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Think Transportation, Not Cars
The Sunday New York Times comes with its own Automobiles section. Nothing unusual about that. Many papers have one as a convenient way to cash in on whatever is left of the classifieds. Certified pre-owned BMWs anyone? The section also comes...
Carbon Output "Socialism On A Planetary Scale"
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...
Carbon Trading Grows Up
When someone robs a bank, nobody challenges the legitimacy of banks. They suggest instead that the bank find better security. Why should carbon markets be any different? Wednesday last week the European Commission (EC) discovered cyber thefts of...
The long and the short of energy efficiency
David Owen asks a provocative question in the current New Yorker: If our machines use less energy, will we just use them more? He more or less says yes. The real answer comes in two parts. For now—over days, weeks, months, and even years—...
One person's cost, another's opportunity
Transitioning into a new, low-carbon energy future costs money. No doubt about it. Yet the flip-side of cost is opportunity. Pew just released a new study on Global Clean Power: A $2.3 Trillion Opportunity. Is this just a smart attempt at rebranding...
No jobs in economic modeling
Co-authored with Nat Keohane. Last week Nat Keohane and I tried to shed some light on the inner workings of economic models when it comes to jobs. Among other more specific statements around climate policy, we also said that, many macroeconomic...
What's the matter with Arkansas?
Midwestern states have traditionally been reluctant to embrace cap and trade. Now it looks like they may well turn into some of the larger beneficiaries of the California cap-and-trade system. The largest supplier of likely carbon offsets for the...
Two proposals and a reality check
Yesterday's New York Times published three terrific op-eds worth a second thought. Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David Victor argue that, "To Fight Climate Change, Clear the Air." Carbon is the main climate culprit, but we can't ignore and might as...
$100 billion in 1000 words
The Copenhagen Accord enshrined $100 billion as the target for north-south climate finance flows by 2020. Earlier this month, the U.N. high-level Advisory Group on climate change Financing (AGF) issued its final report on how to get there. My...
Bending the curve
Cutting emissions is about creating opportunities for new, clean energy sources, not about crashing economies. The Great Recession saw a crash with the most severe consequences for employment and other measures of economic output since the Great...
Everything's Amazing, Until You illuminate It: Achieving Environmental Accountability
We live twice as long as people only ten generations ago. We are richer, much richer than anyone alive two generations ago. Or in other words, it once took weeks, months, or years to make it from sea to shining sea. Now, flying from California to...
Contingent valuation critic wins the Nobel Prize*
By Tim Haab, Environmental EconomicsFrom the NYTimes: The 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded on Monday to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A Pissarides for their work on markets where buyers and sellers...
