The seen and the unseen: electric cars – where does the electricity come from?
02 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
Carbon credits are bad for the Forests
01 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: carbon credits, global warming, unintended consequence
Via The-Galileo-Movement and dailymail.co.uk
The poor carbon footprint of wind and solar
01 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: bootleggers and baptists, global warming, green rent seeking, solar power, wind power
Paul Joskow pointed out that these costs do not take account of the costs of intermittency: wind power is not generated on a calm day, nor solar power at night. Conventional power plants must be kept on standby. Electricity demand also varies during the day in ways that the supply from wind and solar generation may not match.
HT: The Economist via Sinclair Davidson
The best discussions on green interest group coalitions
26 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, environmental economics, global warming, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: bootleggers and baptists, Bruce Yandle, environmental interest groups, global warming, green rent seeking, Todd Zywicki
Bootleggers, Baptists, and the Global Warming Battle By Bruce Yandle and Stuart Buck:
The theory’s name is meant to evoke 19th century laws banning alcohol sales.
- Baptists supported Sunday closing laws for moral and religious reasons, while bootleggers were eager to stifle their legal competition.
- Politicians were able to pose as acting in the interests of public morality, even while taking contributions from bootleggers.
Yandle and Buck argue that during the battle over the Kyoto Protocol, he “Baptist” environmental groups provided moral support while “bootlegger” corporations and nations worked in the background to seek economic advantages over their rivals.
BAPTISTS? THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL INTEREST GROUPS By Todd J. Zywicki who specifies three testable implications of a public interest model of the activities of environmental interest groups:
(1) a desire to base policy on the best-available science;
(2) a willingness to engage in deliberation and compromise to balance environmental protection against other compelling social and economic interests; and,
(3) a willingness to consider alternative regulatory strategies that can deliver environmental protection at lower-cost than traditional command-and-control regulation.
Zywicki concludes that It has been argued that environmental regulation can be best understood as the product of an unlikely alliance of “Baptists and Bootleggers” – public-interested environmental activist groups and private-interested firms and industries seeking to use regulation for competitive advantage.
Australia’s carbon debate mirrors global follies
19 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: carbon tax, expressive voting
In a democracy we resolve our differences by trying to persuade each other and elections
17 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
An inconvenient chart
15 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: an inconvenient truth, global warming
HT: aei-ideas.org
The battle of the graphs
08 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in environmentalism, global warming Tags: global cooling, global warming, Little ice age, Medieval warming period
The second IPCC report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today.
The 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. The technique they overweighed was one which the UN’s 1996 report had said was unsafe: measurement of tree-rings from bristlecone pines.
Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now.
There are major differences between a carbon tax and emissions trading.
29 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: cap and trade, carbon tax, emissions trading, global warming, rent seeking
- The history of cap-and-trade systems suggests that the carbon emission allowances are given away to carbon emitters, which they can use or sell at market prices. The prices of energy products would rise, but governments would collect no revenue to reduce other taxes and compensate consumers.
- Agreement on a global cap-and-trade system is hard to imagine. A global carbon tax is easier to negotiate. All nations use a carbon tax to raise revenue and use the proceeds to compensate consumers with tax relief. No money needs to change hands across national borders.
- A carbon tax is now being championed by groups and political parties that previously would deny to their graves that taxes have significant incentive effects, and that taxes do not affect the supply of labour or the rate and direction of investment to any important degree. It is suspicious that groups and parties that deny tax cuts increase economic growth take time out from these foundational beliefs to support a tax because of the incentives it gives to reduce carbon consumption. They want it both ways.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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