Stress Testing to Assess Recovery from Extreme Events

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. John Plodinec
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Extreme Events ◽  
Stress Testing ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
Potential Benefits

Abstract Over the last decade, communities have become increasingly aware of the risks they face. They are threatened by natural disasters, which may be exacerbated by climate change and the movement of land masses. Growing globalization has made a pandemic due to the rapid spread of highly infectious diseases ever more likely. Societal discord breeds its own threats, not the least of which is the spread of radical ideologies giving rise to terrorism. The accelerating rate of technological change has bred its own social and economic risks. This widening spectrum of risk poses a difficult question to every community – how resilient will the community be to the extreme events it faces. In this paper, we present a new approach to answering that question. It is based on the stress testing of financial institutions required by regulators in the United States and elsewhere. It generalizes stress testing by expanding the concept of “capital” beyond finance to include the other “capitals” (e.g., human, social) possessed by a community. Through use of this approach, communities can determine which investments of its capitals are most likely to improve its resilience. We provide an example of using the approach, and discuss its potential benefits.

Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Shue
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Co2

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted in Rio de Janeiro at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992 establishes no dates and no dollars. No dates are specified by which emissions are to be reduced by the wealthy states, and no dollars are specified with which the wealthy states will assist the poor states to avoid an environmentally dirty development like our own. The convention is toothless because throughout the negotiations in the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee during 1991 to 1992, the United States played the role of dentist: whenever virtually all the other states in the world (with the notable exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) agreed to convention language with teeth, the United States insisted that the teeth be pulled out. The Clinton administration now faces a strategic question: should the next step aim at a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases (GHGs) or at a narrower protocol covering only one, or a few, gases, for example, only fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (CO2)? Richard Stewart and Jonathan Wiener (1992) have argued for moving directly to a comprehensive treaty, while Thomas Drennen (1993) has argued for a more focused beginning. I will suggest that Drennen is essentially correct that we should not try to go straight to a comprehensive treaty, at least not of the kind advocated by Stewart and Wiener. First I would like to develop a framework into which to set issues of equity or justice of the kind introduced by Drennen. It would be easier if we faced only one question about justice, but several questions are not only unavoidable individually but are entangled with one another. In addition, each question can be given not simply alternative answers but answers of different kinds. In spite of this multiplicity of possible answers to the multiplicity of inevitable and interconnected questions, I think we can lay out the issues fairly clearly and establish that commonsense principles converge to a remarkable extent upon what ought to be done, at least for the next decade or so.

scholarly journals G7 summit – analysis of decisions taken to step up on climate change challenge

2021 ◽  
Vol 129 ◽  
pp. 08017
Author(s):  
Carmen Valentina Radulescu ◽  
Iulian Gole ◽  
Marius Profiroiu
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The United Kingdom

Research background: After the summit of G7 held in the United Kingdom, important decisions regarding future actions against global warming were taken. Some of them were appreciated by the environmental supporters but many others tend to have a different view, especially because of lack of details. Purpose of the article: In this article, we will analyse what are the measure proposed by the most powerful and developed countries, members of G7, what is the position of the other big countries (China and Russia) that were not invited, and how this could really contribute to the saving environment progress. Methods: Through descriptive and comparative analysis the paper reveals the financial and technical difficulties to implement these decisions and how they can contribute to a better environment and achieve the COP 21 objective. Findings & Value added: The stress caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in all economies didn’t cancel the engagement of countries taken in Paris, to limit the rise of global temperatures to 1.50C comparing to the preindustrial era. The United States even came back on track and, generally speaking, it appears that there is a stronger will to take concrete actions.

The Nixon Doctrine and Nakasone Yasuhiro’s Unsuccessful Challenge to Japan’s Defense Policy, 1969-1971

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-74
Author(s):  
Fintan Hoey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Security Treaty ◽  
Security Relationship ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

The Nixon Doctrine of 1969 heralded a new approach wherein the United States sought to limit military commitments, particularly of ground forces, in Asia. This departure was seized on by Nakasone Yasuhiro as an opportunity to push for “autonomous defense” at the risk of undermining the Mutual Security Treaty of 1960. For Premier Satō, however, the treaty was the cornerstone of Japan’s relationship with the United States and vital to the security of Japan and Northeast Asia. Such a divergence of views went to the heart of Japan’s security relationship with the United States. On the one hand, America would cajole and pressure Japan to assume more of the regional defense burden, while on the other, Japanese elites resisted such pressure due to fears of alienating and alarming both Japan’s neighbors and the Japanese public. The Nixon Doctrine and Nakasone’s ideas on “autonomous defense” posed a major challenge to the postwar consensus on defense and Japan’s security ties to the United States. Ultimately, however, they were not able to undermine this consensus which lasted long after the end of the Cold War.

scholarly journals Framing Climate Change Loss and Damage in UNFCCC Negotiations

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Vanhala ◽  
Cecilie Hestbaek
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Frame Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
International Climate Policy ◽  
Loss And Damage ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Elite Interviews

How does an idea emerge and gain traction in the international arena when its underpinning principles are contested by powerful players? The adoption in 2013 of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) puzzled observers, because key state parties, such as the United States, had historically opposed the policy. This article examines the roles of frame contestation and ambiguity in accounting for the evolution and institutionalization of the “loss and damage” norm within the UNFCCC. The article applies frame analysis to the data from coverage of the negotiations and elite interviews. It reveals that two competing framings, one focused on liability and compensation and the other on risk and insurance, evolved into a single, overarching master frame. This more ambiguous framing allowed parties to attach different meanings to the policy that led to the resolution of differences among the parties and the embedding of the idea of loss and damage in international climate policy.

scholarly journals Managed retreat through voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. eaax8995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine J. Mach ◽  
Caroline M. Kraan ◽  
Miyuki Hino ◽  
A. R. Siders ◽  
Erica M. Johnston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Open Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
The Government

Retreat from some areas will become unavoidable under intensifying climate change. Existing deployments of managed retreat are at small scale compared to potential future needs, leaving open questions about where, when, and how retreat under climate change will occur. Here, we analyze more than 40,000 voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties in the United States, in which homeowners sell properties to the government and the land is restored to open space. In contrast to model-based evaluation of potential future retreat, local governments in counties with higher population and income are more likely to administer buyouts. The bought-out properties themselves, however, are concentrated in areas of greater social vulnerability within these counties, pointing to the importance of assessing the equity of buyout implementation and outcomes. These patterns demonstrate the challenges associated with locally driven implementation of managed retreat and the potential benefits of experimentation with different approaches to retreat.

Engaging the Youth Environmental Alliance in Higher Education to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
Sarah Whipple ◽  
◽  
Shardul Tiwari ◽  
Tashiana C. Osborne ◽  
Gillian Bowser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Research Teams ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals

The authors present a new approach to show how interdisciplinary collaborations among a group of institutions can provide a unique opportunity for students to engage across the science-policy nexus using the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Through collaboration across seven higher education institutions in the United States and Australia, virtual student research teams worked together across disciplines.

A Forest Future?

World on Fire ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 129-156
Author(s):  
Mark Rowlands
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eating Meat ◽  
Global Carbon ◽  
Animal Grazing

The other climate benefit of no longer eating meat is that it will make available huge swathes of new land for afforestation—the return of forests to land that has not recently been forested. One consequence of the inverted energy returned on energy invested (EROI) of meat is that we use far more land for farming than we would need if our diet were to be exclusively plant based. In the United States alone, somewhere in the region of 834 million acres could be made available through this strategy, much of it suitable for afforestation. Even the afforestation of land not currently used for farming has the potential to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by nearly one-third. Adding in land currently dedicated to animal grazing and feed crops is a potentially game-changing development in the fight against climate change.

Working With Interpreters to Support Students Who Are English Language Learners

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (16) ◽  
pp. 15-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henriette W. Langdon ◽  
Terry Irvine Saenz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
English Language Learners ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Second Best ◽  
Support Students

The number of English Language Learners (ELL) is increasing in all regions of the United States. Although the majority (71%) speak Spanish as their first language, the other 29% may speak one of as many as 100 or more different languages. In spite of an increasing number of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who can provide bilingual services, the likelihood of a match between a given student's primary language and an SLP's is rather minimal. The second best option is to work with a trained language interpreter in the student's language. However, very frequently, this interpreter may be bilingual but not trained to do the job.

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