This paper considers the challenges to the dissemination of environmental innovation. Following a brief exploration of the legal and regulatory regimes surrounding environmental technologies, the paper examines diffusion mechanisms, market factors, social characteristics and political elements that facilitate and complicate dissemination. Given the importance of innovation to economic development and growth, the diffusion of innovation is of great interest to economists and policymakers alike.
After eight years of non-engagement, the new administration and the U.S. Congress, led by a majority in the President’s party, are rapidly developing climate policy legislation. This paper summarizes past efforts to establish a national climate policy in the United States as well as the major forces influencing the current debate. While this debate is largely shaped by domestic considerations, it takes place as the international community moves to agree on a post-Kyoto policy regime in Copenhagen next December. Whether the United States is willing to take strong action will significantly influence the actions of other nations.
Aldo Leopold’s land ethic takes root in both metaphor and empathy. The use of metaphor and empathy in cultivating the land ethic has profound implications for our relations with the environment, both personal and political. I hope to show that these implications are positive and help us to realize the ethical extension vital to ensuring human harmony with nature. In pursuit of this, I first provide a deeper look into metaphor, empathy, alterity, and their overlap. I then put these ideas into the context of Leopold’s land ethic as described in A Sand County Almanac. Then I dissect the philosophical implications of metaphor and empathy in an environmental ethic. Finally, I suggest representation as a pragmatic instantiation of the ethic prescribed by metaphor and empathy. At the end of all, I think, is a compelling case made for the vital integration of more subjective modes of inquiry into the realm of ethics.
In an effort to explore the potential for financing environmental innovation, this paper examines different forms of financing and attempts to evaluate their effectiveness. The study considers both public and private forms of funding as well as providing policy suggestions for the support of appropriate financing for eco-innovation.
This paper aims to summarize the state of academic knowledge surrounding the economics of environmental innovation. Following a definition of environmental technology, the paper enumerates and describes the obstacles or constraints to the development of eco-innovation.
