Blogrolling

Caught by a fit of Friday afternoon housecleaning, I’ve made a few additions or changes to the blogroll.

I’ve added Chris Blattman to our list of economics blogs. Dani Rodrik speaks the truth when he calls this “the most interesting development blog around.” Chris’ blog — which is relatively new — is primarily about conflict and political change in the developing world, with a particular focus on Africa. This blog has skyrocketed into my top echelon of “must-read” blogs. Here’s hoping he keeps it up.

This is now somewhat old news, but the Wall Street Journal Energy Roundup has a new look: it’s now Environmental Capital, indicating a broader focus beyond energy to “the business of the environment.” They’ve been recategorized appropriately.

I’ve added Oikos to the blogroll. An environmental policy blog that focuses on Australia, the author seemed to have disappeared around the time we got CT started last fall. He’s returned in the last couple months, and while posting is still very infrequent, it’s not a bad place to go if you want environmental policy news from “down under”.

Finally, Lynne Kiesling — not wanting to be outdone by the env-econ guys — seems to be giving Knowledge Problem a fresh new look. I like it Lynne!

Maps of the San Francisco oil spill

Google LatLong, the official blog from the Google Earth and Maps development team, points us to a couple of maps of the Bay oil spill from local news agencies the San Francisco Chronicle and local news station KCBS.

For those of you like me who are fascinated by maps and excited about the possibilities for conveying spatial information opened up by the freeware Google Earth, the Google LatLong blog is a great resource.  I’ve added them to the blogroll.

Whatsa matter wit you?

New to the blogroll: Matter Blog, an offshoot of the Matter Network. Matter is sort of a catch-all for news and issues pertaining to sustainability. Just a cursory glance has already led me to a bunch of fascinating articles I may not have encountered otherwise.

New to the blogroll

We have a new, very eclectic blog on sustainability from a NYT science reporter. It is called Dot Earth, and is listed under “Environment”:

In Dot Earth, reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Supported in part by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Revkin tracks relevant news from suburbia to Siberia, and conducts an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.

For example, this post on the new population crisis, entitled “The Population Cluster Bomb”, discusses the issue that seems to be the impetus for the blog:

Many population experts foresee the next few decades evolving in a way that is very different from the global-scale, catastrophic “population bomb” concept that caught hold in the 1960s. What they depict is more like a dangerous scattering of cluster bombs, as the world splits into two types of countries: those with aging, shrinking populations, like Japan and much of Europe, and those regions, like most of Africa and parts of south Asia, still mired in poverty, disease, illiteracy or government dysfunction with resulting high birth and death rates.

This is an issue that has been recently overshadowed by climate change (although population growth is implicitly addressed as a source of carbon emissions and a factor in severity of climate change impacts). Note that most of these clusters will be in locations seriously affected by global climate change. Anyway, I like this new blog a lot, and I think most who read Common Tragedies will as well.