Air quality and water quality are often adversely affected by heavy industry and the production and use of fossil fuels, but environmental interest groups, government officials, and the private sector frequently disagree on policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions. While most research has focused on the cost-effectiveness of proposed policies, RAND has also devised a new methodology to evaluate policies while balancing economic development with environmental quality concerns.
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The authors perform a technical and economic assessment and estimate the economic costs and net GHG reductions from U.S renewable electricity mandates. GHG emissions reductions from such policies could be as much as 670 million metric tons per year. Depending on technological development, economic costs are $13-$45 billion per year. Lower costs depend on favorable technological progress.
REPORT
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ended a voluntary national program that encouraged facilities to improve all aspects of their environmental performance. The significant environmental challenges that the U.S. faces require it to continue to seek complements to traditional regulatory approaches.
REPORT
California's dirty air caused more than $193 million in hospital-based medical care from 2005 to 2007 as people sought help for problems such as asthma and pneumonia that are triggered by elevated pollution levels.
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Assesses how park characteristics and demographic factors are associated with park use.
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There is little evidence of an association between short- or long-term exposure to particulate matter air pollution and venous thromboembolism; and no evidence that hormone therapy is modifing such a link.
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The authors investigated the association between physical and social neighborhood environments and fifth-grade students' physical activity and obesity.
REPORT
The RAND Corporation research on energy and environment addresses a range of topics of relevance to U.S. and international audiences, including environmental quality and regulation, energy resources and systems, water resources and systems, climate change, and natural hazards and disasters.
NEWS RELEASE
Western Riverside County's Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan -- a sweeping effort to protect endangered and threatened species while accelerating the approval of transportation improvements -- has made significant progress, but needs modifying to reach its goals in Southern California's changing economy.
NEWS RELEASE
Alternative sources of fossil fuels such as oil sands and coal-to-liquids have significant economic promise, but the environmental consequences must also be considered.
NEWS RELEASE
By better managing environmental issues during deployments, U.S. Army units can gain tactical and strategic advantages that will help in combat and post-conflict operations, and boost overall mission success.
PROJECT
Climate change presents decisionmakers with a fundamental quandary: how to address a potentially serious, long-term, and uncertain threat. A joint project of RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment and the RAND Pardee Center seeks to address this problem through basic research and computer modeling.
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Investigates the variability in ecological risk perceptions by surveying members of four stakeholder groups commonly involved in environmental policy debates.
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This paper investigates the ways in which terrorism is linked to education and poverty using data newly culled from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) documentary sources.
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It has been well recognized that urban transportation and land-use are strongly interrelated and affect air quality.
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This paper examines the factors and incentives that are most likely to influence households' choice for cleaner vehicles in the metropolitan area of Hamilton, Canada.
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The development of models to assess air pollution exposures within cities for assignment to subjects in health studies has been identified as a priority area for future research.
RESEARCH BRIEF
This research brief examines how technology changes -- in economic development, health, environmental quality, and military power -- will play out differently across the globe.
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This study demonstrates robust decision making (RDM), an analytic method that helps design robust strategies through an iterative process that first suggests candidate robust strategies, identifies clusters of future states of the world to which they are vulnerable, and then evaluates the trade-offs in hedging against these vulnerabilities.
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Integrated urban models are designed to simulate land-use and transportation interactions and to allow predicts of traffic volume and vehicle emissions at the link level of the urban transport network.
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