Environmental Economics

I'm working on all ten ... right friggin' now

From Aguanomics (A To Do List for the Planet):

Billy Pizer, formerly of RFF and now in charge (kinda) of negotiating climate change treaties at the US Treasury, gave this list of "things to do" at his EAERE keynote ("Facing the Climate Change Challenge"). 

It is merely a list of topics, but they are topics where we need more research -- not just to increase our academic understanding but also to learn how to design, implement, measure and enforce policies:

• Market design with policy revision
• Dealing with trade in the long run
• Technology modeling
• Technology transfer policies
• Social cost of carbon
• Catastrophes
• Linking, policy revision, and delinking
• Offset reforms
• Development and climate change / climate change and development
• Carbon markets in the long run

Those of you looking for interesting areas for research, work, reporting -- and perhaps concern -- could do worse than address one or more of these issues.

Field research: book recommendation

Huge by James Fuerst

The funny touching story of Eugene 'Huge' Smalls, a rage filled misfit 12 year old Phillip Marlowe wannabe trying to solve the mystery of who vandalized the sign at his grandmother's retirement home. Set in suburban New Jersey, Huge is filled with a cast of quirky but believable characters. A noir detective story with a surprising coming of age twist.

Field research update

Fact 1: Even though grouper seasons are being shortened (maybe), the grouper reuben at Harry A's on St George Island is yummy.

Fact 2: i'm a crabcake snob. Crabcakes should have 2 ingredients: lump crab meat and something to hold it together. That's it. Anything else and I'm not buying.

Fact 3: I'm a shrimp snob. Shrimp should be steamed: not fried and definitely not boiled. Boiled shrimp are soggy.

Fact 4: Cold beer almost makes bad seafood tolerable. Almost.

The research frontier

These are the voyages of a graduate student. Their 5 year mission? To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no researcher has gone before.

From the inbox:

I am an economics phd student at [top school]. I regularly read your environmental economics blog and enjoy what you guys cover and discuss. I am just getting started in environmental economics research and I figure that I would ask you a few questions about how to find the "research frontier" in the field. So far I have a big interest in fisheries management .... I have not completed any formal research projects on fisheries but I hope to in the future. Some of my other interests are the economics of global warming, valuation methods, various issues in ecological economics, and energy economics. As for my questions: Where can I go online to discover the most up-to-date research in environmental economics as a whole and within the fields that interest me?

My reply:

What you might do is pick up the latest issue of JEEM, Land Econ, Env and Res Econ, Res and Energy Econ and Marine Resource Econ (since you are interested in fisheries) and read the latest article on your favorite topic. All of these are available online, especially if you are searching for papers on campus. Since you are just starting out, you won't be able to understand much of what is in the papers, but skim those parts. Pay close attention to the references and read those papers that seem especially relevant. At some point you'll get a feel for a research frontier and be totally discouraged because you don't see how you can contribute to it. No fear, that is the purpose of grad school.

I'm beginning to warm up to offshore drilling

Report sees money in offshore drilling:

A coalition of corporate, energy and agriculture leaders presented a report Monday projecting that North Carolina could eventually reap $577 million a year from offshore drilling along the state's coast.

Members of the Southeast Energy Alliance made their case for drilling as lawmakers try to cope with a nosedive in state revenue....

The group's dollar figures, though, depend on the accuracy of federal estimates of oil and natural gas deposits and whether corporations choose to drill off the North Carolina coast.

That "nosedive in state revenue" has the potential to hurt me in ways I've never been hurt before (Note to Bev: I'm sorry I didn't vote for you ... now please lift the hiring freeze!). Ouch.

Note: This was posted with the "new Typepad"'s QuickPost feature!

Field research fun fact of the day

Each June, St. George Island in Florida hosts a mullet (fish) toss on the beach. This year's winning toss was over 93 feet. By coincidence, my hometown of Glen Burnie, Maryland holds a perpetual mullet contest at the local mall.

Don't forget the SAP webinar

Check out today's SAP webinar where folks will be discussing the economic stimulus package and what it means for different sectors. Here are the questions I've submitted to the webinaires:

1. The stimulus is touted as an engine for creating jobs. Yet, the cost per job created seems quite high (e.g., $160,000 per job in renewable and clean energy). Is this the best way that the U.S. government could spend money in order to create jobs?
2. Why are there no job creation estimates offered for the energy and water sectors? At $160,000 per job, there could be over 300,000 jobs created. Is this number feasible in this sector? Why or why not?
3. What are the job creation implications of Waxman-Markey. Will it create or cost jobs?

Econbrowser on green jobs

Green jobs:

One of our local papers did a better job of reporting this issue than I have seen from any of the big guys, in part because the reporter started with the question that I think everyone should be asking: what does it mean to create a green job? Here's what I said:

If you have two people making the same amount of energy that one person used to make, would you want to describe that as creating one new job? I would say no, you're significantly reducing productivity. Ultimately, creating jobs has to do with promoting productivity.... We might well make a decision that we want to be promoting economic growth in a way that's more friendly toward the environment. That's a fine decision to make, but I don't think we ought to be doing it under the pretense we're creating jobs for people.

In the secondary market for domain names

Buyer:  ... i will buy the domain: env-econ.net, how mutch?

Seller: It is not really for sale.

Buyer: why not? what is the price, than you sell?

Seller (after a bit of research): www.envecon.com is for sale for $1200. We have worked very hard on our blog, I can imagine selling for anything that low.

Buyer: i have interesst for the domain env-econ.net ?

Seller: Correction: I can't imagine selling for $1200 ... but $10,000 would be a sure thing.

Buyer: i can max. 1500 dollar pay.

Seller: That is a good offer but we have too much invested in it to move on that.

Buyer: i understand, but a have not more money.

As satisfying as a bowl of corn flakes without the banana

About a month ago I responded to my Congresswomen's thoughts on cap-and-trade over at the Energy Collective. I received a reply today:

Dear Mr. Whitehead:

Please know that I have received and read your e-mail of June 23. I appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts with me and have duly noted them.

Thank you for visiting my award winning website, www.foxx.house.gov.  We update our site daily and it is a great resource to learn about constituent services, legislative updates and my work in Congress.  I hope you will continue to utilize the website and let me know what you think about it.

Sincerely,

Virginia Foxx
Member of Congress

My reply:

Congresswoman Foxx:

Thanks for your reply. What sort of awards has your website won?

Thanks,

John Whitehead

Update (from the inbox):

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

       [email protected]