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Grossly Incomplete: Redefining GDP for Climate Change
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is broken. Robert F. Kennedy said as much in his first major presidential campaign speech. Simon Kuznets, the father of GDP, acknowledged its shortcomings. GDP is an imperfect indicator of human well-being at best, and...
Benefits of Clean Air and Water Dwarf Costs 10 to 1
The Office of Management and Budget is nerd heaven: a bunch of people getting their professional kicks from analyzing federal regulation. This bean counting may sound painfully lacking in glamour, but it’s incredibly important. OMB’s annual report...
In Need of a Nudge? Carbon Tax and Making Polluters Pay
Nudge is the best kind of book. It presents the type of head-slappingly obvious solutions to public policy problems that make you wonder why you needed a book to tell you about them in the first place. Place the veggies before the French fries in...
Thailand: Where Environmentalism Rules, Sort Of
As an economist, I travel with a lot of intellectual baggage. It's tough, wherever I am, not to look around and wonder if people are behaving in an economically rational way.Recently, I spent a month in Thailand. While there, I was struck...
Energy Efficiency and Energy Use: The Rebound Effect is Overplayed
Trying to put the rebound effect for energy efficiency in its rightful place is like playing a game of wack-a-mole. Predictably every couple of years, someone new discovers the counter-intuitive appeal of showing how more efficient energy policies...
Foreign Policy: Why Bloomberg Endorsed Obama
When it rains, it pours. First came Sandy, the incarnation of the Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns.” Then came the political hurricane, with three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsing Barack Obama for his second....
326 consecutive months of above average global temperatures
Paul Volcker may have $3 billion of “I told you so” J.P. Morgan Chase losses to point to. Al Gore has 326 months, and counting. Somehow I doubt either feels gleeful, although I wouldn’t blame them:April was the 326th month in a row the global...
This Jacket Will Not Stop Global Warming
Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and apparel company, ran an eye-catching, full-page ad in The New York Times the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year. The headline, “Don’t Buy this Jacket,” was above a photo of one of its...
Imagine What A Real Cap Could Do
RGGI (pronounced “Reggie”), the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, has capped carbon dioxide emissions in ten northeastern U.S. states. Well, it isn’t much of a cap, given how loose it really is. Still, the latest analysis that tries to follow the...
Naomi Klein is Half Right About Capitalism vs. the Climate
Naomi Klein is always worth reading. If you haven’t seen Capitalism vs. the Climate, go ahead. I’ll wait. Her 10,000-word exposé is well worth the effort. It makes the essential point that addressing climate change means reorganizing how the world...
What Nuclear Proliferation & Abolition Have In Common
Global warming has characteristics that make it unique among most public policy problems. Its effects are more global, more long-term, and more uncertain than most. That triple whammy makes sensible national and global policy exceedingly difficult....
Helicopter Parents Should Worry About The Air
My wife and I have no car, no TV, and a no-screens policy around our 8-month-old. We carry him around in an organic cotton wrap. His favorite toys are wood, his baby soap is plant-based, his only pacifier is his left thumb. He has yet to taste baby...
