Climate Change
UC Berkeley report demonstrates need for strict resource shuffling rules in cap-and-trade
The Energy Institute at Haas, part of UC Berkeley, has a new study that looks at California’s rules for regulating electricity importers in the cap-and-trade program. These rules attempt to keep importers from gaming the cap-and-trade system via resource shuffling. The Energy Institute has simulated different counterfactual cap-and-trade rules using 2007 electricity market data. The …
CONTINUE READINGMore About the Distributional Impacts of a Carbon Tax
I’ve posted before about the equity effects of pricing carbon. A new paper from Brookings provides further evidence on the subject. The main conclusions are that a carbon tax is indeed regressive, but the problem could be fixed by spending about 10% of the proceeds on social welfare programs. The authors find that the direct …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat More Does it Take to Get the U.S to Act on Climate Change?
One standard explanation for why the U.S. has failed to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that it isn’t worth it for us economically. Conventional wisdom has held that we would experience fewer consequences from a warming planet and could adapt more easily to a changing climate than countries in the developing world. Reducing …
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CONTINUE READINGShould Environmentalists Worry About Chuck Hagel?
Reports out today indicate that within the next few days, President Obama will appoint former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to succeed Leon Panetta as Defense Secretary. Even though Hagel himself is a Republican, the GOP has already promised a fight, ostensibly on the entirely specious grounds that Hagel is anti-Israel. Hagel…hmmm…where have environmentalists heard that …
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CONTINUE READINGIn Climate Policy, A Stitch in Time Saves Nine
Moving quickly on carbon reduction could save a lot of money. A new study in Nature highlights the importance of timing in climate policy: [A]chieving the same 60% chance of success with action starting in 2020 would require a 2020 carbon price of around US$150 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) — more than double …
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CONTINUE READINGPut That In Your Tank and Smoke It
The next time anyone tells you that an increase in gasoline prices (say, as part of a carbon-tax or a cap-and-trade system) would generate unbearable costs to consumers, think again. The Los Angeles Times reports something that I have often seen but never really thought through: gasoline stations often a couple block away from each …
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CONTINUE READINGLooking Ahead to 2050
Since New Year’s Eve is both a time for nostalgia and for looking ahead, it seems appropriate to see what the world will look like at mid-century. The world will be facing considerable challenges then. The population will be bigger. The United Nations predicts that the world population will grow by 2 billion to 9 …
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CONTINUE READINGA Hidden Cost Due to Climate Change
Over the last decade some leading economists have written about the benefits and costs of airlines using hubs. Here is one paper . I have wondered how climate volatility will affect the time cost of air travel in a world of hub flights. If I must fly from Boston through Chicago to get to my …
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CONTINUE READINGJohn Kerry & Climate Change
Whatever else it might portend, Kerry’s appointment as Secretary of State is certainly good news environmentally. The New Republic put it well: Kerry, long an advocate for the U.S. to lead on climate change prevention, has compared the threat posed by poor international effort to confront climate change to that of war. In an August …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Significance of NOAA’s Recent Proposal to Protect 66 Coral Species
Citing threats associated with climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) proposed on December 7, 2012 to list 66 coral species under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”), and to reclassify two already-listed Caribbean coral species from “threatened” to “endangered.” According to NOAA Fisheries, this was “the most complex listing process NOAA has ever …
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