Environmental Economics

Only makes me want to curse harder*

K-man posts this one about every other day:

Just a reminder — this is a Times blog, so obscenities — even mild ones that you use all the, um, fleeting time — will get your comment deleted.

via krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

Why, oh why, won't the cursers listen?

Maybe it would help if he listed the swear words that aren't acceptable?

I guess they just don't understand.

I wonder if it is OK to drop an abbreviation or acronym like GD, mofo, shite or a$$?

*Yet, better. Even better.

 

Yes, you have been banned

From Facebook:

Subject: comments on your blog

Hey - I just tried to post a comment on your blog and it won't let me. Did you ban me? I tried the log in via facebook and it says I'm logged in, will let me type in my comments but won't let me submit them. Weird.

Has anyone else had this problem?

My gift to you (and it is not a new bike)

From the press release:

In their shiny new working paper, "Wind Turbines and Coastal Recreation Demand," Landry, Allen, Cherry and Whitehead kick ass and take names. ...

Sorry for the profanity but our agent insisted. Here is the abstract:

We examine the impact of coastal wind turbines on coastal tourism and recreation for residents of the northern CAMA counties in North Carolina. A combination of telephone and web survey data are used to assess the impact of coastal wind farms on trip behavior and site choice. Most of the respondents to our telephone survey claim to support offshore wind energy development, and independent survey data suggest that the observed levels of support may be indicative of the broader population in this region. Overall, we find very little impact of coastal wind turbines on aggregate recreational visitation; loss in consumer surplus associated with wide spread wind development in the coastal zone is insignificant at $17 (or about 1.5%). Results suggest that NC coastal residents are averse to wind farms in the near-shore zone; average compensating variation for wind farms one mile from the shore is estimated at $55 per household. On average, we find no evidence of aversion to wind farms 4 miles out in the ocean, or for wind farms located in coastal estuaries. For all wind farm scenarios, we find evidence of preference heterogeneity– some respondents find this appealing while others find it aversive.

via econpapers.repec.org

It's a topsy-turvy world, and maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans. But this is our hill. And these are our beans!*

Reduced operations at two Ohio power plants have fishermen and bird watchers anticipating a poor winter along Lake Erie.

The coal-burning plants on the lakefront in Cleveland and nearby Eastlake emit warm water that draws fish and rare gulls and ducks during the cold weather months. Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. announced in August it was cutting back operations only to times of heavier power demand.

Avian education specialist Jim McCormac with the Ohio Division of Wildlife has called the plants "ecotourism magnets" that draw birders from throughout the Midwest. He tells The Plain Dealer the shutdowns are "a real bummer."

Wayne Ritchie has fished near the Eastlake plant for more than 40 years and says the change will "mess up" anglers.

via www.dispatch.com

So is warm water discharge from power plants a positive or a negative externality?

*Leslie Nielsen as Lt Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun

I can't reveal my source*

For once in my life, I heard about this via word of mouth before reading it:

Citing an “abundance of caution,” federal officials shut down more than 4,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico to deepwater shrimping last week after a commercial shrimper hauled in a catch of royal red shrimp and found numerous tar balls in his net.

via green.blogs.nytimes.com

*I've always wanted to say that.

It's like having sex. It's a painstaking and arduous task that seems to go on and on forever, and just when you think things are going your way, nothing happens*.

As prospects dim for a major agreement on capping pollution worldwide, deforestation, renewable energy and other smaller steps that target global warming will take center stage at a United Nations meeting next week, observers predict.

Beginning Monday in Cancun, Mexico, the 12-day United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will pick up where last year's meeting in Copenhagen left off: a global community seeking the fairest way to deal with a warming world.

"I would not look for any major agreement," says energy expert Reid Detchon of the United Nations Foundation, which supports U.N. causes. "I would look toward small agreements for progress being made."

via www.usatoday.com

*Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin, The Naked Gun 2 1/2.

I want a world where Frank junior and all the Frank juniors can sit under a shady tree, breathe the air, swim in the ocean, and go into a 7-11 without an interpreter*

A recent study by the University of Virginia found that implementation of agricultural practices such as livestock stream exclusion, buffers, and cover crops would generate significant economic impacts.

Every $1 of state and/or federal funding invested in agricultural best management practices would generate $1.56 in economic activity in Virginia. Implementing agricultural practices in Virginia to the levels necessary to restore the Bay would create nearly 12,000 jobs of approximately one year’s duration.

via www.northcentralpa.com

Yes.  And so would paving the bay.

*Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear

More on "bidding for firms"

I said (Bidding for firms):

My state income tax payment goes to someone else in the state. But in this case the reduced taxes are enjoyed by Facebook folks out-of-state. If out-of-state folks don't have standing then the incentives are costs.

Since the state is granting the tax breaks I'm inclined to disenfranchise the out-of-state Facebook folks.

He commented (from the inbox):

If the server farm never came to NC then the state would also get no income tax revenues. The question is would they have come to NC without the tax breaks? If the answer is no then it is no cost to the state with a net gain of 42 jobs. How can it be a cost if NC never had the option of getting the money in the first place?

Anyway you know I hate subsidies and special tax incentives that politicians use to choose winners and choose losers....if NC wants more jobs then they should cut taxes across the board. Let the market choose what those jobs should be.

I replied:

The problem is that the land has an opportunity cost, whether Facebook would have come to NC or not. In addition, the taxes help pay for the additional infrastructure that the new firm requires. When states are bidding for firms, the firms are able to extract these benefits (tax breaks) from the winner (i.e., loser). If the states all decided not to bid for firms, then the winner would receive the firm based on its comparative advantage (skilled labor, etc) and enjoy the tax payments from out of state.

In yo face

For cap-and-trade critics who think freebie permits are corporate giveaways, Joshua Linn writes in his JEEM abstract:

Cap-and-trade programs have become an increasingly common means of regulating emissions from electric power plants, but there is little empirical evidence about the programs’ effects on regulated firms’ profits. This paper uses stock prices to estimate the change in expected profits under the Nitrogen Oxides Budget Trading Program (NBP). Using regional variation in compliance costs, I find that the NBP reduced expected profits by as much as $25 billion, primarily affecting the values of coal generators that operate in states with restructured electricity markets.

Surely you can't be serious. I am serious...and don't call me Shirley*

World temperatures could soar by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the 2060s in the worst case of global climate change and require an annual investment of $270 billion just to contain rising sea levels, studies suggested on Sunday.

 

Such a rapid rise, within the lifetimes of many young people today, is double the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) ceiling set by 140 governments at a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen last year and would disrupt food and water supplies in many parts of the globe.

 

via www.reuters.com

*Honoring the memory of one of the great actors, all of my titles today (if there are any more) will be movie lines from Leslie Nielson.