Sending your dirty laundry abroad doesn't make the world a cleaner place

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2116131,00.html

The U.S. sends its coal to China while closing down their own coal energy plants because it is dirty energy. Surely this is false economy if you offset the global impact of such coal trade. There should be a ban for such activities considering environmental and economic costs of exporting coals from one country to the other. The exported coal will be burned for energy anyway, only thousands of miles away from where it was mined.  The world will still endure the CO2 emitted from plants in China.

What is ironic is the U.S. then imports solar panels from China because the Chinese produces them for cheaper with the help of their government in subsidies.

REF14

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=421623

It seems that REF could have inevitably negative impact on the research culture in higher education. Despite its objective in measuring research output, individuals and institutions partake in planning their hiring "strategically" directly to effect their REF result. It is not short of data manipulation. REF rules cannot sieve out these either because everyone allegedly plays by the rules anyway. Prevalent are practices such as holding out research publication and hiring research staff on temporary or part-time contracts to synchronise with REF cycles. I think it is inorganic and has many unintended implications. For example, resources that would otherwise be used for teaching and learning are unavoidably rerouted to support REF-boosting activities, surges in research activities which are out of sync with global research environment and ultimately REF results which do not reflect actual institution's strengths and weaknesses.