New York received record-breaking rainfall in 2023, which led to flooding in coastal and urban areas. As the state grapples with recurring flooding issues, residents are reminded of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, where governments were challenged with the displacement of thousands of families and damage… Read More »Disaster Response to Hurricane Sandy Highlights Disparities in Home Buyouts
In this third installment of our blog series on Green Georgism we delve into the world of ecological tax reform, exploring the fusion of ecotaxes and green incentives to promote sustainable development. Ecotaxes, or green taxes, impose levies on activities with harmful environmental impacts, while… Read More »The Principles and Policies of Green Georgism: LVT, Carbon Tax, Ecotax reform
Building upon the foundation laid in our first blog, “Green Georgism: Environmentalism through the eyes of Resource Justice,” our second piece delves deeper into the connections between Henry George’s ideas and key perspectives from the past century of environmentalism. This blog explores how Georgism dovetails with key aspects of environmentalism, and provides useful insights into the sustainable and equitable management of natural resources. By examining the broader definition of land as encompassing all natural materials, forces, and opportunities, we align George’s vision with modern environmental concerns, addressing issues such as urban sprawl, wealth inequality, and the preservation of natural capital.
Our world is facing an ever-escalating array of environmental challenges. From the alarming rise in global temperatures and the subsequent impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events and shrinking ice caps, to the devastating consequences of deforestation, habitat loss, and species extinction, our planet is in dire need of urgent action. These challenges require us to think carefully about how we can promote the sustainable and equitable management of natural resources such as land, minerals, oceans and wildlife.
Here at the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation our core mission is to advance the ideas of Henry George and to realize his vision of a world that recognizes humanity’s collective right to the bounty provided by our planetary resources. We have historically focused on applying this Georgist worldview to urban land use and property tax reform. However, our pioneering research center, Resource Justice (RJ), is responding to these looming environmental challenges by expanding our mission and working to foster research into the sustainable, efficient and equitable utilization of natural resources. Recognizing the urgent need for actionable policy solutions motivated by compelling values and informed by responsive research, we consider these ecological concerns to be key priorities here at RJ.
Climate change poses a significant threat to numerous regions in the United States, rendering them increasingly uninhabitable due to rising sea levels, flooding, wildfires, and more. As a response to this challenge, managed retreat has emerged as a strategy to relocate affected households, neighborhoods, and even communities away from harm’s way. Although managed retreat can involve a number of processes, the use of buyouts––the voluntary purchasing of private properties using public funds (which is intended to spur the relocation of at-risk households to lower risk locations), is a critical (and in many places, virtually the only) tool in a policy maker’s toolbox.
While physically moving people out of harm’s way makes intuitive sense, the real world applications of managed retreat-related buyouts are highly complex, emotional, and fraught with weighty fiscal and equity implications. Here we explore some basic financial considerations of managed retreat, shedding light on the challenges faced by affected municipalities and fundamental flaws in the system as a whole.
In this article we explore the complex question of how to ensure that greenspace and other urban amenities will actually benefit the communities to which they are targeted. We will highlight the many benefits of urban greenspace, explore the lesser-known implications for both nearby house prices and the rents faced by tenants, and discuss ways to ensure that the attractive greenspaces are financed by those households who they benefit most while also making sure that vulnerable tenants also share in their many desirable social and environmental outcomes.
Tom Daniels, Crossways ProfessorDept. of City and Regional PlanningUniversity of Pennsylvania IntroductionThe research project on the California Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation (SALC) program combined the broader exploration of how the SALC might serve as a national model—both to preserve farmland from conversion to development and… Read More »Methodology and Findings for the ‘California Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program: Evaluating the Use of Cap-and-Trade Funds to Promote Climate Mitigation and Adaptation.’
The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. Don Huberts After the COVID-19 dip, global oil use has rebounded to 100 million barrels per day and is projected to rise to 104 million bpd by 2026 with no peak in sight. Coal… Read More »Leveling the Energy Playing Field
“The Earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend.” ― E. O. Wilson A mass extinction is underway, we… Read More »LVT, the Key to Conservation Biology?
It’s too easy for a northeastern US observer to have an overbearing and infuriating attitude regarding Mississippi. Unfortunately, Mississippi has a laundry list––or a butcher’s bill if you like, of past sins that stick in the craw of humanists and the respecters of justice alike.
That said, no one is innocent. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed (after getting hit with a brick in Chicago), “As long as the struggle was down in Alabama and Mississippi, they could look afar and think about it and say how terrible people are. When they discovered brotherhood had to be a reality in Chicago and that brotherhood extended to next door, then those latent hostilities came out.”
So, we ought to look at the current problems in Jackson, Mississippi, bloodlessly and try to keep emotions out (I’m not saying it’s easy). What happens when a group surrenders political power but economic power remains the preserve of the privileged? Perhaps, it will turn out that political power is often no power at all. Instead, it takes politics and economics for political economy like two elements forming a chemical compound producing different behaviors.
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