Environmental Economics

The failure of U.S. ethanol policy

Sometimes ecological economists sound like real economists*.  That is, every once in a while they make sense.  From Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis in today's Washington Post:

Taking these together -- the environmental damage, the human pain of food price inflation, the failure to reduce our dependence on oil -- it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed. Congress took a big chance on biofuels that, unfortunately, has not worked out. Now, in the spirit of progress, let us learn the appropriate lessons from this setback, and let us act quickly to mitigate the damage and set upon a new course that holds greater promise for meeting the challenges ahead.

Happy Earth Day.

*Relax, I'm joking.

Why can't we all just get along?

GatE calls us out:

This article gives mainstream environmental economists a perhaps deserved kicking whlst highlighting the failure of ecological economists to get their message across.

I am not convinced by this statement but perhaps I will be after reading the paper:

    ...it is clear that ecological economics is in a position to become the central subdiscipline of economics.

I wonder if the env-econ boys would agree?

Tim: saddle up the ponies and fill up your knapsack. It's time for some more ecol- vs env- economics. Here is the beginning of the subquote above:

In view of the demonstrable failure of traditional economics to focus its attention on what will be the central issues of the twenty-first century, ...

According to the abstract, one of those central issues is "economic impacts of nuclear explosions." If the world does experience a nuclear explosion, heaven forbid, the economic impacts might be furthest from my thoughts.

Another Ecological Economics blog

Yikes!

http://ecologicalecon.blogspot.com/

Car repairs and the value of the environment

Yesterday I had the misfortune of taking the family minivan to the shop to get the brakes checked.  Turns out the anti-lock brake module is bad and needs to be replaced.  The bill?  $1130.  Now the minivan is 8 years old and has almost 90,000 miles on it.  So we asked ourselves the obvious question:  Is it worth $1130 to repair the van.  After careful cost/benefit analysis, we decided, yes, the value of repairing the van is at least that much, to us. 

Now I know you're asking what the hell does this have to do with the environment.  Read on for another in our long line of unprovoked attacks on ecological economics...

If a species goes extinct and no one knows, does it matter?

In Friday's post, I questioned whether $27 million was a justified expenditure for preserving the habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker--a species whose existence is in question and there have only been two 'possible' sightings in three years.  In the comment section an interesting philosophical debate over species extinction arose.  Since only a few people read the comments and for some reason 25% of our readers take Fridays off, I thought I would ask the question here and see what you thought:

Should all species extinctions be prevented?

Read below for some of my views and some from readers.

Income inequality and biodiversity

This entry from the WSJ's Energy Blog two weeks ago struck a nerve (an update on the nerve striking is forthcoming later this month or next):

While its long been argued that income inequality has negative effects on public health and social capital, a recent study from researchers at McGill University found that income inequality is also linked to biodiversity loss, David Roberts at GristMill writes.

NJ's natural capital is worth $18 billion? ... or less ...

... a study puts values on NJ's natural assets:

Dr. Costanza and the other researchers concluded that New Jersey’s total natural capital is worth about $18 billion per year. Nature, he says, turns out to be about as economically valuable to New Jersey as the state’s construction industry.

The estimated value of nature is New Jersey is probably too high since the methodology doesn't pay too much attention to substitutes and income constraints, yada, yada, yada.

More Doom and Gloom

From the Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday:

Right now, Earth’s carrying capacity is thought to be somewhere in the range of 4 billion to 5 billion people.

There are 6.5 billion of us.

...

"If we were to replace our reliance on fossil fuels and instead grow fuel plants, that would require setting aside lots of land to produce ethanol," [Ohio State University ecologist Tom Waite*] said.

"We don’t have enough land worldwide to meet those demands."

Demand for food, fuel and materials already consumes more trees and crops than are being grown worldwide.

*Not to be confused with Tom Waits.

Environomics

From the LA Times, How to Get Wall Street to Hug a Tree, is an article that brings up the abuse of upwardly biased values of the environment (again):

Environmentalists and investment bankers are working together to put a price tag on nature. The new 'greens' think that human beings are ready to start paying for Mother Nature's services—and that calculating their financial worth will save the planet.

Cooling on Hotspots

Protection of a small number of "biodiversity hotspots" may not be sufficient to preserve threatened species:

New study questions 'biodiversity hotspot' approach to wildlife conservation, by Mark Shwartz, Stanford Report: In recent years, major international conservation groups have focused their limited resources on protecting a small number of "biodiversity hotspots"—threatened habitats that are home to many of the world's rarest plants and animals.

But a handful of protected areas will not be sufficient to save the countless species of plants and animals facing extinction worldwide, according to a new study by scientists from Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Writing in the Dec. 15 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers say that it's time for ecologists to reconsider the hotspot approach to conservation.