Environmental Economics

Don't you hate it when you forget your gym shoes?

Friday Beer Post: What do you get when you combine beer, university researchers and monkeys?

A Georgia Health Sciences University lab tech was recently discovered in a campus locker room engaging in unusual behavior.

Authorities said 32-year-old Coley Mitchell was jailed after he was found intoxicated with his pants down in a locker room in the Sanders Research and Education Building while two lab monkeys were found roaming free, outside their cages, the Augusta Chronicle reported.

Mitchell was booked into Richmond County jail on charges of public intoxication. The monkeys were examined and found to be unharmed.

via www.clickorlando.com

Um....speechless.

Daily demand and supply: the helium market

How am I going to be able to afford my hilarious helium voice? Department cocktail parties will never be the same:

The United States produces 75 percent of the world’s helium. And roughly 30 percent of that world supply comes from the U.S. Federal Helium Reserve in Amarillo, Texas, at a huge natural underground reservoir called the Bush Dome.

That supply, according to energy officials, is fast being depleted. Some speculate the usable life of the reservoir could be over in five or six years. ...

In 1996, Congress moved to privatize the federal helium program, requiring that all the government’s helium supplies be sold off by 2015, according to a June report in Popular Mechanics magazine.

Though new private helium production plants are expected to start up in the coming years – a plant is projected to open this fall in Wyoming – private industry hasn’t jumped as quickly to produce helium as Congress hoped.

Because of that, consumers face spiking prices and tightening supplies.

The federal government, which sets helium prices, announced in April that enormous price spikes were coming. Now, distributors around the Triangle are surprising vendors week to week, month to month with increases.

Though businesses are reluctant to talk about what they pay their suppliers for helium, some North Carolina retailers have said a tank that once cost $75 is now more than $200.

Some stores have increased the price of balloons. Others have held off with hopes that prices will go down again.

via www.newsobserver.com

If the "federal government ... sets helium prices" why do they seem so market-based?

Dante's lament

I've been an associate editor for the Journal of Environmental Management for about 2.5 years (I've handled about 160 papers). It has been quite the learning experience. I logged in today and found three papers that needed new referees. Examining the responses to my invitations, 1 potential referee had accepted, 7 had declined and 10 had been un-invited (i.e., had not bothered to respond to the email within 7-9 days). On these three papers I have an amazing 6% success rate. 

What has been most surprising is the authors who will gladly submit one, or even two, paper(s) to the journal and then refuse to serve as a referee.

I am discouraged, to say the least.

Just Drill, Baby

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will lay out policies on Thursday aimed at achieving North American energy independence by 2020 by pursuing a sharp increase in production of oil and natural gas on federal lands and off the U.S. coast.

I know I'm dense, but can someone please explain to me why a market-favoring conservative would want complete North American energy independence?  This is like saying I want food independence for my neighborhood.  Sure, it reduces reliance on food from those other evil suburbs around Columbus, but it also makes my food more expensive, reduces my choices--where am I going to get my unsustainable seafood if I can't import from the Chesapeake Bay region--and makes me generally worse off.

Romney is to predict that a full-blown energy plan will create 3 million jobs in energy sectors and other areas, part of an ambitious effort to create 12 million jobs during a Romney presidency.

"I want every American who wants a good job to be able to have one," Romney told Republicans at a fund-raising event in Little Rock on Wednesday.

Aha! It's the old jobs thing.  Last time I checked, job creation is a cost of a policy, not a benefit.

via www.chicagotribune.com

"Which Species Should You Save?"

Political Calculations:

Suppose, for a minute, that you were in charge of the global organization to preserve endangered species of rhinoceros, of which the two species most at risk of extinction are the Javan rhinoceros and the Sumatran rhinoceros.

Unfortunately, because there is a long list of other species preservation efforts that your fellow environmentalists prefer to support, your organization's resources for preserving these species are limited. So much so that dividing your limited resources between efforts to preserve both species simultaneously will not be sufficient to halt their respective declines in numbers. But, if you threw all your efforts behind preserving one of these species of rhinoceros, you might be able to make a critical difference in its future.

But which one should you choose?

The answer is you should choose to put your limited resources behind the species with the more viable population.

By that, we mean the species whose numbers have not diminished to the point where a random catastrophe, such as a hurricane or tsunami, would be capable of causing their extinction.

Choosing between the species then comes down to the numbers, the math for which has been worked out in a 2011 paper by Gopalasamy Reuben Clements, Corey J.A. Bradshaw, Barry W. Brook and William F. Laurance, describing the SAFE index, which uses a threshold population target to measure how threatened a species may be.

The Species' Ability to Forestall Extinction (SAFE) index measures the relative threat faced by various species, incorporating the best estimates of the species' total population within its known range and its Minimum Viable Population figure - the minimum population needed for it to last over the long term while sustaining its evolutionary potential, which perhaps might better be described as avoiding problems that come from excessive inbreeding within too small a population.

Our tool below is built using the math presented in the researchers' paper. ...

We found the SAFE index interesting because it appears to provide a better indication of a species' viability than the percentage of range loss measure that is often used to determine the relative threat of extinction to various species.

But what really sets it apart for us is that this method of prioritizing species recovery efforts would seem to also reflect the actual choices made by the combination of individuals, scientists, lawmakers and organizations seeking to preserve various species, which have consistently put more funding to work in support of preserving species that are only "threatened" as compared to those that are "endangered".

The SAFE index for economists at Appstate is -0.03.

The least that I can do is CAIR*

Benefit-cost analysis be darned:

The fallout has begun just one day after a federal appeals court scrapped a major EPA rule designed to curb long-distance drifting power plant pollution — and Louisville’s air quality may pay the price.

A Western Kentucky utility told the Kentucky Public Service Commission Wednesday that it intends to abandon pollution controls that would have allowed it comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, also known as the transport rule. 

Henderson-based Big Rivers Electric Cooperative, which owns and operates four generating stations and a 1,266-mile transmission system, could save its customers about $225 million by dropping pollution controls required for the transport rule, said Marty Littrel, cooperative spokesman.

via www.courier-journal.com

Stavins and Schmalensee conclude:

Existing studies providing estimates of the Transport Rule’s benefits and costs consistently find that benefits outweigh costs, on a national basis, often by a wide margin.

*With apologies to Kid Rock.

Top 25 Green Business Blogs: We're #6!

OnlineMBA.com: 

Over the past decade or so, environmental concerns started swelling from a fringe movement to mainstream awareness. And this growing consciousness means growing pressure on purveyors of goods and services to follow suit and ensure their businesses show Mother Earth a little love and tenderness. Unsurprisingly, everyone has something to say on the subject at hand, and eco-friendly corporations (or those hoping to someday become eco-friendly) would do well to follow the news and views that could very well change things in time. For those who enjoy soaking up opinions and stories in the blog format, the following reads will prove worth their time and consideration.

...

6. Environmental Economics:

Savvy green businessfolks know they have to understand how the economics of natural resources work in order to tailor their services around preserving them as much as their resources allow. Tim Haab and John Whitehead delve deeply into the true cost of using up land, oil, coal, gas, and the like, providing readers with detailed information about its relationship with business and industry.

Hat tip: Graham Stone via twitter.

Picture of the day

What do you do when the department chair double books a classroom?

I blame the budget cuts. 

And guess who is teaching an extra section of micro principles this semester?

$5.25 lb, frozen whole fish

From the inbox:

You are receiving this email as confirmation of your order for Wild Alaskan Sockeye Salmon. I wanted to provide some updates and share my most up to date information on when the salmon will be in Boone. I also included a few pictures of the commercial fishing fleet in Alaska and the "Tangent" which was the boat I fished on. ...

Our fish has arrived in Seattle and is waiting to be picked up for delivery to Boone. I am estimating arrival will be sometime after Labor Day weekend.