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Richard Revesz responds to Lisa Heinzerling, defending cost-benefit analysis

This post continues a dialogue with professor Lisa Heinzerling: see Revesz's initial post and Heinzerling's response.

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Cost-benefit analysis, correctly applied to many environmental problems, will show that strong environmental regulation is often economically efficient. Although some environmentalists, including Lisa Heinzerling in a recent post, have expressed reservations about the use of cost-benefit analysis to evaluate environmental rules, rejecting cost-benefit analysis instead of seeking to reform it would be a major strategic error for the environmental movement.

Can sustainability survive the recession?

Ben Tuxworth, communications director at Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

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What will the recession mean for sustainability? With the U.S. subprime tsunami still breaking on Britain's shores, house prices in freefall, and several major financial institutions in trouble, it's becoming a hot topic in the U.K. now, with pundits wading in on both sides. Media framing has a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecy, so it's worrying that there's a fair amount devoted to how rising costs and stagnant incomes will inevitably trample on the green shoots of ethical consumption.

And to be fair, it's not hard to find evidence to support this view. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is, as predicted, getting a good kicking on his planned fuel-tax rises -- to the point that it's a safe bet they'll be abandoned soon. More worryingly, there are signs that some forms of ethical consumption have slowed fairly dramatically in the last few months. With food prices at supermarkets up around 20 percent on this time last year -- equating to around £1,000 (nearly $2,000) per year for the average family -- the squeeze is on.

A Post columnist’s defenders can’t salvage his poor cap-and-trade logic

Tyler Cowen weighs in on the cap-and-trade debate. He focuses on my criticism of Samuelson’s seeming failure to understand the relationship between cap-and-trade and a carbon tax: But Samuelson is correct here and Avent is misleading. When there is uncertainty about the location of the social optimum, and uncertainty about elasticities, a carbon tax and […]

McCain asks Obama to plane-pool to joint town-hall meetings

Now that Barack Obama has the Democratic presidential nomination in the bag, John McCain says he wants to get the general election rolling. This morning, McCain invited Obama to join him for 10 town-hall-style meetings throughout the summer. In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, McCain said the “old-fashioned, traditional town-hall meeting” would “change […]

Arizona senator says no to Boxer-L-W without giga-subsidies for nukes

McCain said last night that he is the candidate of change. How is billions of dollars in subsidies to build hundreds of nuclear power plants "change"?

Here is everything you need to know about McCain's understanding of both energy and climate issues: He doesn't care enough about the climate to support even a so-so bill like Boxer-Lieberman-Warner unless there are giga-subsidies for nukes beyond the $100 billion or so the industry has received to date.

Snippets from the news

• Strong climate policy would protect 14 million American jobs. • Schwarzenegger declares statewide drought in California. • Asian autos outsell Detroit for the first time. • Law firm forms practice group focusing specifically on climate change. • Bill Gates dumps stake in ethanol company.

World Environment Day is June 5

Thursday is World Environment Day, and you will no doubt celebrate by donating to Grist. (Thank you!) Once you’ve got that out of the way, you can also help out our dear environment by packing a lighter suitcase when you travel, jogging in the park instead of on the treadmill, using a wind-up alarm clock, […]

Will the Senate ever get to constructive (or destructive) debate on climate bill?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he won’t allow floor debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to extend beyond next week, according to an article in E&E Daily ($ub. req’d) today. “If we don’t finish it next week, then it means something has gone wrong,” he’s quoted as saying. But at an […]

Mexico City residents losing sense of smell, says research

The air pollution in Mexico City is so bad that it could be harming residents’ sense of smell, researchers say. People who live in the city, which exceeds the World Health Organization’s ozone standards 300 days out of the year, did a worse job identifying common scents like coffee and orange juice than residents of […]

Report: Strong climate policy would protect 14 million American jobs

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

A new report from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, finds that strong climate policy is a driver for a healthy economy. A policy that prioritizes energy efficiency and renewable energy -- such as cap-and-trade legislation that limits carbon emissions -- will drive investment into those sectors. From day one, the millions of Americans working in such jobs will enjoy greater job security.

Strong Climate Action Directly Benefits Over 14 Million American Workers. "What is clear from this report is that millions of U.S. workers -- across a wide range of occupations, states, and income levels -- will all benefit from the project of defeating global warming and transforming the United States into a green economy." Over 14 million people throughout the country are employed in 45 representative occupations that would benefit in a low-carbon economy, roughly nine percent of today's total U.S. workforce. [PERI, 5/28/08]

The six green strategies examined in the report are: building retrofitting, mass transit, energy-efficient automobiles, wind power, solar power, and cellulosic biomass fuels. PERI's analysis shows that the vast majority of jobs associated with these six green strategies are in the same areas of employment that people already work in to-day, in every region and state of the country.