Month: February 2013
Climate Change’s Bipolar Personality
Climate change is literally bipolar, impacting both the northernmost and southernmost parts of the globe. But the pace and effects of warming differ at the two poles. At the northern end of the world, impacts are already dramatic. The Economist has a special feature on the Arctic, which provides an especially clear explanation of why the …
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CONTINUE READINGFalse Equivalence Watch: Michael Shermer
Faced with the inconvenient truth that Republican Party has declared war on science, some conservatives have decided to retreat to false equivalence: yes, the GOP is the home of modern Luddism, but the Democrats are just as bad. This is a move perfected by many mainstream columnists, who condemn both parties for failing to adopt …
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CONTINUE READINGMexico as a Lead Pollution Haven
The New York Times has published a piece about the unintended consequences of U.S environmental regulation. The Times focuses on how U.S lead battery disposal regulation has contributed to our exporting dead batteries to Mexico. If Mexico has more lax disposal regulation and if more people live close to areas where dead batteries are …
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CONTINUE READINGHeads in the Snow
This isn’t news to any of our readers, but as a massive winter storm descends on the East Coast, let us be clear about one thing: The existence of a terrible, extreme snowstorm, far from belying the existence of “global warming”/climate change, actually confirms it. According to every model and every prediction of the phenomenon, climate change will …
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CONTINUE READINGPutting a Human Face on Hydraulic Fracturing
It is rare when new web content makes one want to sit back in an easy chair, study every image, and follow every word. Let me tell you about one offering that not only delivers that kind of quality, but focuses on one of the critical environmental and social issues currently facing the country. The …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Talmud and the Endowment Effect
The endowment effect is one of the most important aspects of behavioral economics. It postulates that losing something is worse than gaining something is good. One can easily see it applied to various aspects of property law: it is worse to lose a piece of property that you think is yours than to gain a …
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CONTINUE READINGAirpocalypse Now: China’s Tipping Point?
The recent run of air pollution in China, we now know, has been worse than the air quality in airport smoking lounges. At its worst, Beijing air quality has approached levels only seen in the US during wildfires. All of the comparisons to London, Los Angeles, and New York in the last century are beside …
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CONTINUE READINGHas New Urbanism Killed Land Use Law?
My Land Use casebook, like most of them, mentions New Urbanist zoning and planning techniques, but does not dwell on them. In order to teach New Urbanist concepts such as Form-Based Codes, SmartCode, and the Transect, I had to develop my own materials, as well as shamelessly stealing a couple of Powerpoint presentations from a friend who …
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CONTINUE READINGHarvard Offers A Natural Experiment for Testing Whether Place of Work Determines Where We Live
Readers of this blog are well aware that fossil fuels aren’t correctly priced to reflect the social cost of their consumption. Many economists believe that the U.S gas tax should be at least $1 higher per gallon. In the absence of such Pigouvian Pricing, there is a negative carbon externality associated with living further from …
CONTINUE READINGA New Feast for Environmental Policy Wonks
The Winter 2013 issue of the always-invaluable Journal of Economic Perspectives is just out, and it is a treasure for environmental policy people. It features a symposium on tradeable pollution permits, with contributions from among others William Pizer and Robert Stavins. It not only reviews the history of tradeable permits in air pollution, but also …
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