Year: 2013
Has 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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CONTINUE READINGLiterally Trashing the Environment
No, not another rap on Joe Biden. The world literally wastes an awful lot of food, notes the International Herald Tribune: Between 1.2 billion and 2 billion tons of the 4 billion tons of food produced around the world every year never gets eaten, according to a new survey by a group of British engineers. …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Precarious Legality of Cost-Benefit Analysis
Cost-benefit analysis has become a ubiquitous part of regulation, enforced by the Office of Management and Budget. A weak cost-benefit analysis means that the regulation gets kicked back to the agency. Yet there is no statute that provides for this; it’s entirely a matter of Presidential dictate. And reliance on cost-benefit analysis often flies in …
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CONTINUE READINGCellulosic Biofuel mandate for 2013
I mentioned the other day that the D.C. Circuit struck EPA’s cellulosic biofuel mandate for 2012. Today, the New York Times reported on EPA’s 2013 quota. EPA has proposed to raise the mandate to 14 million (ethanol-equivalent) gallons for 2013. EPA explicitly stated that it believes its 2013 proposal “is consistent with” the D.C. Circuit …
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CONTINUE READINGIf the Constitution is Dead, where does that leave Takings?
Justice Scalia is getting a lot of attention for his comment that the Constitution is “dead, dead, dead”, but obviously he didn’t mean that the Constitution is no longer in effect. (See? Intent theory sometimes is helpful, Nino.). Rather, he meant that the Constitution does not have a meaning that changes over time. It has …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s AB32 as a Field Experiment
In modern academic economics, many scholars are running field experiments. I can point you to researchers such as John List of University of Chicago or Esther Duflo of MIT. In this 8 minute video, I sketch the simple economics of why it is very important for someone to run this field experiment for learning how …
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CONTINUE READINGUniversity of Washington Young Environmental Law Scholars Workshop
The University of Washington Law School has issued a call for papers for its 2nd Annual UW Young Environmental Law Scholars Workshop. The workshop will be held July 10-12, 2013, on the UW campus in Seattle. Here’s their description of the event: This collegial two-day workshop features discussion of works-in-progress by ten early career environmental …
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CONTINUE READING5 Things You Need to Know About Africa
Africa is going to be an increasingly important area in the future, if only because a higher percentage of the human race will be living there. Here are some key things you should know about sub-Saharan Africa: Population growth. The African population will reach 1.2 billion by 2025, and 1.9 billion by 2050. Currently, 40% of the …
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