economy

The economic benefits of going green

Earlier this week, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, Dan Weiss, went on CNBC to discuss "the economic benefits of going green" as it relates to the energy bill currently in Congress. Weiss, a strong advocate of the clean energy provisions, went head to head with Max Schultz of the Manhattan Institute, whose sole platform was costs.

The only way to a soft landing is down

The only way to a soft landing is down.

In a brief article on DeSmog by Emily Murgatroyd, a Cato Institute type, Jerry Taylor, is quoted as saying

Scientists are in no position to intelligently guide public policy on climate change. Scientists can lay out scenarios, but it is up to economists to weigh the costs and benefits and many of them say the costs of cutting emissions are higher than the benefits.

Can we consider this claim, or is it somehow protected by a taboo? Is one a Marxist or even a Stalinist for pointing out that economists are not, themselves, necessarily right about everything?

Economists, meanwhile, claim to have the key to rationality. Their claim is based in their own definition of their field, which is about "how people collectively make decisions", but they proceed very quickly from there to the marketplace via a number of dubious assumptions.

The marketplace is real enough, and the fact that it affects the decisions we make is inescapable, but that doesn't prove a claim that economics is uniquely placed to resolve our differences.

A claim in more desperate need of challenging I cannot imagine -- yet on it goes, essentially unchallenged in circles of power.

America’s climate and energy future

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

A few weeks ago, one of the presidential candidates' advisors challenged a group of climate leaders to describe America's future. His challenge triggered a flurry of e-mails as we attempted to articulate a vision.

We talked about carbon caps and price signals and new investments in R&D. That's fine, the advisor responded, but what it the vision? What is America's perfect future?

I'm not sure we ever satisfactorily answered this very good question, but I found myself trying to describe what America might look like 10, 20, and 40 years from now.

The economy is an ecosystem

It is increasingly argued by people who used to be climate change deniers that preventing global warming will be too expensive to contemplate; even the Stern report, which was put together by a sympathetic economist, estimates that the world economy would have to decrease annual growth by about 5 percent. On the other hand, reports are emerging that argue that green jobs will reinvigorate the economy, creating an entirely new green-collar job sector.

I want to argue something much stronger -- that by building green industries, such as wind, solar, geothermal, public transit, zero-emission buildings, and others, we will not only provide millions of jobs, we will be able to rebuild our manufacturing and machinery industries and thereby expand the middle class and the long-term source of our wealth. I will argue such an expansion can be environmentally sustainable.

In order to understand why this is so, we have to understand how the economy works, looked at from a production-centered point of view. Think of the economy as a kind of ecosystem -- a system that is full of various niches and levels, as a natural ecosystem is.

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Over 150 companies worldwide sign climate petition in advance of Bali

More than 150 companies worldwide, representing some $4 trillion in market valuation, have signed the Bali Communiqué: As business leaders, it is our belief that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs of not acting: • The economic and geopolitical costs of unabated climate change could be very severe and […]

A new report lays a road map for creating green jobs while fighting the climate crisis

A major new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) provides a detailed roadmap for avoiding catastrophic global warming and restoring our energy security, while maintaining economic development.

The report, "Capturing the Energy Opportunity: Creating a Low Carbon Economy," is by CAP's John Podesta, Kitt Batten, and Todd Stern. It is well worth reading, and I say that not because I am a senior fellow at CAP, but because the 88-page report lays out the most comprehensive set of plausible job-creating climate/energy policies I have seen.

The authors understand the scale of the problem:

The challenge we face is nothing short of the conversion of an economy sustained by high-carbon energy -- putting both our national security and the health of our planet at serious risk -- to one based on low-carbon, sustainable sources of energy. The scale of this undertaking is immense and its potential enormous.

The urgency of this issue demands a president willing to make the low-carbon energy challenge a top priority in the White House -- a centerpiece not only of his or her energy policy but also of his or her economic program -- to produce broad-based growth and sustain American economic leadership in the 21st century. This task is so encompassing it will demand that the incoming president in 2009 reorganize the mission and responsibility of all relevant government agencies -- economic, national security, and environmental.

The report explores the crucial steps needed to meet the challenge:

GAO says the electric sector’s got a big subsidy to match

The GAO has reported on subsidies to our electric sector, proving what Grist readers already (sadly) know, namely that subsidies to the dirty folks vastly exceed existing or proposed subsidies to cleaner generation.

The most remarkable thing is that the biggest subsidies, like nuclear liability guarantees and lower debt costs through rate payer guarantees, aren't even included in the list (although, to the GAO's credit, it does acknowledge their existence).

So who's packing the biggest, er, subsidy?

Food prices going up, along with everything else

From an article in the Telegraph by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Hat tip to Gristmill reader KO):

What has abruptly changed is the twin revolution of biofuel politics and Asia's switch to an animal-protein diet. Together, they have shattered the fragile equilibrium.

Investors who want to take advantage of agflation must tread with care, both for moral reasons and questions of timing.

Riiiight ... moral reasons.

The way I see it, you can go the PETA route and call the closest thing the environmental movement has to a hero (Nobel Laureate Al Gore) a hypocrite for eating meat, replete with a bulbous-nosed, pot-bellied caricature, or you can admonish your politicians to stop supporting biofuels. I suppose you could do both. I'm concentrating my firepower on the biofuel side of the equation.

Industrial agrofuels are still in their infancy. They have to be stopped now, before it's too late. As consumers, voters, and peaceful protesters, we have a measure of power. Let's start using it. Find an effective way to convince humanity to eat fewer animal products and I'll support that effort also.

More quotes from the article under the fold: