Despite what mainstream economists preach, currency-issuing central governments have no budget constraint. It is therefore incumbent upon them to use their unique spending and taxing powers to achieve the broader goal of sustainable development. Their failure to do so has meant that nations have fallen well short of realizing their full potential. Rather than accept the neo-liberal myth that 'small government is best', the citizens of a nation should welcome the central-government's responsible use of their unique spending and taxing powers to provide sufficient public goods and critical infrastructure, achieve and maintain full employment, resolve critical social and environmental concerns, and meet the requirements of an aging population. Should central governments fail in their responsibility to prudently use their unique powers, public disapproval is best registered through the ballot box, not through degenerative debates that distort the facts about the operation of a modern, fiat-currency economy.

The Porter Hypothesis argues that environmental regulations can benefit firms by fostering innovation. This talk explains why economists are generally skeptical of this idea. It then describes some examples, consistent mainstream economic theory, that can produce outcomes consistent with Porter's Hypothesis. Each example highlights either the distribution of benefits or costs, or the presence of some additional distortion, other than pollution. While each example can be fully consistent with the Porter Hypothesis, it is also possible that regulations benefit firms even without fostering innovation, a result that would be empirically difficult to distinguish from the Porter Hypothesis. The talk concludes by discussing policy implications and the recent economics literature on this topic.

Bio: Robert Mohr's research focuses on innovation, the organization of work and technology adoption, with an emphasis on environmental policy. His scholarly publications include contributions to the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Land Economics, and the Industrial and Labor Relations Review. He teaches graduate courses in microeconomic theory and public finance and undergraduate courses in microeconomics, public policy and environmental economics.

Dr. Kushner is an expert in education innovation and reform, with a focus on paradigm change in educational systems. She is a Program and Evaluation Specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Extension, where she works locally, nationally and internationally with programs related to agriculture, the environment, and youth, family & community development. She had led several interdisciplinary reform initiatives including the NSF-sponsored EPICS program, the founding of the School of Integrative Studies at Edgewood College, and is currently leading a national youth water education reform initiative. Her current research focuses on knowledge construction, evolution of thinking, interdisciplinary research, and on leadership and learning related to environmental and social change. Her past work has focused on program innovation and evaluation in science, engineering, medicine, and the humanities.

The federal government manages millions of acres of forestland, and provides technical and financial assistance to the states and to private landowners for managing non-federal lands. Traditional forest management has focused on historically valuable goods and services—timber, water quality, recreation, and much more. However, changes in climate and other environmental factors have already significantly altered existing forests, and traditional management practices are leading to forests that can neither recover from nor adapt to these changes. Economic difficulties for the private sector and states, constraints on the federal budget, and disagreements about the purposes and possibilities of federal forestry practices compound the environmental challenges for sustaining U.S. forests. What, if anything, can the federal government do to prevent serious forest degradation?

ROSS W. GORTE is a senior policy specialist in the Natural Resources Section of the Resources, Science, and Industry Division of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington, DC, and served as section head from 1992-1999 and from 2002-2007. He joined CRS as an analyst in 1983. Dr. Gorte provides objective, non-partisan information and analysis for the Members and Committees of Congress, and their staffs on a variety of issues, including federal and other lands and resources, wilderness, and other management systems; timber management, the timber industry, timber taxation, and timber trade; deforestation and forest carbon sequestration; wildfire control and effects; and appropriations, finances, and economics of federal land and resource programs. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 articles and reports for Congress, as well as testifying before congressional committees several times on these issues. Dr. Gorte has a Bachelor of Science in Forest Management (1975) and a Masters of Business Administration (1976) from Northern Arizona University, and a Ph.D. in forest economics (1981) from Michigan State University.

Suburbanization is widespread across the landscape and suburbs are where the majority of people live in the United States. In contrast to more urban cores, suburban regions can still support many ecosystem services. However, over-use of local ecosystem services and other indirect impacts of suburbanization can degrade the ability of ecosystems to generate services. This talk explores the dynamics of aquatic ecosystem service source and use in a watershed draining suburban Boston, the Ipswich River watershed, MA, part of the Plum Island Ecosystem LTER study. Topics include the evolution and legacy of ecosystem service sources and use (water supply, nitrogen removal), the role of imported, exported and locally derived ecosystem services, regional vs. local scale solutions to maintain ecosystem services, the role of landscape heterogeneity, accumulation of ecosystem services over broader spatial scales, and the need for improved monitoring strategies.

Microbes are the engines that drive decomposition, but to what degree are decomposition and soil organic matter (SOM) formation dependent upon the structure and function of unique microbial communities? Historically, theories on the formation of soil organic matter have focused on two major paradigms. The first focused on the decomposition of litter inputs and the influence of litter quality therein (e.g. lignin/N ratio). The other focused on the abiotic and chemical alteration of litter inputs that can increase the chemical complexity of SOM. More recent conceptual developments and experimental evidence increasingly point to a significant direct contribution of microbially-derived products to stable SOM formation. This new model has implications that may overturn these decades-old paradigms: 1) changes in the molecular structure of decomposing plant litter are directly dependent upon decomposer community dynamics; 2) the molecular chemical diversity of microbial cells, metabolites, and transformation products – rather than the chemistry plant litter inputs – may be the origin of the molecular diversity of SOM; 3) the sorption of microbially-derived products on minerals may be the ultimate source of stable SOM; and 4) conditions that influence microbial processing and sorption (e.g. soil mineralogy, temperature, and microbial community structure) could have an overriding effect on SOM formation. This seminar will explore my lab's current and future efforts to understand how decomposer communities influence SOM formation.

TBA