Waiter, What’s This Fly Doing In My Soup?
This is the sort of thing that gives environmentalism a bad name: The UN has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the UN agency’s Rome...
CONTINUE READINGThe Economics of Insurance in the Face of Climate Change
Eduardo Porter offers a "teachable moment" thanks to his NY Times Business piece on insurance today. He writes a piece arguing that for profit "conservative" firms have a stake in fighting climate change. While I want this logic to be correct, an academic might ask whether it is correct. The insurance industry makes profit if it collects more in premiums than it pays out during disasters. So, if it sells $20 million dollars worth of insurance but only 3 guys ...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Supreme Court Upholds Local Government Bans on Pot Dispensaries
In its most important land use decision since 2011, the California Supreme Court has upheld local governments' power to ban marijuana dispensaries within their jurisdictions. Last week the court unanimously rejected marijuana advocates' claim that such local bans are preempted by California state law. The Supreme Court's opinion in City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center, Inc. can be found here.The seeds of this dispute can be found in Cali...
CONTINUE READINGSome Overdue Environmental Justice In Time for Shavuot
The Jewish festival of Shavuot, which begins at sundown this evening, commemorates the Israelites' receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Shavuot is thus the paradigmatic lawyers' holiday given its focus on law and justice. This connects nicely with the other two great pilgrimage holidays found in the Jewish Bible, giving us a trinity (so to speak) of three themes: Passover (Freedom); Shavuot (Justice); and Sukkot (Peace). And a little bit of environmental justice...
CONTINUE READINGDiscount Rates and Middle-Class Stagnation
Discount rates are how economists measure the importance of the future versus the present. If the discount rate is low, we care a lot about the future; the reverse is true if the rate is high. It turns out that one of the key factors driving the discount rate -- maybe the key factor -- is whether we expect to get richer in the future.* Small changes in discounts are important in carcinogens due to the 20-30 year latency period between exposure and illness. They are ...
CONTINUE READINGWhy it’s important that we know that we’re at 400 ppm of CO2
A major (and unfortunate) milestone has been crossed this past week. Measurements of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million, the highest in millions of years. Others have commented on how worrying this milestone is for the planet. But what I want to focus on here is how important it is that we even know that this milestone has been passed. Our understanding of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is actually relatively new, and it began wit...
CONTINUE READINGThe Insurance Industry Helps Us to Adapt to Climate Change
The NY Times reports that insurance rates are rising in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy for coastal communities. As I argued back in 2010 in my Climatopolis book, such "price gouging" is good! If insurance markets are competitive, then the rates that insurance companies charge households who seek home insurance will reflect the best guess of the true actuarial probabilities of bad events. Everyone who reads this blog knows that climate change raises the probabi...
CONTINUE READINGWARNING: Individual Research Findings and Economic Models May Not Be Fully Grounded.
A couple of weeks ago, a major paper on the economics of government deficits turned out to have huge flaws. Matt and Jonathan have already had something to say about this, but I'd like to add some thoughts about the implications for environmental issues."Interesting," you say, "But what does that have to do with the environment?" I see two big lessons. The first lesson is about the danger of overreacting to a dramatic research finding, especially when you reall...
CONTINUE READINGAlberta, Open Sewers and the Keystone Pipeline
Al Gore raised the hackles of the Canadian government this week when he criticized the country's large scale extraction of oil from the Alberta tar sands. The tar sand oil reserves are among the world's largest but are particularly energy intensive to extract. That means that extracting oil that will then be burned will emit significantly more greenhouse gases than oil extracted through more conventional means. Gore said that the extraction has led to damage t...
CONTINUE READINGNiall Ferguson, Climate Smear Artist
Big kerfluffle over the weekend concerning remarks by right-wing Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson, who claimed that Keynesian economics is not concerned about the future because Keynes himself was gay and didn't have children. Now, not only is this bigoted, but it is untrue on its own terms: Keynes was married, he was childless because his wife had a tragic miscarriage, and the man himself was deeply committed to future generations; he wrote an essay called "Economic...
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
