Environment

Call for help (I refuse to type bl*g)

John Quiggin20 Comments

I’m trying to get started on a reasonably substantial analysis of the economics of policies to mitigate climate change. I thought this would be a good time to acknowledge a couple of readers who’ve sent me useful links, and ask if anyone has any others. Of course, I’ve already got a mountain of stuff to get through.

Waratah points me to this link suggesting that California could achieve a net benefit from a program generating a substantial reduction in emissions, and SimonJM has pointed to this useful site.

20 thoughts on “Call for help (I refuse to type bl*g)”

  1. I’m sure you are already well aware of the excellent book “Natural Capitalism” by Hawken, Lovins and Lovins. The book is supplemented by a website (www.natcap.org), from which you can get further examples of successful conservation strategies. This site also links to a section on “Climate-Economy models” which is well worth a look.

    I would also suggest you have a look at the book “Small is Profitable” by Lovins et al., which addresses the important issue of the viability of small-scale renewable electricity generation. This book also has a website
    http://www.smallisprofitable.org/

    Obviously I am an admirer of the Rocky Mountains Institute (http://www.rmi.org/). To my mind, they have made at least two major contributions to the conservation movement: (1) by attacking the idea that conservation means everybody will be poorer and (2) by repeatedly pointing out accounting (not economic) problems associated with conservation decisions. I would be willing to make a small bet of, say. $20 (which might be satisfied by a contribution to your next “whip-around” for a worthy cause) that your findings will include major problems with the accounting behind conservation-related investment decisions, and that these problems seriously interfere with what an economist would consider rational.

    On the nuclear side, I suppose you are aware of the recent critical report from the Sustainable Development Commission (UK govt.) downloadable from
    http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/060306.html

    There is the 2001 USA0-oriented book “Perverse Subsidies” by Myers and Kent (see http://www.iisd.org/publications/pub.aspx?pno=281)

    Will send more if any occur.

  3. And hopefully you are still intent on answering my concern about the cost/benefit analysis of Kyoto. Namely that Kyoto is probably low cost in its current form and yet in its current form it is also probably low benefit.

    My standing question is this. Does John Quiggin regard the Kyoto protocol as low benefit as well as low cost in its current form?

    And the logical follow on is that if changes are made to Kyoto to make it high benefit will it then also be high cost?

  4. i was going to post a link to the sustainablity commission but gordon has beat me to it,

    i work for a company that deals with mining, and uranium is where its at at the moment,
    its quite clear from the exploration etc that there is an intention to step up sales very largely,
    last night i read that report on nuclear power from the sustainability commision and thought it very good, sensible even,
    i agree with their conclusion and i think a lot more people need to learn a lot more about this issue cos this will be a very big one in australia

  6. First you need an economic system that accurately reflects and values broad environmental indices.

  7. On natural capital, see “Natural Capital and Human Economic Survival� Prugh et al., CRC Press – Lewis Publishers, 2nd ed. 1999 and Gretchen Daily (ed) “Nature’s Services� 1997, Island Press (http://www.islandpress.com/books/detail.html/SKU/1-55963-476-6 ). The Island Press website itself is worth a look around.

    The Ecovalue Project at the U. of Vermont’s Gund Institute (Where Robert Costanza is Director) is also interesting (http://ecovalue.uvm.edu/evp/default.asp )

    The Australia New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics website is at http://www.anzsee.org/ . The international Society is at http://www.ecoeco.org/index.html .

    The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change research (http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/index.shtml ) includes studies of economic impacts.

    Assessment of impacts and adaptations to climate change is the subject of a project at CIESIN (Columbia U.) at (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/aiacc/). The CIESIN website itself is well worth a look at (http://www.ciesin.org/).

    The US global change research program regional impact estimates page seems to have become moribund since 2003, but there are still some revealing analyses of US impacts at http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/overviewregions.htm

    The ICLEI (not sure what the letters stand for) is an international association supporting local govt. sustainability initiatives. Interesting to see what sort of initiatives are being supported as this forgotten level of govt. (http://www.iclei.org/)
    Other relevant sites are http://www.who.dk/tech/hcp/eurosust.htm and http://www.sustainable.org/

  8. John shouldn’t dignify your obtuseness with a response, Terje, but I’ll accommodate you: when painting your cubby house, having stripped the old paint off to leave the surface ready for undercoating before its final finish, do you proudly talk to the neighbours about the enormous benefit to cost ratio of your paintstripping efforts thus far? You do? Well done, cheers.

  9. I think that the example you might be trying to make is much like my earlier example of a freeway between two cities. If you build the road only half the distance it will cost half as much. However you will get zero benefit.

    The Kyoto protocol is like a road half way. John Quiggin has made a strong argument that it is actually a pretty cheap road. I don’t disagree with this. I am merely asking him to address the fact that it also seems to offer next to no benefit.

    Maybe you are saying that I am jumping the gun by saying the road has little benefit. I should wait until the full road is built. However I would counter by saying that John is jumping the gun in saying it is a cheap road. He should present the costing for the complete project. I suspect that this is a road for which the second half will be many multiples more expensive than the first half.

  11. The Australian Greenhouse Office published “Economic Issues Relevant to Costing Climate Change Impacts� in 2004. Barrie Pittock et al. wrote “Climate Change:An Australian Guide to the Science and Potential Impacts� for the Australian Greenhouse Office in 2003. Both downloadable from http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/science/publications/index.html
    There is also the “Overview of potential climate change impacts on Australia (which you are no doubt aware of but other readers may be interested in) at
    http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/impacts/overview/index.html
    CSIRO lists its climate projection publications at http://www.dar.csiro.au/impacts/future.html and lists relevant consultancy reports at http://www.dar.csiro.au/impacts/consult.html

  12. The Beijer Institute in Sweden has a series of publications including “Environmental and Resource Economics: Some Recent Developments.” (Dasgupta and Maler, 2004) and “Sustainability’s Compass: Indicators of Genuine Wealth” (Carpenter et al., 2004) which must be interesting if only for the stellar list of co-authors (Arrow, Maler, Dasgupta, Daily…). On the technical side, you might be interested in “Environment, Uncertainty, and Option Values” (Maler and Fisher 2005) All downloadable from
    http://www.beijer.kva.se/publications/pdf-archive/pdf_archive.html

    I think I’ll stop for a while now. Unless something really interesting occurs to me…

  14. “A clean energy future for Australia� (WWF report) downloadable from http://wwf.org.au/ourwork/climatechange/cleanenergyfuture/
    This report references work by Reidy and Diesendorf (2003) and by Reidy (2003) on perverse incentives for fossil fuel consumption in Australia.

    Florentin Krause submitted a pretty detailed analysis of negative US estimates of the cost of Kyoto to a 2001 US govt. inquiry. She discusses modelling problems and suggests that an “integrated least-cost strategy� would be economically beneficial on balance. Though I have never heard of this lady before, The report is at http://www.senate.gov/comm/environment_and_public_works/general/107th/krause.htm
    She also co-authored what looks like a well-researched analysis of several alternative policy options in a paper called “A Comparison Of Deregulation, Electrical Eff i c i e n c y P rograms, And Integrated Market Tr a n s f o rm a t i o n Policies: Impacts On Carbon Emissions And Serv i c e Costs In We s t e rn Euro p e ‘s Power Sectorâ€?
    (Downloadable from http://smealsearch2.psu.edu/40831.html) and some other interesting-sounding papers on the cost of carbon reductions.

  15. SOT-Great talk by Prof Norman Myers at the canberra Press Club not only on why biodiversity matters but explaining the topic on what it means to say 50 species are going extinct every day. Wish the eco sceptics here could have caught it.

    Nice to know one is on the ball when you have someone if that stature confirms the things one believes.

    SOT- Pyramid Schemes
    A little time in the lab could teach big business how to help the poor
    http://grist.org/biz/fd/2006/03/14/elkington/index.html

    Mentioned to JQ about the Bottom of the Pyramid movement and thought he and others may find this interesting. Many see that poverty/development and AGW are intimately linked in that any solution that doesn’t include developing nations is doomed to fail. Pitty many elements of the pro-business lobby couldn’t put their energy into looking at solutions instead of mudding the waters of AGW science.

  20. I am advised by ECOS mag. that the correct weblink to the “10 fully costed deep-cut studies” referred to in David’s comment above should be to the WWF study “A clean energy future for Australiaâ€?, already referenced above. Actually, though this excellent paper does briefly summarise 8 (not 10) studies from Australia and overseas in Section 13, the reader interested in the costs of mitigation would have to go to the originals for the economic estimates.

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