William Nordhaus can recall the precise moment when he became interested in what is now known as “green accounting,” a type of accounting that factors environmental costs and benefits into measures of economic activity.
It was 1969, and he was thumbing...
At a quick glance, the thin lines stretching across the glass façade of the new building at 87 Trumbull St. resemble opened blinds, but they serve a different purpose. The rows of lines are a film that enhances the windows’ visibility to chickadees,...
Consciousness, the distinctive quality that allows humans to perceive the world, sometimes gets in the way of people trying to comprehend the ecosystems in which they live — a paradox that hinders our ability to live sustainably, argues Michael Dove, the...
Thousands of years before humans began burning fossil fuels, they had indelibly altered the natural world through foraging, herding animals, and farming, according to a new study by an international consortium of archaeologists.
The study, published Aug....
When Yale economist Joseph Shapiro was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about a decade ago, he attempted a cost-benefit analysis of the 1972 Clean Water Act — the federal law governing water quality in the country’s rivers,...