Environmental Economics

Aguanomics: Resolving the Keystone XL debate

David Zetland:

In the escalating war of words, Alberta has said it will spend $5 billion on a pipeline to take its oil east, and Obama has pledged that Keystone can go ahead if it "results in no net increase in carbon emissions." These two statements indicate how the impasse may be broken. ...

[math]

Build the XL based on "polluter pays" and stop the empty debates.

via www.aguanomics.com

A (short) publication story

Short story and short paper: We submitted this to Applied Economics Letters June 27, about 5 years after it was first written. It was accepted on July 15 and published on August 27. What were we waiting for? The energy to beef it up to send it to a higher ranked journal. That energy never materialized. 

 

The law of unintended conequences strikes close to home

I live in a snooty area. Why?  Because the schools are outstanding. And I'm a snob (not really, but it's easier to say that than to explain the chain of events that lead to me living in a snooty area).  The town where I live is home to one of the top golf courses in the world--Muirfield Village.  It is one of the first golf courses that Jack Nicklaus designed, he still has a home on the course, and every year that course hosts the PGA's Memorial Tournament--sometime's referred to as golf's 5th major.  This year, the course will host the President's Cup--a biennially golf tournament pitting a team of the best U.S. golfers against a team from the rest of the world (minus Europe--which apparently doesn't count as part of the rest of the world, or something). Because residents of Muirfield Village have been known to 'sneak' around the temporary orange plastic fences the course erects every year to keep out the riff-raff, for the President's Cup, the tournament directors decided to erect a more permanent, higher, and less penetrable six-mile wrought-iron barrier with imposing looking spikes on top. But it appears that Muirfield's attempr to keep out the free-riders has imposed an unintended costs:    

Some Muirfield Village residents don’t like the black iron fence that was constructed in July to separate their backyards from the Muirfield golf course.

They say the pointy-tipped enclosure looks more like a fence for a graveyard than one for a prestigious golf course. They say they bought their homes for access to a parklike setting and to watch elite golf.

And they really didn’t expect the dead deer.

At least twice this month, deer have died after trying to jump the 5-foot fence. One was impaled on the fence’s finials and left hanging. The other, found with broken legs, was put down by Dublin police.

via www.dispatch.com

Oops.

Off-topic post: How dare you call us profitable!

First a little background for those who don't follow Major League Baseball (why don't you?): The Houston Astros are bad...really bad.  The team is in the supposed process of rebuilding after moving to the American League from the National League this year.  They are currently 31.5 games out of first place. That means they would have to win 31.5 more games than the first place team in order to catch them--and they would have to pass the other 3 teams in front of them.  With only 32 games left in their season, that seems, shall I say, unlikely.  How have they accomplished the feat of incomeptence.  Easy, they cut costs.  Running a baseball team as a cost-minimizer will lead to bad baseball.  But, on the bright side, Forbes is claiming that the Astros are on pace to have one of the most profitable seasons in baseball history.

Before we delve into how things have been absolutely awful, let's concentrate on the peculiar manner in which the Astros have been extremely successful. According to Dan Alexander of Forbes, the franchise is the most profitable in MLB history.

We probably should have made sure you were sitting before that last sentence:

The Astros are on pace to rake in an estimated $99 million in operating income this season. That is nearly as much as the estimated operating income of the previous six World Series championship teams — combined.

The reason is quite simple: Owner Jim Crane has reduced cost dramatically as the club tries to rebuild and move forward in the American League.

via bleacherreport.com

But the Astros are taking exception:

We are very disappointed that, earlier today, Forbes released an article that includes significant inaccuracies relating to the Astros' finances. The Astros do not disclose financial information. However, as MLB will confirm, the information reported in the Forbes article relating to the Astros' revenues, the Astros media rights fee from CSN Houston, and CSN Houston's per subscriber rate are all significantly inaccurate. As a result, the conclusion about the Astros operational profit is significantly inaccurate.

How dare you call us profitable! 

Apparently it's better to suck on and off the field.

Daily Demand and Supply: A Commons Success

Lobster populations in Maine are booming like never before. Tourists readily dole out $15 or more for lobster rolls, those delectable morsels of seafood on a bun. And environmentalists have praised the harvest as a rare example of sustainability in a sea of overfishing.

Enter market forces. Last year's record haul of 126 million pounds, double that of just a decade ago, led some to wonder whether lobster might go the way of cheap, everyday foods like the chicken nugget or TV dinner. Prices paid to lobstermen at the dock plummeted and have not recovered. They are barely enough, to cover fuel and bait.

via finance.yahoo.com

What happens when supply increases? Prices fall and quantity sold increases.

Ashhole update

I wonder if any NC State economists think this one is exaggerated?

Several dead or dying ash trees dot lawns along Canterbury Road, but only one has drawn the attention of Upper Arlington city arborists.

Last week, Jim Lekoy and Scott Conover pointed to a dead limb in one backyard that hangs over a set of power lines.

The city has ordered the homeowner to remove the tree before the limb snaps and falls on the lines.

“They want to take it down in September,” Lekoy said. “We’re here to see if it will last that long.”

Such visits have become more frequent as the emerald ash borer spreads through central Ohio, where it is expected to kill nearly every mature ash tree by 2018.

...

Ash borers were first discovered in 2002 near Detroit, where they likely had hitched a ride in wooden packing crates shipped from China. A minor pest in Asia where ashes are more resistant to borers, the insects have proved deadly to North American ashes. Borer larvae eat the soft wood under the bark, cutting off water and nutrients in the trees.

via www.dispatch.com

"The Harsh Economic Sting of the Beepocalypse"

Craig Newmark:

OMG! What will we do when all the bees die? 

My suggestion: Don't worry. Like other apocalypic environmental disasters we've been warned about, this one, too, is 99.9% bogus. Work done by NC State economist Wally Thurman, Montana State economist Randy Rucker, and Oregon State entomologist Michael Burgett is extremely persuasive that there isn't a problem. See Wally briefly explain in this short video with John Stossel. Or read Wally and Randy's piece in the Wall Street Journal from about two months ago. Or read this brief piece by Shawn Regan of PERC.

via www.newmarksdoor.com

Hey Jim, should we be worried about our policy professionals?

This morning we sent the following to the RESECON e-mail list:

This is just our friendly (but late) beginning-of-the-semester reminder/request to take advantage of the myriad resources available at THE Environmental Economics blog (www.env-econ.net) in your economics and environment economics classes or just for your own personal pleasure.  John (Whitehead) and I have been at this for over eight years now, and still going strong.  There’s so much information on the blog that it is practically a textbook on its own; a really crappy textbook with little organization and a bunch of irrelevant posts and stupid jokes, but hey, at least you can search the site—on the right side, or look at posts by topic—on the left side. 

As always, feel free to give us feedback on how we can make the site better, or more useful.  We’ll probably ignore the feedback but you’ll at least feel like you contributed to our success (it’s not like we make a bunch of money off this).

Enjoy.

Tim Haab and John Whitehead

In response, we got this:

An excellent resource for policy professionals, like me, too….

Thanks Jim and Tim.

Jim?

Some people are bigger than others (and others are just plain small)

From the inbox in response to those things I've done (this and that):

Fair enough.  I'll enrich that discussion in the next version.

Thanks,

Arik

I apologized for being cranky and Arik said "no apology necessary." And now I feel rather like a turd.

"Q&A Re: Launch of New AERE Journal!"

I posted this not knowing that Tim scooped me by 1.5 hours so I'll sheepishly put it below the fold (it has already been retweeted and I don't want to lose the link).