Environmental Economics

Graphic of the Day: Wither Environmental Protection?

...and here's the graphical version (from FiveThirtyEight) of the Washington Post story on the proposed budgetary demise of environmental protection:

 

A journal referee's rant

From the inbox April 10:

Dear Dr. Whitehead,

On 01/Mar/2017 you kindly agreed to review the above-referenced manuscript. This is a friendly reminder that your review of this manuscript is due by 31/Mar/2017.

As timely reviews are of utmost importance to authors, I would be grateful if you could submit your review as soon as possible ...

If your review will be delayed for any reason, please let me know when I can expect to receive your comments. ...

I knew my review would be delayed but failed to let the journal know. I completed the review yesterday but:

I clicked the link to perform the review and [it] tells me "the review assignment is no longer available." I suppose, as has happened before with [this journal], the editor has grown impatient and made a decision without my review (attached). If this is the case I don't recall getting a notice that my review was no longer needed.

Yes, this has happened twice with this journal. In this case I completed the review 2.67 months after it was requested. And for the second time I got to submit my review and the opportunity has vanished. 

What do I do? Never agree to review for this journal again? Or, only review if I think I can complete the review within the silly one month window that the journal demands?

Let's think about that one month window for a second ... What sort of reviewers is this journal targeting? Who can drop whatever they are doing to complete a review within a month?

Or, am I the worst journal referee? The guy who holds up publication?

2-3 months is about my average so journal editors, please don't send me a request unless you can wait 3 months.

And there is my answer, I won't accept any more review assignments if the editor can't wait 3 months.  

Now, on to the 3 other late reviews ...

EPA: Extinct Protection Agency?

I guess the last line is the bright side?

Candidate Donald Trump vowed to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency “in almost every form,” leaving only “little tidbits” intact. President Trump is making good on his promise to take a sledgehammer to the agency.

When the White House releases its latest budget proposal on Tuesday, the EPA will fare worse than any other federal agency.

An advance copy of EPA’s budget for fiscal 2018, obtained by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, indicates the administration will proceed with its effort to reduce current funding by more than 31 percent, to $5.65 billion.

The plan would eliminate several major regional programs, including ones aimed at restoring the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, as well as EPA’s lead risk-reduction program. The White House also proposes nearly halving categorical grants, which support state and local efforts to address everything from pesticide exposure to air and water quality, to $597 million. It would slash funding for the Superfund cleanup program, which helps restore some of the nation’s most polluted sites, despite the fact that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt lists it as one of his priorities.

Dozens of other programs also would be zeroed out entirely, including funding for radon detection, lead risk reduction, projects along the U.S.-Mexico border and environmental justice initiatives. The agency would have significantly less money for enforcement of environmental crimes and for research into climate change and other issues.

The budget proposal would maintain funding for “high priority” infrastructure investments such as grants and low-cost financing to states and municipalities for drinking water and wastewater projects. But in the broadest sense, the White House wish list would undoubtedly hobble the EPA, leaving the work of safeguarding the nation’s water and air primarily up to local officials.

EPA officials declined to talk publicly about the specifics of its budget ahead of Tuesday’s planned release of the latest White House proposal. But in a recent email, an agency spokeswoman said the proposal “prioritizes federal funding for work in infrastructure, air and water quality, and ensuring the safety of chemicals in the marketplace. The budget aims to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies and focus on our core statutory mission.”

S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said in an interview that he was amazed the administration had not shifted course from its first proposal in March — former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy called it a “scorched earth” budget — despite bipartisan push back in Congress and warnings from many groups that such cuts could hamper state and local work to curb pollution.

“You would think they would have learned something from these trial balloons,” Becker said. “Instead, they’re doubling down. They just don’t care about the reaction.”

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, echoed the exasperation of many in the environmental community. “This isn’t a budget — it’s a road map for the President, EPA Administrator Pruitt and polluters to see that millions of Americans drink dirtier water, breathe more polluted air and don’t have enough nutritious food to lead healthy lives,” he said in a statement. “With each cut in EPA funding, each regulatory rollback, each special favor for polluters, it becomes more clear that for President Trump, public health protection is not a priority, but a target.”

Trump administration officials, including Pruitt, repeatedly have made clear that they intend to return the agency to its “core responsibilities” of protecting air and water quality. Combating climate change, which was a key focus in the Obama administration, has essentially vanished from the EPA’s mission.

In unveiling its initial proposal, the administration acknowledged that the drastic cuts “will create many challenges” at the agency. But it suggested that, “by looking ahead and focusing on clean water, clean air and other core responsibilities rather than activities that are not required by law, EPA will be able to effectively achieve its mission.”

A deal reached recently by lawmakers to fund the government through September left the EPA largely untouched, reducing its budget $81 million below the current operating level — about a 1 percent cut.

The China vs U.S. Coal Debate: Who is cleaner?

The Center for American Progress says China is kicking the U.S. a$$ in the great coal race:

The result is a report — authored by Melanie Hart, Luke Bassett, and Blaine Johnson — that offers the clearest picture yet of the big picture on coal in China. And a closer look, it turns out, utterly destroys the conservative argument. Far from sitting back and coasting while the US acts, China is waging an aggressive, multi-front campaign to clean up coal before eventually phasing it out — reducing emissions from existing plants, mothballing older plants, and raising standards for new plants. Unlike the US, it is on track to exceed its Paris carbon reduction commitments.

In short, while the US dithers along in a cosmically stupid dispute over whether science is real, China is tackling climate change with all guns blazing. The US, not China, is the laggard in this relationship.

...and the conclusion is stark:

The conservative argument that the US risks acting alone on climate change is the inverse of the truth. China is acting far more intentionally and aggressively than the US — investing more, building more, testing and experimenting more. If the US remains on its current path, by 2030 China will be the uncontested technological and economic leader on climate change.

And of course climate investments are only a small part of China’s sweeping plan to remake the global economy. Meanwhile, the US looks more and more like another powerful empire that got too bloated and stupid to see the future coming.

"Virginia governor calls for state carbon regulations"

Climate federalism:

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) signed an executive order on Tuesday directing regulators to formulate rules cracking down on electricity sector carbon emissions.

The order requires state officials to convene a working group on carbon emissions and issue a report by the end of the year on potential regulations to limit power plant greenhouse gases. 

Any final regulation, according to the order, should be “trading ready” in case the state decides to enter a regional carbon pollution trading program in the future. 

via thehill.com

Gov. McAuliffe is not up for reelection in 2017 but I read somewhere that another Democrat is likely to win. This makes me more optimistic that climate policy might survive the Trump Administration.

About $3750 per EPA job loss

This is tempting:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is setting aside $12 million to pay for employee buyouts, officials wrote in a memo this week. ...

The EPA said in April that it would maintain a hiring freeze put in place by the Trump administration in January and that it would offer employees buyouts as part of a workforce restructuring proposal. The agency said at the time that the buyout program would be completed by the end of the fiscal year in September. 

The buyout fund also comes as the Trump administration considers a 2018 budget proposal that would see the EPA shed 3,200 jobs. The White House is due to announce its formal budget next week, kicking off the congressional appropriations process.

via thehill.com

Imagine the creative gallows humor:

Emissary: We will block out the sun with our arrows.
Spartan (gallows humor here): Then we will fight in the shade.

A couple of things to try to wrap your head around

From the Moment of Happiness Daily Quotation:

“Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness, which is always founded upon a peculiar relish for all the little pleasures which common occurrences afford.”

-- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

All of the little pleasures ... for example, I think I just saw a video of an economist, dressed as Justin Trudeau, singing Rush. 

Apparently famous sports economists are famous among fisheries economists

Where I am today.  At lunch, this was overheard (paraphrased):  Whether it's Whitehead et al, or Haab et al, you guys are cited all the time.  

The department chair's office has been cleaned out

Sent from my iPhone

Additional industry slots have opened up on the EPA's science board

Making American Great Again:

Two scientists have resigned from an Environmental Protection Agency advisory board to protest agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s removal of their colleagues.

Carlos Martín, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, and Peter B. Meyer, president of the E.P. Systems Group, a Pennsylvania-based environmental analysis firm, said in a letter to EPA staff on Friday that it was “with certain regret and concern — and in protest” that they step down from a Board of Scientific Counselors subcommittee on sustainable and healthy communities. Martín posted the resignation letter to Twitter on Friday morning. 

Pruitt this week dismissed half of the members of EPA’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises the agency’s Office of Research and Development on scientific research programs. Among those Pruitt booted were subcommittee co-chairs Courtney Flint and Robert Richardson, who Martín and Meyer described as “leading scholars.” Their removal came as a “shock” and “suggests that our collective knowledge is not valued by the current EPA administrators,” Martín and Meyer wrote.

via www.huffingtonpost.com