climate economics
Category archives for climate economics
That’s over at P3. But I’ve seen it elsewhere. The idea is that because we’ll need to keep unburnt oil in the ground to hit (or rather, to not hit) a 2 oC commitment, a pile of oil companies are wildly overvalued, leading to… well, who cares what it leads to, because it doesn’t matter.…
Answer: both are complex disciplines. But because they deal with every-day events, amateurs regularly assume that they know enough to dismiss the entire field. Suppose you wanted to know what was wrong with climatology: how far is it really understood, what can it usefully describe and what not, what can it usefully predict: who would…
As regular readers will be aware, I think the ETS is stupid, and we should be imposing a carbon price via carbon taxes instead (Time for carbon taxes? and refs therein, if you’re interested in the history). But David Hone isn’t, he likes the ETS, and nice person that he undoubtedly is, it cannot be…
Or so says Marginal Revolution (via Timmy). I repeat it here to wind up all the people who continually tell me how wonderful fuel efficiency standards are. Prediction: no-one will change their minds. a gas tax provides immediate, direct incentives for drivers to reduce gasoline use, while the efficiency standards must squeeze the reduction out…
PAYING FOR IT by ELIZABETH KOLBERT in the shouty New Yorker suggests that carbon taxes may be back on the (US) agenda. It would be good if they were, but I’m dubious (am I ever anything else?). There are many reasons to be dubious. One is in the article: a carbon tax makes so much…
Or, Timmy in the Torygraph. Its a bit broken I’m afraid, though it manages to get some obvious things right. But before I start on the actual matter, we need to sweep away some of the dross. It starts Perhaps we can sit down and discuss this climate change thing like the adults we are?…
Someone’s PR folk mailed me CARE and climate change Into Unknown Territory: The limits to adaptation and reality of loss and damage from climate impacts, and the report itself. You know what its like: the first big pic is a poor person with a baby in a dry landscape with a dead cow skeleton; the…
Reading P3 and mt I got stuck at …economics makes grandiose claims to be the science of collective behavior, or even the science of collective happiness. Yet it dismisses any philosophically interesting aspects of these questions in favor of counting dollar-denominated transactions. Nevertheless, it claims for itself a unique position among the sciences, as the…
Or so says reuters and a whole host of others repeating the same story. The source is draft ELECTRICITY GENERATION POLICY STATEMENT from the shouty Scottish government. You won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t believe a word of it (I’ve been pretty sniffy before), but lets read on. Oh, but first, why so…
CH has resigned as a minister (he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, often just reported as “energy secretary”) after he was charged with asking his then-wife to take some speeding points for him; or, more formally, for “perverting the course of justice”. And I think the reaction, certainly amongst his colleagues,…