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economics

Economics of the Environment

January 10, 2012 by Robert Stavins
with 330 views
0

The Sixth Edition of Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings has just been published by W. W. Norton & Company of New York and London.  Through five previous editions, Economics of the Environment has served as a valuable supplement to environmental economics texts and as a stand-alone book of original readings in the... [read more]

Cold, Hard Climate Economics

November 10, 2011 by Gernot Wagner
with 348 views
5

Global warming is happening faster and with more intensity than anyone expected, yet the fossil-fueled right has succeeded in removing the issue almost entirely from the agenda through a false pretense of defending "free markets." In response, environmentalists have tended to retreat further into their own organically padded corners,... [read more]

No Free Lunch on Climate

September 6, 2011 by Gernot Wagner
with 252 views
1

Plenty of studies show how we can save the planet and save money all at once. Many of them happen to be produced by McKinsey. Economists tend to deride them. If you could really save money by being green, why wouldn’t everyone be green all the time? [read more]

UNESCO, Rolling Stones and the Art of the Trade-Off

August 21, 2011 by Gernot Wagner
with 181 views
0

Economists have some hard and fast rules that—to put it mildly—don’t necessarily endear them to everyone around. For one, there’s the idea of trade-offs. It makes so much sense it’s sometime easy to forget how difficult an idea it really is. You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes we so wished it wasn’t true. If only you try... [read more]

Carbon Output "Socialism On A Planetary Scale"

July 7, 2011 by Gernot Wagner
with 353 views
0

One of the more powerful quotes about the importance of taking nature seriously goes back to Oystein Dahle: “Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.” It’s made all the more powerful as Mr. Dahle is... [read more]

Comparing Apples Now To Apples Later

April 10, 2011 by Lou Grinzo
with 79 views
0

Allow me to be perhaps the millionth person this year to observe that one of the critical problems we face regarding our looming energy and climates challenges is the sorry state of critical thinking skills. You can provide your own list of ways this situation is a very bad thing, although I would be deeply disappointed if at least one... [read more]

Barriers to High Speed Rail in the US

March 15, 2011 by Hugh Bartling
with 108 views
1

The New York Times had an interesting article over the weekend on the state of Florida’s recent rejection of federal money to build a high speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa. This comes on the heels of gubernatorial elections in Wisconsin and Ohio where anti-rail governors who were elected last year similarly rejected federal... [read more]

The Mirage of Fail Safe Engineering

March 14, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 843 views
1
Harsh Reality: Smoke billows into the sky moments after an explosion occurred at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant.

As I have said many times, all of our energy options require trade-offs. I can’t think of any that don’t have some negative consequences and risks associated with their production and/or use. One job of the engineer is to minimize those risks down to an acceptable level. Often times, public expectation mistakenly believes that “... [read more]

Arguing With the Numbers

March 8, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 266 views
0

Over the weekend I read a remark in one of the Wall St. Journal's political columns that resonated with an implicit theme of this blog since its inception in early 2004. In her discussion of the budget crises facing various states and the debates concerning how to resolve them, Peggy Noonan highlighted the benefits of focusing on the... [read more]

Economic Doctrines and Climate Change

October 29, 2010 by Breakthrough Institute
with 426 views
0

Last week, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released an important new report that explores the ideological origins of different policy responses to climate change, and helps clarify why there has been a lack of consensus (and lack of progress), on tackling climate change or nearly two decades. The report, "... [read more]

Concentrated benefits and dispersed costs

October 17, 2010 by Michael Giberson
with 746 views
0

Recently I went looking for a source for the idea that special interest lobbying succeeds due to the logic of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. Frequently in economics and especially among public choice analysts the concept is attributed to Mancur Olson and sometimes specifically to The Logic of Collective Action. For example,... [read more]

The Jevons Paradox: Time to Send it The Way of the Dodo?

June 23, 2010 by Peter Troast
with 1,733 views
11

The Jevons Paradox has been the elephant in energy efficiency's room since energy efficiency was in diapers. It casts a gloomy shadow over the industry, raises doubts about the sanctity of our mission, and the fact that it exists at all is, frankly, kind of a drag. But here's the thing: energy efficiency is all grown up now, and Jevons... [read more]

What the Oil Spill might mean for Echo Boomers and Energy Efficiency.

June 19, 2010 by Peter Troast
with 285 views
1

My generation (I’m 19) has been getting a lot of flack these days. We are resistant to entering the “real world”, hesitant to settle down, and spend way too much time on “the internets”. Are we simply unmotivated, or is there logic to our laziness? Where some see our so called “prolonged childhood” as nothing but a bad thing, I see... [read more]

An Aside into Domestic US Politics

June 10, 2010 by Andrew Holland
with 352 views
2

I have spent very little time on this blog delving into the US political debate about climate policy.  Frankly, in the short to medium term, it doesn't matter very much for security policy what any nation does.  Most scientists say that we're locked-in for the next 30 years or so with an escalating concentration of carbon and... [read more]

Note to Environmentalists: Economists are on your side

April 12, 2010 by Tim Haab
with 238 views
2

There is a tendency among some environmental writers to dismiss “classical”, “traditional”, “neoliberal”, or “mainstream” economics as somehow inimical to environmental interests. The problem is that more often than not these writers get the facts wrong. It’s almost as if the knee-jerk aversion to economics that exists among many... [read more]