Welcome to Common Resources, Resources for the Future's new blog. In this space we hope to bring you the highlights of RFF's research, along with new, policy-relevant insights and debates. Common Resources inherits the mantle of RFF's previous climate policy blog, Weathervane, but will now cover all of the environmental, resource, and policy economics research areas at RFF.
Some of what you see on Common Resources will be familiar: RFF podcasts and webcasts, features and abstracts of new RFF discussion papers, the weekly RFF on the Issues series, and more—all collected in one place. But we'll have new content as well: original blog posts from the roster of RFF scholars (and some of our friends) on their research topics, policy debates, or whatever they find interesting. We hope these will spark lively discussion. Think of it as a peek into the conversations we have every day at our office doors.
All of our posts on Common Resources will be open to comments (though they will be moderated). The blog is for you, the consumers of our research, whether you're an important policymaker, an interested amateur looking for something to read over breakfast, or anything in between.
Common Resources was soft-launched to RFF insiders and a few outside readers at the beginning of April. Since then we've written a lot of posts, many of which are worth taking a look back at. Some highlights:
- Nathan Richardson on implications of the EPA's proposed carbon performance standards for power plants
- Joel Darmstader on China, rare earth metals, and implications for global trade.
- Pete Nelson on the philosophy of allowance allocation.
- Pete Nelson and Nathan Richardson debating the relevance of liability caps on oil spill damages.
- Pete Nelson on Alan Blackman's work on eco-certification.
About Your Managing Editors:
Pete NelsonPete Nelson is Resources for the Future's Communications Director and co-managing editor of Common Resources. Pete has over twenty years experience writing about and researching environmental and natural resource policy issues. He was a founder of the environmental news service Greenwire and served as its first editor-in-chief. More recently, he served as Communications Director for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling created by President Obama after the 2010 Gulf oil spill.
Nathan Richardson is a Resident Scholar at RFF. He is trained as a lawyer but has (so far) been able to lurk undetected among RFF's economists. He has blogged at Weathervane, Progressive Fix, and the University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog, and until recently was author of the weekly series RFF on the Issues.
About RFF:
RFF is a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that conducts independent research – rooted primarily in economics and other social sciences – on environmental, energy, natural resource and environmental health issues.
Although RFF is headquartered in Washington, D.C., its research scope comprises programs in nations around the world. Founded in 1952, RFF was created at the recommendation of William Paley, then head of the Columbia Broadcasting System, who had chaired a presidential commission that examined whether the United States was becoming overly dependent on foreign sources of important natural resources and commodities. RFF became the first think tank devoted exclusively to natural resource and environmental issues.
For more than 50 years, RFF has pioneered the application of economics as a tool to develop more effective policy about the use and conservation of natural resources. Its scholars continue to analyze critical issues concerning pollution control, energy and transportation policy, land and water use, hazardous waste, climate change, biodiversity, ecosystem management, health, and the environmental challenges of developing countries.
