The New England Landcape Futures (NELF) Explorer is a scenarios-based interactive land-use mapping tool created with the input of more than 100 New Englanders who helped develop the scenarios and reviewed the beta-versions of the tool. With the NELF Explorer, you can visualize alternative future land uses over space and time at multiple scales including state, watershed, and town. You can also gain an understanding of how the different land-use scenarios would affect conservation priority lands such as wetlands and wildlife habitat.
Air quality would deteriorate in key areas of the US if the Clean Power Plan were repealed rather than implemented. Other consequences of repealing the Clean Power Plan and replacing it with a narrow "inside the fenceline" alternative include additional premature deaths and increased carbon dioxide emissions in some regions. Maps from a peer-reviewed publication illustrating areas at risk for worse air quality and health outcomes along with additional new analyses are included in a public comment signed by 14 scientists and submitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Large clean air and health co-benefits are possible with a power plant rule that includes stringent carbon dioxide emission targets, flexible compliance options, and significant program investments in end-user energy efficiency. An alternative limited to power plant upgrades provides few co-benefits and could increase premature deaths and heart attacks in the US.
Reducing carbon pollution from power plants has the potential to limit air pollutants that cause asthma attacks and premature death. However one policy option could actually cause more conventional air pollution and premature deaths than doing nothing. Join us to hear about the impact of power plant pollution and different types of carbon standards on health and the environment, and learn the latest research on the current policy options under consideration.
New research by Science Policy Exchange collaborator Matthew Ayres of Dartmouth College offers eight tactics for combatting imported forest pests in a new paper published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research. In the new paper, Ayres underscores the importance of prevention efforts to protect forests from highly damaging insects and diseases transmitted as an unintended consequence of global trade.
Three Science Policy Exchange collaborators are quoted in a new Washington Post article about air quality, health, and economic benefits of the Clean Power Plan.
The S3 RCN Presents New England Landscape Futures Webinar #2 on Thursday November 2, 2017 at 2pm Eastern Daylight Time. The webinar will feature a presentation by Joshua Plisinski and Jonathan Thompson of Harvard Forest. They will describe how the New England Landscapes Futures scenarios were translated into input for modeling and mapping future land use, how the maps were made, and how to access the maps.
After the EPA announced its plan to repeal the Clean Power Plan, a group of 11 scientists reviewed relevant research and reported that the “inside the fence line” approach to regulating carbon dioxide emissions currently favored by the EPA would produce little to no climate and clean air benefits, and would harm human health.
Science Policy Exchange collaborator Jonathan Buonocore is quoted in the Washington Post, in a new article by Chris Mooney. Buonocore, from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University, spoke about air quality and health benefits of a strong carbon standard.
A new map released today by scientists at Syracuse and Harvard Universities shows that, compared to doing nothing, replacing the Clean Power Plan with a narrower option would make air quality worse and endanger more lives, on top of the 3,500 premature deaths and $33 billion in health costs already estimated. Indiana, Ohio, and Texas are among the hardest hit states.
Recent news of the discovery of the emerald ash borer in Franklin County and the hemlock woolly adelgid near Lake George crystallizes the threat that imported forest pests pose to the Adirondacks. In a new op-ed, Gary Lovett of the Cary Institute, leader of the Science Policy Exchange forest pests project, discusses the growing problem of forest pests and what we can do to prevent another highly damaging pest from arriving and establishing.
