ABSTRACT

Climatic change would detrimentally affect goals set by Eastern European countries, including Ukraine, to increase forest cover. Sustainable economic development, if it means anything, achieves paired goals of economic development and environmental protection. Global circulation computer models today can handle these mechanisms with relatively high resolution. The Caspian Sea is rising and the Aral Sea is falling, both catastrophically. The Caspian's rise may or may not be related to climate change. A warmer Euro-Siberian climate would affect agriculture, tundra, rivers, wetlands, wilderness, and all the human activities interlaced with snow and sun and rain. Like weather forecasts longer than seventy-two hours, energy projections are uncertain. But as financial managers who invested in emerging markets could attest, it is useful to anticipate the future to minimize risk. Economic modeling suffers from well-known uncertainties about the future of technology, human behavior, and the effectiveness of policy. The transition economies represent probably the world's largest and cheapest greenhouse gas emissions mitigation opportunities.