Blog Archives for Josh Hurd

By Josh Hurd - May 26, 2009   Adaptation to climate change no longer implies giving up on the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that global warming is already affecting the world. A recent Yale Environment 360 article on the matter discusses this issue:

By Josh Hurd - April 27, 2009    Wildlands CPR's Tom Petersen was on Montana Public Radio's "The Write Question" on Sunday, April 26. Listen to the program by clicking on the play button below. The program will air again on Thursday, April 30, from 8:30PM-8:42PM.

By Josh Hurd - April 14, 2009    A while ago I did a searching with UC Davis' Natural Resource Projects Inventory, trying to understand where most California restoration projects get their funding. In the process, however, I discovered that I could map all of the watershed restoration projects as well.

By Josh Hurd - April 9, 2009    General obligation bonds, approved through ballot initiatives, finance the majority of California’s restoration activities. Since 2000, the state has raised over $13 billion for water-related projects through the issuance of these bonds (see Table). Of this, $3.3 billion has gone to watershed restoration and protection. However, the general public appears increasingly less willing to support bond-funded restoration programs, as the margin of victory for the measures has steadily decreased, from 30-percent in 2000 to 8-percent in 2006.

By Josh Hurd - March 17, 2009    The United States Forest Service released its initial set of projects, for "construction and maintenance of facilities, roads, and trails, and abandoned mine mitigation and for wildland fire management." The comprise only 10% of the total projects being funded in the Forest Service under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the econom

By Josh Hurd - February 24, 2009    Environmental protection almost always takes a hard hit during economic recessions.  News abounds around the country of how, especially in energy policy, the gains of the past few years have been offset by cheap gas and a depressed economy.

By Josh Hurd - February 19, 2009    The Puget Sound has been at the forefront of restoration. A recent report, "Action Agenda: Financing Strategy -- Estimates of Spending Related to Puget Sound," released by the Puget Sound Partnership, shows the complicated funding situation that projects such as this face. According to the report:

By Josh Hurd - February 17, 2009    The concept of a carbon footprint has gained legitimacy within many realms of the governmental and business worlds. A new footprint, however, is gaining popularity: the water footprint.

By Josh Hurd - February 4, 2009    Market mechanisms to provide for environmental quality are controversial.  The 1990 Clean Air Act, which instated a cap-and-trade system to efficiently decrease acid rain, irked many people, who said that the buying and selling of rights to pollute was morally wrong. However, twenty years later the program is widely heralded as a success. Thus the current interest in cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide.

By Josh Hurd - December 8, 2008    This map shows the locations of firms that have done restoration work under contract for the federal government within the past few years. We obtained the data by exporting federal contract data from OMB Watch's FedSpending.org, imported that data into Excel, culled it a bit, and then Geocoded it using BatchGeocode.com.