I’ve gone back to one of the old layouts. So far, I’ve picked up a strong preference for a serif font, which I share, and mixed feelings on the rest of the design, including the mugshot. So please comment away, and I’ll consider a redesign when I’ve digested it all.
Category: Metablogging
Format
I just upgraded WordPress and, as usual, I’m a bit slow about restoring my formatting. I’ll try to get the essentials like recent comments back soon. In the meantime, feel free to make suggestions.
New on the RSMG Web
There’s lots of interesting stuff up on the Risk and Sustainable Management Group website
In Branson’s Greenhouse Philanthropy? Mark Neal makes the point that Richard Branson’s recent moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being driven by the approach of an emissions permits market, and make sound business sense.
Nanni Concu looks at Ethics of conservation versus ethics of development defends market-based instruments against recent criticism, and looks at Green choice. Also, Strategies for energy security links to the always-interesting Jeffrey Sachs.
On water, a central interest of the RSMG group, Mark covers the new Office of Water Resources, a BCA report urging action and the vexed question of recycling
Read, enjoy and comment
Academic blog wiki
Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber has set up a wiki directory for academic blogs. This sort of thing has been tried before, with varying degrees of success. For example, this Muisc blog wiki looks fairly lively. On the other hand Wikablog seems to pretty much moribund. The new one has the advantage of starting with the fairly extensive CT blogroll, supplemented by some discipline-specific lists.
Auto-immune disorder
My antispam software, Akismet, has started classifying my own comments as spam. Until I’ve fixed this, I’ll be a bit slow participating in the discussion.
Podcast
I’ve finally joined the podcasting revolution, with this Business Matters interview about prospects for South-East Queensland. More here
Update: More broken links fixed, I hope
New economics blogs and blogs by economists
Andrew Norton has abandoned Catallaxy and set up his own blog, describing himself as Carlton’s lone classical liberal. Andrew has an official comments policy, something I’ve been meaning to set down for ages.
Meanwhile, one of my fellow economists, and occasional commenter here, rabee at jaffa.net has set up a blog offering Progressive occidentalist commentary on a range of issues, including Islamism and the left
Another try at a comment thread
I’m having another go at opening comments on the Fabianism post below. I think the problem is that the ideology under discussion is objectionable to my spam filters, not for political reasons but because it contains the name of a well-known treatment for male performance problems.
Anyway, if you have comments, you should be able to post them here, but try to avoid the text string in question.
Recently on the RSMG Blog
Lots more interesting stuff on the Risk and Sustainable Management Group blog including
Giving ecosystem valuation a bad name.
Wetlands, rivers and floodplains are worth around 20 times the value of agricultural production in the MDB (estimated at around $9 billion). Or 25% of the Australian GDP.$187 billion is clearly an impressive figure, considering the wetlands, rivers and floodplains of the MDB are a small part of the continent. But it is also a very suspicious one.
The River Symposium is underway in Brisbane with the theme ‘Managing rivers with climate change and expanding populations’.
John is making a presentation today (Wednesday) at 1:30 titled ‘Responding to climate change in the Murray Darling Basin’.
Reader Chris Dodds has alerted me to this PM&C discussion paper on potential private involvement in waste water. There’s a lot of interesting information, including discussion of issues like the role of third-party access, which is central to the continuing dispute between Sydney Water and Services Sydney, a would-be private entrant.
How best to implement environmental flows
The Australian on Tuesday and Wednesday mention a project just launched to answer the question of how best to use water for environmental purposes. Working out the best way to use the water will help decide how much money is required to purchase water (as a portfolio of water rights) for a given environmental target.
Alternative energy for Australia.
Today the UQ Sustainability Seminar Series, run by the Division of Environmental Engineering, hosted Frank Barram, Managing Director of Integrated Energy Services, on the topic “Applications, benefits and limitations of alternative energy in Australia. An economic perspective�.
Report – Rural Water Use and the Environment: The Role of Market Mechanisms
“They (Environmental Managers) need to enter markets to source water and to access the full range of water and water-related products on the same terms and conditions as other market participants.� XXII
Read and comment
TAFE-blogging
Reader Paul Williams, who works in TAFE policy in NSW, points me to this interesting report on the economic value of TAFE, undertaken by Allen Consulting, who do the whole thing with a general equilibrium model and estimate the NPV of the TAFE sector at $196 billion.
The report has had some coverage in the media, but there’s a pretty good case to be made that this kind of thing could be better disseminated through blogs, where there’s time to debate the issues. Then again, you could argue that after 30 comments we’ll all be debating the influence of climate on the civil war in Iraq.
You can read it here
Also, in today’s (Wednesday) Fin, Alan Mitchell has an excellent piece lamenting Australia’s lousy record in building human capital, something that isn’t helped when the PM encourages kids to drop out of school at the end of Year 10 in the hope (unlikely, these days, without the kinds of skills obtained by persevering to Year 12) of getting and completing an apprenticeship.
John Quiggin 