Category Archives: Global warming

Krugman on Reducing Energy Consumption

Paul Krugman, in his New York Times op-ed column, “Colorless Green Ideas,” uses a surprising example to illustrate the point that energy conservation need not come at the expense of growth. It’s a widely-held, damaging belief that cutting energy consumption and other carbon emission reduction strategies are a zero sum game, that the money spent […]

Symposium at Yale Discusses Stern Report on Climate Change

An interesting story by David Leonhardt in the New York Times, “Amid Ivy, a Battle About the Climate,” on a bit of dueling among economists about the Stern Report. By way of background, the Stern Report was prepared by Sir Nicholas Stern for the UK government, and was the first attempt by an economist to […]

Australia Taking Steps to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is beginning to sound green. He has put forward a program to spend A$10 billion to conserve water in the face of a multi-year, no-end-in-sight drought, and now has announced a plan to phase out the traditional, highly inefficient incandescent light bulb with florescents (see Syndey Morning Herald and the […]

Study Recommends Carbon Tax over "Cap and Trade"

As we’ve noted, Wall Street firms have been investing in various means of profiting from likely future regulation of carbon emissions, particularly carbon trading. A study by Dr. Robert Shapiro, undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration (which we found thanks to Greg Mankiw’s blog), concludes that carbon taxes would be more effective than emissions […]

The Politics of Global Warming

A nice piece, Global Smarming, by Ian Williams in The Guardian, on some of the jockeying on the issue of climate change. It contrasts the actions of British Petroleum with those of Exxon Mobil. BP in 1997 decided to lower its carbon emissions below the 1990 level by 2010. It achieved the goal in 3 […]

Oil in Focus Again

Here we’ve had a few months of favorable oil prices, and as a result, oil has taken a back burner to other stories. It’s beginning to come to the fore, mainly in not-positive ways. We have two items today, one a very good post on Econbrowser, “Saudi Oil Production Cuts,” and what they might say […]

New Energy Conservation Technology

Roland Piquepaille has a very good post on his Technology Trends blog, “Creating energy from wasted heat.” Although much of the news about climate change has been grim (both the severity of the situation and the lack of political willingness, at least in the US, to even admit there is a problem), it is important […]

Shortcomings of Prediction Markets and Markets Generally

Barry Ritzhold of the Big Picture has had a run of posts lately on topics near and dear to my heart. He has written before on the subject of prediction markets, and his latest comment, on a particularly wrongheaded story in the New York Times, makes some important observations about markets in general. This topic […]

Climate Change, Species Loss, and the WTO

A reader comment on Angry Bear on the climate change and environmental degradation was sufficiently articulate and well argued to be featured as a separate post. The writer Stormy makes a number of important points: 1. The IPCC Report is actually conservative; it doesn’t touch the issue of species die-off, already occurring at alarming levels […]

Practical Responses to Climate Change

This comment, “Climate is Changing. Now What?” by Marcelo Riensi on Global Economy Matters, discusses the types of actions available to deal with global warming: reducing emissions via conservation and improved energy efficiency; managing the costs and disruption as efficiently as possible; and finding replacement sources of energy: [T]he IPCC report can be summarized thus: […]

"On Climate Change and Good Sense"

Below is a comment, On Climate Change and Good Sense,” from Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times on the UK’s Stern Report, which estimated the economic costs of global warming. The report has been criticized for using too low a discount rate, which would have the effect of making the financial impact look larger. Brittan […]

Global Warming’s Impact on Migration

A good post by Aapo Markkanen at Global Economy Matters on the effect of global warming on migration and how that might interact with demographics. And he also points out that migration can exacerbate existing conflicts: The UN-backed panel on climate change released its latest report on climate change last Friday… [T]here wasn’t much that […]

Martin Wolf: Economists Need to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Well, that isn’t exactly what he says, but close. Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ chief economics editor, in his February 6 commentary, “In spite of sceptics, it is worth reducing climate risk,” says that economists are the big skeptics about global warming, and the possible consequences are too dire for them to continue to take […]

Predictably, the Journal Doth Protest (Global Warming Edition)

The Wall Street Journal’s editors have weighed in with their objections to the first of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued last week. And predictably, they dispute the work of 2000 scientists from 113 countries by claiming the “full scientific report” due out in May undercuts the “short policy report” issued […]

The FT : "We Need a Clear and Predictable Price for Carbon"

We have to admit to being a little slow on the uptake from time to time. We reported on the FT’s February 2 editorial, which commented on the publication of the first of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Media watch item: still no editorial yet on this topic in the New […]