The reduction of CO2 emissions be possible? / Robert Douglas Cairns, Professor, McGill University

Garbage, at times, stinks of gold. E-waste, toxic, or nuclear trash, is making the Mafia wealthy, allowing crime syndicates to perfume their bank accounts, or fill their safes with cash. Waste management is extremely lucrative. The EU’s trash business has an estimated turnover of over 100 billion yearly. The largest 25 European waste management firms employ 130,000 people. Now, multiply on the global scale—much of it illegal, and therefore often in cash. Welcome to the Godfather. It ...

“A WAKE UP CALL FOR THE WORLD” For Simon Elin, chief executive of the British Recycling Association, it’s “a tough time” his industry and country are facing just now. He does not think about Brexit, Britain trying to leave the E.U., dreaming to return to glorious times as a world power, one day soon. His colleague Arnaud Brunet, head of the Bureau of International Recycling, predicted “catastrophic environmental problems.” An assessment the London Times shared: “The world is drowni ...

Comme le rappelle le Policy brief 17/32 consacré en large part à l’hypothèse dite de « Prebisch-Singer », la dynamique du prix des matières premières se décompose en tendance de très long terme, en cycle et en instabilité (volatilité) à court terme (Jacks, 2013)1 . La flambée du cours des matières premières sur la période 2002-2012 avait, dans cette perspective, conduit nombre d’observateurs à évoquer l’existence d’un « super-cycle » alimenté par la hausse structurelle de la demande ...

The lion roared. A thunderous, gut-freezing roar. Followed by a ferocious growl, just to make sure that the adrenaline would reach explosive heights. Again, the thunderstorm effect, menacing, rumbling in the distance. This was a different storm. I could see the massive head. Its contour. Did I notice the eyes, yellow and green? A lion. Male and twenty yards away. Covered by a dense, green, bush. Since I am an admirer of Hemingway’s adventures, I was aware that the author estimated t ...

Who would cry because a whale has died, thrown onto a beach somewhere on our globe by a giant wave, the noble mammal ceasing to breathe through its blowhole in the head. No news on television, possibly a note on the third page of a local newspaper. Eight billion humans, most struggling to survive themselves, will never know or care. A pilot whale has died in Southern Thailand, after consuming more than eighty black plastic bags? A sperm whale discovered dead on a beach of Spain, who ...

Over the past decade, an increasing number of emerging markets has joined the liquefied natural gas (LNG) import club. From 7 countries in 2010, they were 17 in 2017: from traditionally export-oriented regions (such as the Middle East and North Africa) facing burgeoning gas and electricity demand, from emerging economies with growing energy needs (Southeast Asia), from countries facing severe energy and gas shortages and willing to replace imported oil in power generation (South Asi ...

Reducing carbon emissions is the most complex political and economic problem humanity has ever confronted. Coping with the Climate Crisis brings together leading experts from academia and policy circles to explore issues related to the implementation of the COP21 Paris Agreement and the challenges of accelerating the transition toward sustainable development. The book synthesizes the key insights that emerge from the latest research in climate-change economics in an accessible and ...

The fall in oil prices, which began in fall 2014, had a significant influence on the strategies of the key players in the oil industry in Africa. The continent’s oil sector has experienced deep-reaching changes, ranging from a drop in exploration budgets, the disappearance or sale of weakened companies, the reorganization or pullback of the traditional oil majors, the establishment of new companies and the arrival of state-owned companies attracted by the crisis-induced windfall eff ...

Awad Ibrahim, chairman of the Lybian Organisation of Policies and Strategies (LOPS), one of the few think tanks in this violence-torn country, has escaped to establish contacts with his African colleagues at the African Think Tank Summit held in Rabat from May 9th to 11th. For a few years he was Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy in his country, and later appointed Deputy Prime minister. At times Awad Ibrahim fears for his life, but he believes a political solution between ...

This paper reports the results of an application using an interregional input-output matrix for Morocco together with regional information on water consumption by sectors. We develop a trade-based index that reveals the relative water use intensities associated with specific interregional and international trade flows. We estimate, for each flow associated with each origin-destination pair, measures of trade in value added and trade in water that are further used to calculate our in ...