Environmental Economics

I'm going to San Francisco

Great city, right? Everyone thinks that it is cool that I'm going and I should have a good time. But here is my schedule:

• Friday, 1:30 - 10:30: travel to SF
• Saturday, 8:00-5:30: attend American Fisheries Society Governing Board meeting
• Sunday, 2:00-4:00: Preside over part of AFS Socioeconomics Section meeting as president and then ... past-president(!)
• Monday 12:30 am - 2:00 pm: travel to Boone

There won't be much time to enjoy the trip (sob), especially with the AFS position on economic growth coming to a climax.

Warning: long post.

Gas price news for your holiday travels

Happy Labor Day U.S.ers.  Enjoy driving while you can afford it.

Gasoline prices could rise to about $9 per gallon if the United States withdraws troops from Iraq prematurely, Rep. Jon Porter said he was told on a trip to Iraq that ended this week.

I was going to make a premature extraction joke, but then I decided to pretend like I'm above that by saying 'I was going to make a premature extraction joke'.

Goods are bad, services are good

The Australian Conservation Foundation has developed an online Consumption Atlas to document Australians consumption impacts on the environment. 

If that isn't enough, there are even helpful tips for helping the environment, like:

• One of the easiest ways to lighten your environmental impact is to simply buy less.
• An Australia Institute study found that we waste $10.5 billion a year on things that we rarely or never use.
• You can save money and the environment by only purchasing the products you need.
• Consumption and environmental impacts are rising steadily with household incomes.
• Goods have a high environmental impact because they require materials to produce and are often manufactured using energy intensive processes.  Services have much lower impacts.

I always knew John's frequent pedicures were his way of helping the environment.

Experimental ... economics?

Consider the following hypothetical situation. Suppose an environmental economist writes Americana, alt-country (whatever that is*) and roots songs, records them and puts them on an album. Would you be willing to pay $12.97 for this album?

• Yes
• No
• Don't Know

Now suppose this hypothetical situation is real**. You can actually buy the album at http://cdbaby.com/cd/jshogren. Don't by hypothetically biased!

*"Whatever that is" is the parenthetical remark made by the alt-country mag No Depression. Abandoning their roots, No Depression has broadened into "American music" ... (whatever that is) and watered down their brand. Sigh.

**I hope for this guy's sake he has tenure.

Economic Growth and the Environment

Since the seminal Grossman and Krueger (1994) QJE article examining the empirical relationship between GDP and pollution, much has improved in the area now known as the Environmental Kuznet's Curve literature.  The basic argument still goes something like this - when incomes are low there is very little pollution, as incomes rise so does pollution, then as income rises further pollution levels begin to fall.  There are differing theories as to why this happens and there are different results in the literature, both, confirming and debunking the existence of this curve.  There is no denying that China is on the upward portion of the curve.  There are, however, some serious questions to be raised - including but not limited to (1) when will China's growth lead to improving environmental conditions? (2) Will it be too late to save China's environment - clearly it is already too late for the millions of sick and dead?, and (3) how should we be measuring the marginal cost and the marginal benefit of another unit of growth?

If you are interested in what others are saying - check out the comments over at The Jolly Green General.

I almost forgot - Go Dukes! (JMU) and Wolverines! (UMich).  That's for John and Tim

We're #50! or #1 depending on how you want to view things

CurrencyTrading.net presents a list of the top 100 economics blogs.  We're #50.  But, the list is broken into categories that render the overall rankings questionable: f.e.** international economic blogs are #'s 1-15, environmental econ blogs are #'s 50-54.  Does that mean we're 35 spots worse than the 15th best international econ blog?  I prefer to think of us as the #1 environmental economics blog.  To wit, we are listed as 'The Environmental Economics Blog. [emphasis added]' And really is there a need for any other? 

**I'm tired of pretentious abbreviations for Latin terms no one knows (there's a reason the language died):  e.g.=exempli gratia=for example,   i.e.=id est=that is.   So from now on, or until I forget, 'f.e.'=for example and 'that is'=that is--are 6 letters really that hard to type? 

Bonner Bridge update

The aging* Bonner Bridge runs across Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks of NC. It is falling apart and needs some sort of replacement. There are two options being considered:

• A short bridge next to Bonner that is about $1 billion cheaper but goes through the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge
• A long bridge (18 miles or so) that avoids the wildlife refuge.

I'll give up my SUV if you fly commercial

If we preach anything here at Env-Econ we preach that command and control is one of the most costly solutions to environmental problems.  This is command and control:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles.

The former North Carolina senator told a forum by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, yesterday he thinks Americans are willing to sacrifice.

Edwards says Americans should be asked to drive more fuel efficient vehicles. He says he would ask them to give up SUVs.

Don't dictate, give people the incentive to make the efficient choice.  Same result, only cheaper.

Gay marriage vs climate change

More evidence that we don't want to pay for climate change mitigation:

Americans have the “right” opinions on environmental issues, but “they don’t really care,” concludes Matthew Yglesias, a blogger and editor for the Atlantic Monthly (matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com). He says he reached this conclusion after perusing the results of a report from the research and strategy firm American Environics and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

The report, “Energy Attitudes,” found that 69 percent of voters would support a candidate with whom they disagreed on environmental matters and that there are six issues, including gay marriage, abortion and taxes, that are more important to them (american-environics.com).

Even people who described themselves as “environmentalists” put other issues higher on their priority lists. The upshot of the report, Mr. Yglesias writes, “is that while there’s public eagerness to do something about global warming, it’s very tenuous, and people are rabidly opposed to anything that would increase energy costs.”

I'm not surprised that no one wants to pay higher energy prices to mitigate climate change, but in a ranking exercise, gay marriage is more important to us than climate change?

Teaching Workshop Announcement

Pete Schuhmann sends along this announcement in the comments section:

The Seventh Annual Economics Teaching Workshop

• Saturday October 13, 2007
• SunSpree Resort
• Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina
• http://www.csb.uncw.edu/people/schuhmannp/teachingconference.htm

I've been to a couple of these and they are really good (future fliers can say "Endorsed by the Environmental Economics blog").

Note to UNCW: Hey guys, how about converting that *.doc brochure to *.pdf?