Environmental Economics

The 'Hollywoodisation' of Climate

From today's Daily Mail:

Professor Hardaker [Royal Meteorological Society] warned against the "Hollywoodisation" of weather and climate seen in films such as the 2004 smash hit film The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts terrifying consequences after the melting of the Arctic ice shelf.

Such films, he said, only work to create confusion in the public mind.

"I don't think the way to make people pay attention is to make them afraid about it," he said.

"We have to help them understand it and allow them to make choices - because the impact of climate change is going to mean we have got some quite difficult choices to make both in policy and as members of the public.

"Unless we can understand the science behind it, we can't be expected to get our heads around making these difficult choices."

I agree(d)*.

Prediction: A binding carbon market in 7 years

From the NYTimes (In NH, towns put climate on the agenda):

Of the 234 incorporated cities and towns in New Hampshire, 180 are voting on whether to support a resolution asking the federal government to address climate change and to develop research initiatives to create “innovative energy technologies.”

...

The last time voters in New Hampshire focused on a global issue at such meetings was in 1983, when more than 100 towns asked that the federal government do something about acid rain, which was polluting the state’s waterways.

And we all know what happened 7 years later ... the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 established the EPA's Acid Rain Program (the poster child for Cap'n Trade), S02 fell dramatically, regulation costs fell dramatically, cap-and-trade as innovative regulation become passe', cats slept with dogs, etc.

Live free or die!

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Where's Whitehead?

Just received this: 

EPA's National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) and National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) are sponsoring a meeting to discuss research being conducted on ecological valuation.

Here's a link to the agenda.  Scroll down to 2:00 on day 1 to see the title of a presentation by famous sports economist John Whitehead.

Who's greedy enough to want $25 million?

As an economist, I'm a big believer in incentives.  Incentives drive behavior.  If you want someone to do something, give them the incentive.  And yes, in most cases I'm talking about money.  There is only one true driver of innovation and that is the pursuit of money.  Why?  Because people want stuff...and money buys stuff.   In the immortal words of Gordon Gecko: 

Greed, for lack of a better word is good.  Greed is right.  Greed works.  Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

That's why I'm such a big fan of the X-Prize Foundation--y'know, the people who paid $10 million to the team that designed and tested a reusable spacecraft.  And now it looks like the X-Prize Foundation is turning it's incentive gun toward the holy grail of automotive technology:  The 100 MPG car. 

Small pond

At the risk of self-promotion (ignoring the fact that the ship has already sailed), check out page 5 of the Spring 2007 Appalachian Explorations (AppState's alumni publication). You'll see my smiling face and a bunch of stuff that makes me wonder about myself:

For those of us who forget that the world is a finite entity full of finite resources, John Whitehead, an environmental economist in the Walker College of Business, reminds us otherwise.

Yes, I am that sort of jerk.

Is government policy bad for you?

Browsing news sites this morning, I came across these headlines:

• Senate Proposes Ethanol Incentives
• Ethanol to fuel record corn price
• Consumer Price Index up 0.4% in February
• Gas, food prices hit consumers
• CDC: Few Americans meet fruit, veggie guidelines
• Red fruit and vegetables are beneficial to health

My conclusion?  The Senate is not beneficial to your health.

See, economics is easy. 

A sports econ follow-up

I can't help but link to this post and expand on my famous-osity. And, it is relevent for environmental economics. Bruce Johnson, a real sports economist at my alma mater, had the idea to investigate the role of existence value for sports teams. The problem is, when professional sports teams want subsidies they threaten to move. Economic impact studies show that pro sports teams have no impact but they then argue that the teams generate significant non-market benefits such as providing water cooler fodder, improving racial relations, and giving a city "major league status."

The question is, are these non-market benefits enough to justify the subsidies?

Sitemeter ... do I get a refund?

Our Sitemeter has been seriously screwed up for some time now and now the icon says [Ignored]. I've done as our commenters suggested and installed the free SiteMeter (from a different server) and the free StatCounter.

As of 3:08 pm 03/15/07:

• StatCounter says we have 1579 page loads, 910 unique visitors and 181 returning visitors so far today.
• SiteMeter says we have 1610 page views (could be the same as 1579 page loads since I checked SiteMeter after StatCounter) and 818 visits.

The free StatCounter also provides much more information than the subscription SiteMeter (which isn't working anyway). Since it works and is free I like StatCounter better. I'd like a partial refund from SiteMeter, or at least a free hat, but I'm not expecting even an email apology.

For our records, we had 386,892 SiteMeter-style visits on 03/14/07. As god is my witness, the march toward 1 million visitors continues via StatCounter!

Whining pays

Planet Gore: Environmental economist Tim Haab (whose blog, env-econ.net, should be a daily read for anyone interested in energy and environmental economics, even if you don't agree with all of it) reviews part of John and Teresa Heinz Kerry's new book on the environment.

John: Grrrr: "Tim's blog"

Planet Gore:  When recommending the Environmental Economics blog yesterday, I failed to mention the blog's other main contributor, John Whitehead. A sin of omission. Mea culpa. The blog is always worth reading.