Environmental Economics

Furry Mammals and Tasty Fish Need Not Apply

Are you a fuzzy or tasty endangered species? Are you presently located in Canada? Does someone's job depend upon your harvest? If so, too bad for you:

Economics influences choices for endangered species list: report, by Ethan Baron CanWest News Service: Vancouver -  Furry mammals and tasty fish are getting the sharp end of the stick when it comes to endangered-species protection, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.

SFU Biologist Arne Mooers and his colleagues ... looked at 30 species rejected for endangered-species protection by the federal government from 2003-2006, and compared them to 156 species listed as endangered.

"Listings under the current law seem to discriminate against the fuzzier, tastier endangered species," Mooers said. "The decisions make it look as if Canadians value milk snakes and dromedary jumping slugs more than they value polar bears, beluga whales and coho salmon. That's hard to believe."  ...

McCain on cap-and-trade

The staff at the Environmental Economics blog is excited about covering our first presidential election. Our endorsement is based on a single issue, environmental economics (duh), and bribes. The leading candidate is John McCain:

Mr. McCain, who has introduced legislation to lower carbon emissions, said that as president he would set “reasonable caps” on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions, and would allow companies that reduce their emissions to earn credits that they can trade for a profit.

By "reasonable caps" I'm assuming that he means caps that would achieve the most efficient emissions level as determined by a benefit cost analysis.

 

Happy Earth Day

From The Onion (May 10, 2000):

An estimated 450,000 unsold copies of Time's special April 22 Earth Day issue were trucked Monday from the magazine's New Jersey distribution center to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.

The discarded copies of the issue ... are expected to decompose slowly over the next 175 years.

Getting the price right, NYC style

Weekend news: It's going to cost you to drive into Manhattan:

This weekend Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to introduce an $8 congestion fee for drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street.

The blog giveth and the blog taketh away: Nevermind

Friday morning I dropped a post-bomb about how I'd been implicitly uninvited to speak at a conference (see below). A bunch of us had fun with it during the morning hours (check out the comments to this post). Then I took a lunch break and picked up my daughter after preschool.  When I got back to my office my voice mail had a message asking me if I needed any other information for the conference. Wha?

I called back, said I assumed I'd been canceled, was assured that I wasn't canceled, etc. Jeez, I'd made other plans (a softball doubleheader) but I didn't want to be a no-show. So this has been my schedule since lunch yesterday:

1. 1:00: find out I'm expected in Richmond, Ky by 4:00 on Sat. Begin my presentation ...
2. 2:00: Economics seminar, I'm hosting Leah Mathews from UNC-Asheville (great seminar on valuing Blue Ridge Parkway amenities)
3. 3:30: A post-seminar beer at the Boone Saloon
4. 5:45: Change for the softball game in my office
5. 6:15: Hit the softball field for my first game in eight years (3 RF putouts, 0 errors, 0 hits, 2 walks, 1 run; we lose is extra innings)
6. 8:30: Hit the softball field for my second game. This one is tougher, my knees are aching, thighs are burning, and shoulder is screaming (2 RCF putouts, 0 errors, 0 hits, reached base on an error and scored a run; we lose)
7. 10:00: Plug in my external hard drive and find that it isn't recognized by my laptop (I dropped it on the way out of my office)
8. 10:45: Give up on the hard drive and drive into my office.
9. 11:45: Finish my presentation and drive home.
10. 8:25 am: depart Boone
11. 1:30: arrive at the Starbucks in Richmond, Ky (it was a beautiful drive from Boone to Richmond cutting through the mountains instead of the I-81, I-75 nightmare; Playlist: Patty Griffin, Scott Miller, Son Volt and Wilco)
12. 2:00: finish my triple iced Americana, shut down my computer and head to EKU

Here is the rest of my agenda:

1. 4:00-5:00: My presentation (Download Whitehead.042007.ppt)
2. 6:00: Head back to Boone!

Someone remind me and I'll post the email that made me think I was canceled. Regardless, lesson learned, I'm a jerk (see below), please forgive me.

Picture of the day

What? Too many pictures of John Whitehead lately? When it rains it pours ...

Here is Nick Livy and his faculty advisor at the ASU Tenth Annual Celebration of Student Research and Creative Endeavors (click on the thumbnail). Hey Nick, tuck your effin' shirt in!

Photo Credit: Andy Heckert.

This isn't your parents' demand for gas

Last week, I was doing some background research for a project I'm working on with a couple of chemical engineers and a statistician to try to develop a joint engineering/economic model of the life cycle of transportation fuels.  We were in need of recent estimates of the U.S. demand for gas using national data (monthly consumption and income).  So I sent a message to the ResEcon listserve, a community of 700 or so (I think) environmental economists*. As always, ResEcon came through and I received a fairly recent working paper by a few folks at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis. 

The findings of the paper are both interesting and troubling for policy design.  The upshot:  Consumption of gas has become dramatically less sensitive to price changes over the past 30 years. 

In celebration of Earth Day

According to the EPA's Personal Emissions Calculator my household of two adults and two kids emits 61,192 pounds of carbon each year, about 50% more than the average household of two. Everything is average except for our electric bill. I think we pay about $150 each month instead of the $100 average. But, it is cold in Boone and we crank the heat for 4-6 months each year. We only need air conditioning for about a month, but still, our electric bill makes us that bad?

We already recycle, but we're going to need to drive less (hat tip, but no link, to Tim), adjust the thermostat and buy Energy Star products. To be about average we must:

1. Reduce the number of miles driven by about 400 per week (no more of those weekly beach trips), or
2. Replace 200 75-watt incandescent light bulbs with 25-watt ENERGY STAR lights, or
3. Replace 50 of our refrigerators, or
4. Turn my thermostat up by 150 degrees in the winter and turn it down by 150 degrees in the summer (or vice versa, I can never get the up and down straight), or
5. Some combination of 1-4.

We're working on it but crap, there goes my extravagant, rock-star lifestyle.

Nutrient credit trading information from PADEP

As a follow up to my pave the bay post, the env-econ.net Pennsylvania correspondent, Will Delavan, points us to this press release that announces an actual nutrient trade:

Red Barn Trading Co. has executed the first nutrient credit sale under a wide-ranging initiative that Governor Edward G. Rendell established to clean up the state’s rivers and streams and help Pennsylvania meet its federal obligations to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.

...

Red Barn’s landmark first nutrient credit sale is a sale of credits over a five-year period for a Susquehanna County development (by developer Daniel Maisano, Dunn Lake LLC), which is using the credits toward permitting a package sewage treatment plant for a residential development, according to Peter Hughes, Red Barn Trading president.

Great stuff, and it sounds like a real trading program is developing in Pennsylvania. Stay tuned, you'll hear it here first.

Another perfectly reasonable approach to solving global warming

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this, right?

China claimed yesterday to have caused a snowfall for the first time as part of its increasingly ambitious attempts to control the weather.

Officials in the meteorological bureau in Tibet said they had used "rain-seeding" techniques to trigger a snowfall over the city of Nagqu last week.

"This proves it's possible for humans to change the weather on the world's highest plateau," said Yu Zhongshui. The bureau said it had produced just under half an inch of snow at a height of 15,000ft.