Environmental Economics

Lightning Safety Awareness Week

Before you engage in averting behavior, make sure you understand the lightning death numbers. The lightning safety advocacy folks might be out to scare you (Lightning Stats ...):

The National Weather Service is gearing up to promote Lightning Safety Awareness Week, an annual campaign aimed at educating the public about the risk of death and injury from lightning. But the government may want to start by raising awareness in its own corridors, as it can't seem to agree on just how deadly lightning is.

On a Web site promoting the awareness week, a fact sheet filled with exclamatory lightning stats says, "Lightning Kills About 100 People In The U.S. Each Year!" But another page states, "In the United States, an average of 66 people are killed each year by lightning." And the National Weather Service's own stats show that, over the past 10 years, the average number of lightning fatalities has been 45. Deaths haven't topped 53 in a single year since 1996.

If the supreme court can't figure it out, how can we?

Breaking news from WaPo (I feel like Drudge):

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that regulators may have misinterpreted the federal Clean Water Act when they refused to allow two Michigan property owners to build a shopping mall and condos on wetlands they own.

At the same time, justices could not reach a consensus on whether government can extend protections for wetlands miles away from waterways.

Oil suppy

The principle of supply: as price rises, quantity supplied rises. Oil prices are rising so ... we should expect economic activity that will lead to an increase in the amount of oil produced (As oil rises in markets ...):

The high price of oil, hovering around $70 a barrel, has brought a nearly dormant Mississippi petroleum industry roaring to life. Wells abandoned long ago by the major oil companies are being reopened by independent operators. Requests for new drilling permits have spiked. Trainees for oil-field work can make nearly $14 an hour. Companies wait 12 months to rent the kind of field equipment that was once sold for scrap.

Five years ago there were some 20 functioning oil wells inside the city limits of Laurel; now there are 83.

This isn't enough oil to moderate price increases, but still, it's fun when we get a glimpse of economic theory.

Quote of the Day

From the WSJ Morning Brief:

"I think we have reached an important point in the debate when an oil executive calls for better fuel economy for vehicles. … It's like a tobacco executive calling for reduced smoking," Dan Becker, director of the global warming program of the Sierra Club, tells the Los Angeles Times, after James J. Mulva, the chief executive of oil giant ConocoPhillips, endorsed tougher fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks.

Sachs on Pricing Carbon

Jeffrey Sachs fights with Canada's Liberals over placing a price on carbon emissions:

U.S. economist wades into carbon-tax debate at progressive policy conference, by Bruce Cheadle, Canadian Press: There is simply no credible way to attack climate change without raising the cost of carbon emissions, a celebrated American economist from the political left told a public policy conference Thursday. "Be sure that without a price on carbon, there is no (large) scaled solution to this problem," Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University told the Liberal-dominated Canada 2020 conference. "That is the first requirement."

More double dividend

Thomas Friedman dreams of a third party in 2008 with a double dividend platform (Seeds for a Geo-Green Party $$):

What might a Geo-Green third party platform look like?

Its centerpiece would be a $1 a gallon gasoline tax, called "The Patriot Tax," which would be phased in over a year. People earning less than $50,000 a year, and those with unusual driving needs, would get a reduction on their payroll taxes as an offset.

It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business.

One of the biggest problem economists have in trying to value environmental goods and services is knowing just what to value.  This doesn't help:

Italy lost hundreds of thousands of tonnes of dangerous waste in 2005, largely thanks to the role of organised crime, an environmentalist group reported.

The Environmental President?

From today's WaPo:

President Bush plans to designate an island chain spanning nearly 1,400 miles of the Pacific northwest of Hawaii as a national monument today, creating the largest protected marine reserve in the world, according to sources familiar with the plan.

Establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a strictly protected marine reserve, which Bush is slated to announce this afternoon, could prove to be the administration's most enduring environmental legacy.

Let the sarcasm commence.

WSJ Morning Report's Quote of the Day

"Investors have a right to know if a company's buildings are in the path of hurricanes that might be exacerbated by climate change, or if it will face high costs when greenhouse gas emissions are regulated. They need that information to reduce their portfolio risk," said James Coburn, a policy adviser at Ceres, a coalition of environmental groups and investors who collectively manage more than $1 trillion in assets that sent a letter asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to require that companies disclose their financial vulnerability to changes in climate, the New York Times reports.

Below the fold is the short piece from the NYTimes.

The WSJ's Numbers Guy on polls

Have you read a poll result lately?* Chances are the answer is yes. Was it bogus? Chances are the answer might be yes. Opinion polls, especially the online version, are so cheap these days that everyone has one (including env-econ and most of the major media websites). Most pollsters realize that they are bogus and only do it for fun. But some take it seriously ... and write leading questions that result in biased answers that are used to throw weight behind issue advocacy.

*Warning: almost off-topic post (here's a drinking game: try to spot the env-econ relevance).