The atmosphere has definitely changed in favor of some form of regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. since the Democrats took control of Congress and the Presidency last November. On June 26, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) by seven votes, and Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Sept. 30 introduced a Senate version that is even stronger. Related Links: For First Time, EPA May Regulate CO2 Against this backdrop is a proposal by the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the gases from coal-fired
Why not a ‘genius’ award just for construction? The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Fellows Program, sometimes called the ‘genius’ award, annually gives 20 to 30 extraordinarily talented individuals an unrestricted $500,000 stipend, payable over five years. This year, the foundation for the first time has included a bridge engineer among its recipients—Theodore Zoli, from HNTB Corp. The 24 recipients come from all professions, ranging from photojournalist and painter to molecular biologist and applied mathematician. All are selected by a panel of secret nominators chosen by the foundation from a broad range of fields. This should be a
As the construction industry and the nation attempt to crawl out of a very deep economic hole, there is a maelstrom of competing political agendas: economic stimulus, proposed federal bailouts of an ever-widening group of companies and industries, health-care reform, global-warming initiatives and war strategies and funding, to name just a few. But with the national debt now standing at a staggering $12 trillion, an annual federal budget deficit hitting $1.36 trillion and the federal business bailout tab running $12 trillion—just for starters—there is no money for some or all of these initiatives unless the U.S. just prints a lot
When disasters challenge the limits of engineering, all too often death and destruction follow. That is because engineering is, in a basic sense, a set of protective disciplines that enable people to live and work safely in the presence of forces that would other-wise kill them. The American Society of Civil Engineers has long recognized its responsibility, as one of the nation’s leading engineering societies, to try and answer the questions that arise when forces overtake engineered structures. ASCE regularly has been dispatching analysis teams of volunteer experts to disaster sites since 1889, when a poorly maintained dam impounding 20-million
The debate over the number of economic stimulus jobs created or saved by the $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will continue long after the recession is over, but the only apparent success so far is related to the infrastructure jobs fostered by the $130 billion earmarked in ARRA for that purpose. As the government coffers run dry, the only way to end the financial crisis is for Washington to start building real public confidence in the U.S. economy and help move massive amounts of private money off the sidelines and into productive parts of the economy. This amount is
Strict college professors like to shake up their students on the first day of class by telling them, “Look to your left, look to your right. One of you will not be here at the end of the year.” That same scenario applies to the construction industry this year. When the market meltdown began last fall, you could have taken a group of construction executives and told them, “Look to your left, look to your right. One of your firms won’t be here in a year.” The industry is coming up on the first anniversary of the 2008 stock-market crash
As the political debate rages over government-mandated, health-care reform, there is one fundamental fact that all parties agree on: Health-care insurance is a necessity for everyone and there must be a way to make it available in a cost-effective manner without adding to the already huge federal budget deficit. The only solution is to engage the private sector and legislate meaningful tort reform. The latest data indicates nearly 46 million people in the U.S. have no health-care insurance—about 18% of the population under age 65—and 30% of all insurance premiums go to pay for the cost of assisting those people.
With the Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments in Bilski vs. Doll, a case that already has set a new standard for granting patents on business methods, the ability to protect groundbreaking innovations in process and workflow will soon be determined. It seems obvious, after the case first appeared on the docket of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, that the 12 judges called in to hear the appeal were feeling particularly creative. To the dismay of many in the patent community, the appeals court seemed to effortlessly overstep its bounds by writing into existence a new test
As America digs itself deeper into a financial hole, Congress and states are using a venerable political ploy to justify even more spending: increasing taxes on the wealthy and big companies ostensibly to help those with less. That ploy may have worked in the early 1900s when big bosses often were so-called robber barons. Today, however, even people at the bottom of the economic ladder realize wealthy individuals help fuel the nation’s economic development in important ways. The U.S. is a democracy, but wealthy individuals faced with confiscatory taxes can easily vote with their feet by moving their operations and
In some ways the green movement has created a new generation of skeptics by generating doubt about the benefits of new products and services designed to mitigate human impact on the environment. But “greenwash” charges should not be lathered on the ones that really do deliver the goods. In heavy construction equipment, there is a huge opportunity for machinery to move down the green path, and some manufacturers are gingerly moving in that direction. Iowa State University Caterpillar Inc. is about to go into production with its diesel-electric dozer, which is 25% more fuel-efficient than its predecessor. Intelligent compaction is
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