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What's the problem? For starters, Levitt and Dubner begin their chapter on climate change by citing the concerns over the risk of global cooling, which were held briefly by some scientists in the early 1970s - that's a common trope for climate contrarians, who say that if concerns over cooling turned out to be false, maybe the same thing will come of the current worries over global warming. They go on to question the accuracy of today's climate models, and by extension, whether we should really be concerned about potentially catastrophic temperature increases over the coming century. They...
...warming due to unchecked CO2 emissions. Then, what was meant to be a quick, cheap fix would turn out to be a trap. And while Levitt and Dubner say the fix is appealing at least in part because it's politically impossible to imagine the world agreeing on a common carbon cap - pointing to the problems with the Kyoto Protocol - in reality, the geopolitics of geoengineering are even tougher. Would the world stand idly by if China unilaterally decided to begin geoengineering our collective climate? What if the U.S. did? And even if we did allow geoengineering to commence, could...
...pond. The local government sent a construction team to Thakare's farm last year to dig the 10-ft.-deep (3 m) pond, financing the $600 investment with funds from a new program to support local agriculture. Strategically located in the path of runoff rainwater, the pond - a common feature of rural-resource management - collects water from the monsoon rains that would otherwise have just been wasted. By capturing and storing rainwater, the pond helps to fill the farm's wells. With a more reliable supply of water, Thakare's productivity soared. Not only did he plant his usual summer...
...investments. The program convinced Ngor Sarr, a subsistence farmer in the region of Fatick in western Senegal, and the other members of his agricultural cooperative to expand their paddy fields last year. Though the seeds he received through GOANA weren't of top quality, leading to mediocre yields - a common problem with the program, critics contend - Sarr's rice output increased enough to encourage him to join GOANA again this planting season. The new government scheme "gives us the chance to do something extra, to try and expand our fields, and that's very good," Sarr says. (See pictures...
...Sept. 9 speech to Congress, President Obama singled out Geisinger and Utah's Intermountain Healthcare as examples of organizations that are learning to do things right. He could have cited others too: the Cleveland Clinic, the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente. What these providers have in common are the creative ways they're doing away with fee-for-service and replacing it with an imaginative mix of systems that cost less, keep patients healthier and make doctors happier. "We need a transition to rewarding the actual value of care," says Dr. Elliott Fisher, director of population health and policy...