Urban Flaneur — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:14:00 GMT

Should the government give financial incentives for people in poverty to change their behavior? For instance, if a poverty-stricken individual sticks with his job for over three months, should he receive a monetary award from the City? Or better yet, should higher school attendance rate result in cash in one’s pockets?

I think this issue is more of a norm-setting question than a policy issue. Mayor Bloomberg is testing the role of government in society with this pilot program (see NY Times article below for specifics). How about improving the City’s social services and helping families fight the “culture of poverty” through consistent and caring consultations?

On the other hand, this approach is much better than Giuliani’s regulatory approach of just putting the poor in jail.

What do you think??

March 30, 2007

New York City to Reward Poor for Doing Right Thing

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/nyregion/30poverty.html

By DIANE CARDWELL

Seeking new solutions to New York’s vexingly high poverty rates, the city is moving ahead with an ambitious experiment that will pay poor families up to $5,000 a year to meet goals like attending parent-teacher conferences, going for a medical checkup or holding down a full-time job, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday.

Under the program, which is based on a similar effort in Mexico, parents would receive payments every two months for family members meeting any of a series of criteria. The payments could range from $25 for exemplary attendance in elementary school to $300 for a high score on an important exam, city officials said.

The officials said the program was the first of its kind in the country.

The project, first announced in the fall. was scheduled to begin as a pilot program in September with 2,500 randomly selected families whose progress will be tracked against another 2,500 randomly selected families who will not get the rewards. Officials planned to draw the families from six of the poorest communities in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

To be eligible, families must have at least one child entering fourth, seventh or ninth grade and a household income of 130 percent or less of the federal poverty level, which equals roughly $20,000 for a single parent with two children.

The city has already raised $42 million of the $50 million needed to cover the initial program’s cost from private sources, including Mr. Bloomberg. If it proves successful, the mayor said, the city will attempt to create a permanent program financed by the government.

Likening the payments, known as conditional cash transfers, to tax incentives that steer people of greater means toward property ownership, Mr. Bloomberg said that the approach was intended to help struggling families who often focus on basic daily survival make better long-term decisions and break generational cycles of poverty and dependence.

“In the private sector, financial incentives encourage actions that are good for the company: working harder, hitting sales targets or landing more clients,” the mayor said in an announcement at a health services center in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

“In the public sector, we believe that financial incentives will encourage actions that are good for the city and its families: higher attendance in schools, more parental involvement in education and better career skills.”

Since Mr. Bloomberg outlined the plan last fall, reaction among antipoverty experts and advocates has been mixed, with some hailing it as an innovative approach that could become a powerful model for the rest of the country and ultimately win the support of the federal government.

Indeed, the program is being financed by several high-profile organizations, including the Rockefeller, Starr and Robin Hood Foundations, as well as the Open Society Institute and the insurance and financial firm American International Group.

The Rockefeller and Starr Foundations are donating $10 million each, while the Open Society Institute is giving $5 million and A.I.G. is donating $2 million. A spokeswoman for the Robin Hood Foundation did not return calls or an e-mail message, and Mr. Bloomberg’s spokesman, Stu Loeser, declined to say how much the mayor contributed.

Some antipoverty advocates have bristled at what they see as the condescending notion that poor people need to be told how to raise their families. Others have focused on the broader economic issues at play.

“It is encouraging that the mayor believes there’s a public role for addressing intergenerational poverty, inequality and economic mobility,” said Margy Waller, a former Clinton administration adviser who is a co-founder of Inclusion, a research and policy group based in Washington.

“What is troubling is the focus on personal behavior as the solution to what is at least in part a problem of the economy,” she said. “Given what we know about the growth of low-wage jobs and the shrinking of the middle class, it will be, in fact, impossible to bring more people into the middle class unless we improve the labor market as well.”

A similar concern seems to have emerged with Mexico’s program, known as Oportunidades, which is now 10 years old, has a budget of more than $3 billion a year and covers nearly one-fourth of all Mexicans.

Intended to replace the food subsidies that had dominated much of Mexico’s antipoverty efforts, the program offers cash stipends to families to keep their children in school and take them for regular checkups. Parents must also attend regular talks on issues including health, nutrition and family planning.

Outside evaluations have found that the program has been successful in raising school attendance and nutrition levels and that the percentage of Mexicans living in extreme poverty has fallen.

Still, there are questions about how much more effective the program can be in lifting large numbers of people permanently out of poverty, in part because jobs are lacking.

In January, Santiago Levy, one of the program’s creators and a former undersecretary of finance in Mexico, said at the Brookings Institution in Washington that even if the program were 100 percent effective, it alone could not solve the problem.

“Now’s he’s out with a high school degree, a healthy man: Is he going to get a job or migrate to the U.S.?” he said.

But others see cause for optimism in the results of Mexico’s program and similar ones in other Latin American countries. In Nicaragua, for example, primary school enrollment rates grew to 90 percent from 68 percent; in Colombia, secondary school enrollment in urban areas rose to 78 percent from 64 percent, said Laura Rawlings, a World Bank specialist who has studied the programs, which she said are active or being created in nearly 20 countries.

The idea to try the program in New York has its roots in the broad attack on poverty that Mr. Bloomberg has made a high-profile cause for his second term. Roughly one in five New Yorkers lives in poverty, according to the Community Service Society of New York.

In keeping with the administration’s emphasis on outcomes, city officials say they will closely monitor the test group’s progress against that of the control group with the help of M.D.R.C., a nonprofit policy research organization involved in the program’s design.

All 5,000 families will be asked to agree to participate in the program before knowing which group they are in, said Gordon Berlin, the president of M.D.R.C., and those not receiving benefits will be paid a nominal fee to submit to monitoring and surveys, he said.

Officials expect that some of the control families will inevitably drop out, but Mr. Berlin said that in conducting similar experiments in the past, he had found that most were willing to participate even without the benefits because they were informed that it would help guide a government policy decision in which they had a stake.

The families receiving the benefits will be given a list of goals they are expected to meet, as well as the values assigned to them. They will also get a “passport” for documenting the completion of tasks that are not automatically reported elsewhere, said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor overseeing the effort.

The city is working with state and federal officials, Ms. Gibbs said, to make sure that families do not lose other benefits because of the grants.

Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Mexico City.

achieving "greener" airports

Urban Flaneur — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:15:00 GMT

In January 2007, Los Angeles Council Member Rosendahl (http://www.lacity.org/council/cd11/) issued a vision statement on his blog to achieve the "greenest" airport (LAX) in Los Angeles – see below for an excerpt. Since the federal government and authorities have the legislative power and oversight over airports, local elected officials are often left acting as advocates instead of policy makers. So when it comes to making our massive transportation infrastructures across the country more environmentally friendly, we have to abide by a top-down political system, instead of having direct access to change at the local fronts.

Do you think local legislative bodies and governments should have more power to monitor airports?

My Vision: A "Green" LAX by Councilman Bill Rosendahl

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is the gateway to our City. It forms the first impression millions of travelers develop of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it is also a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change, and a source of pollution that our residents endure on a daily basis.

I strongly believe that LAX should be held to the highest environmental standards and become the "greenest" airport in the world. To help achieve this goal, I introduced a motion to the City Council last October for LAX to develop an aggressive 10-year program to make this vision a reality.

What is my vision of "greening" LAX? One in which our airport significantly reduces its greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. An airport that maximizes water and energy conservation measures. An airport that incorporates a comprehensive recycling program.

To implement this goal, I called for this 10-year strategy to include, but not be limited to the following objectives:

- Completing the Green Line extension to LAX; reducing thousands of car trips by employees, vendors and travelers;
- Reducing carbon dioxide levels to the year 2000 levels by 2010, in line with the Executive Order signed by Governor Schwarzenegger;
- Requiring new construction projects to meet the highest sustainable building standards (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED), which will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing energy use in building, cooling, heating and lighting at LAX;
- Maximizing the use of reclaimed water, both within buildings and for landscaping;
- Developing a comprehensive strategy to clean and reuse stormwater runoff; and
- Development of a long-range plan for a carbon neutral footprint by 2030.

I am excited to see that the Board of Airport Commissioners was spurred to action by my motion, and will be considering a motion of their own at their next meeting which incorporates some of the issues I have raised. I look forward to working with them to ensure that the full complement of issues needed to green LAX are considered.

The City of Los Angeles needs to show leadership on reducing global warming and redouble our efforts to be good stewards of the environment. Transforming LAX into the greenest airport in the world is a huge step in this direction; one that will not only benefit the citizens of Los Angeles, but help in the global fight against climate change.

Global Poverty & Microfinance

Urban Flaneur — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:26:00 GMT

Last week, one of my good friends and fellow social entrepreneur Carolyn Chen from NYU Stern invited me to their annual global business conference (2/23/07). Although the day featured extraordinary leaders from every facet of life, I was mostly interested in the "Profits and the Poor" panel.

This panel included senior level officers from ACCION International, Kiva.org, Aspen's Institute's Business and Society Program, and Pro Mujer. The Grameen Foundation backed out last minute. For my day-job at the NYC Council, I've been researching the various types of microfinancing, the structures of microfinance institutions (for both domestic & international), and the ways local and global government bodies can help leverage more resources for MFIs.

I walked away from this event with two very interesting facts: 1) Even within the "poor" demographics, only a handful MFIs target the lower segment (such as Pro Mujer www.pro-mujer.org); and 2) It seems like structurally, different MFI models are not serving the unserved, or trying to meet the unmet demand, but rather they are overlapping each other's targeted clients.

grooted path method (gpm)

Urban Flaneur — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:17:00 GMT

there is a glaring contradiction in the world of environmental progressivism and deriving at sustainable solutions. Corporations and governments are calling upon each other and the public to take global warming and climate control more serious now than ever. As a result, environmental awareness is at its peak and people are starting to feel the urgency of the matter.

The challenge lies in framing the approach and execution ...

In a time of crisis and/or urgency, the critical path method towards the end result is derived through a top-down way. In other words, when there's a strong demand for an answer and a direction, the leadership at the top usually will take ownership of the situation and the success is measured by how efficiently (usually meaning the quickest) the tasks are completed. But the problem here is that the solution can't be episodic and it can't be solved by merely a top agenda.

In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg has revealed the NYC 2030 plan and started to build a groundUP coaltion, and I think, is a good illustration of raising consciousness and mobilizing the stakeholders while tapping into the technology by using the web to engage everyone: http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/

Despite the pressing environmental situation, the only way to tackle the problem is to find a sustainable coaltion.

grooted solution ...

The Critical Path Method ("CPM") model takes a scientific approach to project management and pushes for the most efficient way to reach the end goal. However, when the end result itself is to reach a sustainable environment, a different approach must be considered in effecting change.

The grooted Path Method ("GPM") counters the CPM by simply adding more "flex time" to the slack time *this is for all the MPAs and MBAs reading this* ... this will lead to more time between each task to reassess and reevaluate the "groundUP" status. Also, the GPM will require the project managers to clearly identify all the stakeholders before any task has been undertaken.

Right now, I'm working on the GPM matrix system that can tangibly measure the status of mobilization and the "buy-ins" ... let me know if you have any suggestions.

changing the public's behavior for public good

Urban Flaneur — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 07:00:00 GMT

In many public agenda-setting and policy passing spaces in every level of government, elected officials and decision makers (community leaders, private sector interest groups, etc.) will try to introduce a policy that requires the public to shift their sense of societal norm. When the government concludes that certain issues are an imminent problem that can affect the mass population, a solution, within the purview of legislation, might be introduced. Now the real interesting thing here are the categories of possible solutions and also how that solution ultimately reflects the politician or decision maker's ideology.

Basically, there are three main types of solutions to any public problem: 1) Create a set of incentives to change people's behavior; 2) place regulations so the appropriate agency can enforce them; and 3) change people's actions through taxation. Which path is the most effective? It depends on the situation, the time, the "norm" of that time, the severity of the problem, and lastly, the politician's values.

The traditional way to approaching any of the said solutions lies in a top-down agenda setting process. In order to get your issue heard, you must have the access to the right people, be at the right place at the right time, and it doesn't hurt to have a few dollars you can spend on a lobbyst.

this is where grooted offers a refreshing take on this model. Why can't we leverage the beauty of modern technology and the creativity of the young leadership to reverse this process? One possible rebuttal is that it will take too long to get anything done. Cultural revolutions and societal norms can change through slow and patient chain of reactions but the top-down advocates may argue that in urgent situations, the grooted way will not suffice.

Ten years ago, this argument might have had some teeth but now, especially amidst our ingrained way of maximizing technology to be efficient and effective, the grooted-groundUP way is not only the democratic way of resolving issues but also a more powerful and sustainable way of effecting true change.

what do you think??

Change for the Better and the Hurdles

Urban Flaneur — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 07:30:00 GMT

When we need and demand global to local change, due to the recent internet-driven culture, the X and post-X generations approach the process of change with an impatient attitute. In our internet, e-mail, blackberry world, instantaneous gratification has become a way of life and we forget to even reflect on our own short-tempered behavior.

Well, grooted offers a solution to this dilemma. Change must be accepted as a grooted process amidst the modern crossroads. One individual can't effect the change she envisions until she can practice a grooted way of life. The idea of one individual, no matter how righteous or inspirational, having an impossible hurdle of leading any change has existed since Platonic times. The Allegory of the Cave is a great example when one person who knew the truth about fire (symbolic representation of truth and knowledge) who attempted to spread this truth but ended up being killed by his community.

In order to overcome this hurdle, we must now confront the internet jaded, instananeous gratification way of living with a grooted philosophy.

Being grooted in making change means maximizing our technology to create a collective empowerment, whereby one individual does not have to risk death for attempting change.

follow up to public-private 2.0

Urban Flaneur — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:28:00 GMT

In my previous entry I touched on global warming and environmental policy as the critical path towards a public-private collaborative model. Copied below is a great article from the NY Times today that looks at global warming from an economic perspective and imposes pricing to affect social behavior.

At the grooted-level, where I spend the majority of my time, I am currently studying congestion pricing in NYC and whether this is a viable solution to alleviate the worsening impact of traffic congestion and gridlock. Basically, congestion pricing is based on the premise that market demand/supply principles can control people's behavior as they choose to either pay a fee to drive within a congestion charging area or attempt to take public transit. The environmental and economic arguments are clear in this case: Traffic = pollution = declining economy. However, the unforeseen factors of a policy like congestion pricing leads to the grooted repercussions and consequences. In other words, this type of enforcement will impact the ground-level communities such as working class families outside of Manhattan, or away frompublic transit, that must rely on personal vehicles for commuting.

So the main point here is that the solutions, claims, and answers by experts may not reflect or take into consideration the grooted effects. In the case of congestion pricing, it is imperative that before such drastic enforcement take place, local governments must provide a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis that will consider the grooted mass.

December 12, 2006

The Energy Challenge
The Cost of an Overheated Planet

By STEVE LOHR

The iconic culprit in global warming is the coal-fired power plant. It burns the dirtiest, most carbon-laden of fuels, and its smokestacks belch millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.

So it is something of a surprise that James E. Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, a coal-burning utility in the Midwest and the Southeast, has emerged as an unexpected advocate of federal regulation that would for the first time impose a cost for emitting carbon dioxide. But he has his reasons.

“Climate change is real, and we clearly believe we are on a route to mandatory controls on carbon dioxide,” Mr. Rogers said. “And we need to start now because the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive this is going to be.”

Global warming is not only an environmental hazard, but also a great challenge for economic policy. Without economic incentives, analysts say, the needed investments in industrial cleanup, innovative low-carbon technologies, fuel-efficient cars and other ways of reducing energy waste will not occur.

Mr. Rogers’s stance is far from universal within the power industry, but it has surprising support, particularly from those, like him, who also produce electricity from carbon-free nuclear reactors.

And despite the Bush administration’s adamant opposition to any limits on fossil fuel emissions, the idea is beginning to pick up momentum in the American political arena as well. Already, California has adopted a policy aimed at reducing the state’s contribution to global warming by 25 percent in the next 14 years.

In Washington, several influential lawmakers, including Senator John McCain, a leading Republican contender for president in 2008, have introduced legislation intended to limit the nation’s carbon dioxide output.

But how would those goals be achieved? Global warming can be seen as a classic “market failure,” and many economists, environmental experts and policy makers agree that the single largest cause of that failure is that in most of the world, there is no price placed on spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Yet it is increasingly clear that there is a considerable cost to carbon dioxide emissions, especially to future generations, as climate specialists warn of declines in farm output in poor tropical countries, fiercer hurricanes and coastal floods that could make many people refugees.

Price List for Polluting

“Setting a real price on carbon emissions is the single most important policy step to take,” said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. “Pricing is the way you get both the short-term gains through efficiency and the longer-term gains from investments in research and switching to cleaner fuels.”

Some academics see an analogy between a global warming policy and the pursuit of national security in the cold war. In the late 1950s, American military spending reached as high as 10 percent of the gross domestic product and averaged about 4 percent, far higher than in any previous peacetime era. A Soviet nuclear attack was a danger but hardly a certainty, just as the predicted catastrophes from global warming are threats but not certainties.

“The issues are similar in that you pay now so things are less risky in the future — it’s an insurance policy,” said Richard Cooper, a Harvard economist. “And in the cold war, we taxed ourselves fairly highly to mitigate that threat.”

What makes such a view more than a conceptual argument is that executives like Mr. Rogers, who is also chairman of the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group whose members provide 60 percent of the nation’s electric power, are also pushing for a carbon dioxide-pricing policy to reduce the risk to their companies.

They say that only with some sort of federal policy in place — which would probably take the form of a tax on carbon dioxide waste from any source, or a “cap and trade” regulatory system — will it become clear what carbon cleanup or fuel-switching moves their companies may have to make, and on what sort of timetable.

Investors in alternative energy projects also emphasize the need to set policy priorities.

“We need a policy framework for the long term,” said Vinod Khosla, a leading environment-oriented venture capitalist. “Fifteen years is the minimum horizon of stability that we need.”

Beyond incentives for business, a national global warming policy should include increased federal spending on research on futuristic technologies to curb carbon emissions, advocates say.

Combating global warming, they say, will require over-the-horizon breakthroughs involving safe nuclear energy, hydrogen power and advanced carbon sequestration — or technologies that have not yet been imagined.

But even today, there are sizable opportunities, by insisting on more efficient energy use, that are not being seized, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. In a new report, the institute, a business-oriented research group that is part of McKinsey & Company consultants, estimated that the yearly growth in worldwide energy demand could be cut by more than half through 2020 — to an annual rate of 0.6 percent from a forecast 2.2 percent, using current technology alone.

Available steps that would yield a more productive, and efficient, use of energy include compact fluorescent lighting, improved insulation on new buildings, reduced standby power requirements and an accelerated push for appliance-efficiency standards.

All these moves, McKinsey said, would save money for consumers and businesses. “We were really surprised by these huge straightforward opportunities that are not being taken,” said Diana Farrell, the McKinsey Global Institute’s director. “In some senses, there is a big market failure.”

Energy efficiency can help slow the pace at which the risk from global warming risk increases, but it cannot reverse the trend alone. In the very long term, environmental experts say, the world’s economy needs a technological transformation, from deriving 90 percent of its energy from fossil fuels today to being largely free of emissions from fossil fuels by 2100, through cleanup steps or alternative energy sources.

Science and Uncertainty

Given all the uncertainties, the scientists and economists who design and run simulations of global warming policy acknowledge that their work is at best a tool for thinking about climate change issues.

Still, they tend to agree that over the next 50 years, the cost of slowing and eventually reversing carbon emissions growth will be 1 to 2 percent of global economic output. They assume the focus over those years will be mainly on efficiency and cleaning up electricity generation.

In later years, their cost projections become more varied, ranging from 1 percent to as high as 16 percent of global output, depending on assumptions about how difficult it will be to wean the world’s vehicle fleet from fossil fuels, and to make other technological leaps.

“Going past 2050, the cleverness really has to kick in,” said John M. Reilly, an economist at the M.I.T. Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

A global warming policy would be shaped first by science and social values, before economics. A sensible goal, according to many environmental specialists, is to try to avert a doubling or more of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in this century.

“This is not something that goes on inside a computer, but a grand political calculation,” said Stephen H. Schneider, a climate expert at Stanford University.

Yet even in realms of social policy, where uncertainty is high, there is an implicit calculation of costs and benefits. In the case of global warming, the cost of society’s insurance policy may well be worth it, measured in the damage averted.

But it will not be cheap. Take the experts’ consensus estimate that curbing carbon dioxide emissions over the next 50 years will, on average, cost about 1 percent of global economic activity annually.

It seems a modest figure. Yet in today’s terms, 1 percent of the United States economy is more than $120 billion a year, or $400 a person.

Put another way, $120 billion is about equal to the Bush administration’s tax cuts in 2001; it is also roughly the amount spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year.

“There’s no easy way around the fact that if global warming is a serious risk, there will be serious costs,” said W. David Montgomery, an economist at Charles River Associates, a consulting group.

A price on carbon dioxide emissions, most economists agree, would be the most efficient way to combat global warming. And the price, they say, should start small to give industries time to adapt, then ratchet up over the years to encourage long-term investments in energy saving, carbon cleanup and new technology.

The two methods of pricing carbon are to charge a tax on each ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the air, or to place a cap on total emissions and then let polluters trade permits to emit a ton of carbon dioxide.

Economists like William D. Nordhaus of Yale and Mr. Cooper of Harvard advocate a tax as the clearest price signal to the energy marketplace, and less susceptible to political tampering and market manipulation than a cap-and-trade system. It could also be used to raise revenue to offset other taxes.

In a recent paper, Mr. Cooper suggested an initial tax around $14 a ton of carbon dioxide emitted, which he calculated would translate roughly into a 100 percent tax on coal and add 12 cents to each gallon of gasoline. Such a tax would raise as much as $80 billion a year in the United States.

“There’s nothing sacred about the number,” he said, “but you need to get a significant price into the system to create the incentive for people to go out and look for solutions.”

A Quota or a Tax?

Economically, a cap-and-trade system has the same goal as a tax, putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions, but goes about it differently. A limit would be placed on overall emissions, with polluters allocated permits. Then, companies able to go below their emission targets would be allowed to sell their unused “permits to pollute” to companies that could not.

A cap-and-trade system also has some political advantages. It can deflect the anger over higher costs and enable governments to use their allocations to essentially buy political support, since permits are the equivalent of cash. Big polluters, who will have to invest most to clean up, could be granted extra allowances in the early years of the program to subsidize their investments.

In the United States, caps and trading have a record of success in combating acid rain, which is caused by sulfur dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power plants.

“People said it was a crazy idea, too complicated and too regulatory,” said Richard L. Schmalensee, an M.I.T. economist who was an economic adviser to the first President Bush when the sulfur emissions program was designed. “But the lesson learned was that a cap-and-trade system can work.”

The global warming legislative proposals before Congress — including one sponsored by Senator McCain and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, and another by Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico — envision cap-and-trade systems.

But the challenge of controlling carbon emissions is far greater than sulfur. Carbon dioxide is a pervasive byproduct of the economy, and the polluters are many and varied. Once emitted, carbon dioxide is vexingly long-lived in the environment.

The early struggles of the European Union’s carbon emission trading system, set up last year, point to the administrative and political difficulties. The European governments, responding to lobbying by domestic businesses, handed out permits that exceeded the emissions that most companies were already putting into the air. When that became clear in April, the market price of carbon dioxide emissions fell by half.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who will soon take the chair of the Senate environment committee, has pledged to push Congress to impose a price on carbon dioxide emissions, as the Europeans have done.

Yet without coordinated international action, even if the United States — the largest source of carbon emissions — reined them in, this would have only limited effect on global warming. China is on track to surpass the United States as the leading emitter of carbon dioxide by 2009, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency.

“Unless China and India are brought in, it won’t matter much what the developed world does,” said Scott Barrett, a professor of environmental economics at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University.

But developing nations like China and India, energy specialists say, would certainly avoid joining any international effort on global warming without an emphatic move by the United States.

“Every year we delay, we contribute to another year of delay in China, India and elsewhere,” said Jason S. Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group of energy experts. “The ecological and economic imperative is to start now.”

Public-Private 2.0: What is the Common Denominator?

Urban Flaneur — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 01:58:00 GMT

The private and public sectors clash and collaborate everyday as we constantly mesh capitalism, democracy, and every other ideology in between to create a viable society. Before discussing in details about the common denominator betwen these two worlds, should there even be a common denominator? In other words, there's a reason why we have different sectors; from an ideological stance, the private sector is fueled by individual needs while the public sector is more about the collective good. Traditionally, when a common denominator was discovered between these two worlds, one side usually had to compromise their fundamental value. For instance, when a powerful investment bank decides to donate a ton of money to a cause and pose as a socially responsible organization, it's not changing the internal culture of that organization; it's not a reflection of their true organization. In other words, episodic moments of philanthropic conciousness doesn't affect the overall mission of such organizations. But as we progress into the postmodern era, we are confronting a pivotal issue that affects both individual-minded and collective-minded words: the environment. Global warming and environmental issues transcend any sector and affects everyone equally. The public sector is tasked with the duty of protecting the well-being of the general population while the private sector must protect the profits that may be in danger by environmental hazards.

I don't particularly care too much about the big shots (the morgan stanleys and governors) holding hands and symbolizing collaboration. What I am concerned is about pushing environmental and global warming as the common denominator, or the critical cause, that will capture the hearts and minds of everyday worker in both of these worlds. That is the grooted approach and philosophy - affecting change through the groundUP model.

about the flaneurship

Urban Flaneur — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:47:00 GMT

The word flaneur derives from the French word flâner, which means to idle about and stroll ... it's a word I learned while taking a postmodern art class in undergrad. The Flaneur represented an urbane individual who on the outside seemed like idling but...(read more)