Please join us in a Conversation Across Difference, as Professor Teodoro discusses alternative ownership and management models for water and sewer utilities, as well as the political dimensions of public, private, and public-private partnerships (P3s), and what they mean for cost and quality.
In recognition of Earth Day, please join us for a very special lecture about what it takes to pass historic air quality legislation. Margo Oge served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 32 years, the last 18 of which she directed the Office of Transportation Air Quality. Ms. Oge led the Obama Administration’s landmark 2012 Clean Air Act deal with automakers, the nation’s first action targeting greenhouse gases. This regulation will double the fuel efficiency of automakers’ fleets to 54.5 mpg and cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2025.
This talk will explore policies such as taxation, disclosure and regulation of drilling processes in a comparative manner across the states and municipalities on the Marcellus shale play.
Join us for a student workshop lunch and conversation with Professor Jennifer Haverkamp discussing about International Climate Change Diplomacy. If you are interested, please sign up here.
This webinar on January 29, 2019 was jointly hosted by CLOSUP and the Michigan Municipal League. The webinar features Professor Manny Teodoro from Texas A&M University, speaking on water and sewer system finance and policy, including how to measure affordability, and policy options for rate structures and related issues.
The Critical Race Theory (CRT) Discussion Series is co-sponsored by the Ford School and the University of Michigan Law School. Graduate and professional students are invited to join us for our first session, "A primer: Critical Race Theory and Public Policy." Lunch will be provided.
Indo-Pacific Conference organized by International Policy Center and Center for Japanese Studies features a keynote by Susan Thornton, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
This event will be held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC
The Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) invites our Washington DC colleagues to attend a discussion hosted by the Wilson Center/Canada Institute featuring CLOSUP Director, Barry Rabe, and our collaborating National Surveys on Energy and Environment (NSEE) partners, Christopher Borick, Director, Muhlenberg Institute of Public Opinion, and Erick Lachapelle, Assistant Professor, University of Montreal. The discussion will feature findings from the FALL 2015 round of ongoing survey work in both Canada and the US. Key themes will include public views on whether climate change is occurring, response to a range of possible policy options across levels of government, and reaction to Pope Francis' recent engagement on the issue. The U.S. portion of the survey will also include an early look at how Americans want their states to respond to the new Clean Power Plan. The session is free but requires registration. Please call 202-691-4000 or email [email protected] to reserve your seat.
Carl Simon, director of the University of Michigan Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, moderates this panel on transportation policy featuring Peter Sweatman, UM's Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI); Matthew Naud, City of Ann Arbor; and Shannon Bouton, McKinsey Center for Business & Development.
The Ford+SPPG Conference is an annual student-led policy conference among students at the School of Public Policy and Governance (SPPG) at the University of Toronto and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. It’s a great opportunity to further your understanding of multi-stakeholder and cross-border policy collaboration and implementation – and have fun in the process! At the conclusion of the weekend, a panel of faculty judges will select the best proposal.
Free and open to the public. Reception to follow in the Michigan League To register for this lecture, please visit the event website. Winona LaDuke, Internationally acclaimed American Indian author, orator, and activist The United States is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the world and influences international policy. It turns out that Native American communities have the potential to generate up to one half of present US electrical consumption through producing power from the wind.
The most recent comprehensive state environmental index is over 25 years old. Hall & Kerr's 1991-1992 Green Index uses 256 indicators to gauge the environmental performance and policies of every state and it is still being used today in lieu of any suitable replacement. American University's Center for Environmental Policy is creating a new state environmental index to assess the ecological efficiency of each state. Come hear American University's Riordan Frost discuss the preliminary results of this index, and learn more about the challenges and hard decisions inherent in constructing an index.
While much attention has been focused on the threats that hydraulic fracturing poses to water systems—whether by its consumptive use of freshwater or the risk of contaminating ground- and surface waters—the financial wealth that oil and gas development brings to state and local governments may provide opportunities to protect water resources. This diverse group of scholars will discuss their research at the intersection of fracking and water policy, and as a panel explore whether there are particular policies or practices that might be scaled-up or replicated outside their geographical area of study to create more sustainable energy-water systems.
Vivian Thomson will offer an insider’s account of how power is wielded in environmental policy making at the state level. Drawing on her experience as a former member of Virginia’s State Air Pollution Control Board, she narrates cases in Alexandria, Wise, and Roda that involved coal and air pollution. She identifies a “climate of capitulation” —a deeply rooted favoritism toward coal and electric utilities in state air pollution policies. Thomson links Virginia’s climate of capitulation with campaign finance patterns, a state legislature that depends on outsiders for information and bill drafting, and a political culture that tends toward inertia. She extends her analysis to fifteen other coal states and recommends reforms aimed at mitigating ingrained biases toward coal and electric utility interests.
The United States has seen dramatic growth in energy development with much of it occurring on privately owned lands, creating a unique raft of opportunity and risk for landowners. The presentation reviews research on the nexus of property ownership rights and regulatory policy, with a focus on Shale and Wind Energy. It introduces the concept of 'Private Participation' in the planning and siting of energy projects and discusses how private property ownership will continue to influence the energy revolution.
University of Michigan Detroit Center
Ann Arbor Room
Panelists: John Gallagher, Director, Author, Writer, Detroit Free Press "Land Abandonment" Avis C. Vidal, Professor of Urban Planning, Department of Urban Studies & Planning, Wayne State University "Land Development" Moderator: Reynolds "Ren" Farley, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts University of Michigan Institute for Social Research
The U.S. was founded as a maritime nation and was a world leader for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. We have lost much of that leadership. We have the largest Exclusive Economic Zone of all nations, and in 2010 got our first ever National Ocean Policy, but we are still stuck in the muck. We have failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea; application of Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning is sputtering; ecosystem-based management remains elusive; and the ocean is rarely mentioned as a source of jobs and new economic activity in the current debate.
The Obama Administration’s EPA created a stir when it recently proposed widely varying state carbon-intensity targets to be achieved by 2020 and permanently by 2030. Dr. Engel will discuss a recent paper that examines the bases for federal allocation, among the various states, of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to meet federal air pollution standards under the Clean Air Act.
Nuclear power is the primary carbon-free energy source technically capable of meeting the world's electricity needs. But current reactors use and generate special nuclear material that can be used for making nuclear weapons. Is it possible to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and simultaneously develop peaceful nuclear power technologies? At the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Panel Discussion, experts will describe and integrate technical and policy aspects of the nuclear power and nuclear nonproliferation problem.
****Watch the video**** Free and open to the public. Abstract The federal Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is the premier national example of a non-regulatory environmental policy, and it illustrates well both the potential and limitations of using information disclosure to achieve policy goals. The TRI was adopted in 1986 as an amendment to the federal Superfund law, and since 1988 we have had annual reports on the release of over 650 toxic chemicals by some 20,000 industrial facilities around the nation.
Anthrax scares, nuisance lawsuits and political attacks and are all in a day's work for some climate scientists. In his July 2012 feature story in Popular Science, journalist Tom Clynes investigated the people and organizations behind the harassment—and their influence on scientific research, public opinion and policy.
As people around the world increasingly experience the effects of climate change, governments have been slow to enact policies that are consistent with the target of keeping global warming below 2oC agreed upon at the Paris climate talks in 2015....
The widespread power outage in Texas in early 2021 was a devastating reminder of the importance of energy security. So was the spring 2021 ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, a line that supplies half the gasoline to the US east coast. And...
