investing
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Dueling NYT op-eds
David Brooks: The lesson here is that we have a right to be skeptical of so-called stimulus packages. The Federal Reserve can effectively stimulate the economy. There are certain automatic government programs, like unemployment insurance, which also do it. But the history of the past century suggests that politically designed, ad hoc stimulus packages rarely […]
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A few billions more
I’ll go out on a limb and guess that this is not the last such story we will read in coming years: Low-emissions coal-fired power technology, or so-called clean coal, probably needs a further $15 billion of investment and 10 more years of research and development to be ready for commercial use, Credit Suisse Group […]
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Think tank says price on carbon more effective research driver than targeted subsidies
Robert Fri, former deputy administrator of the EPA and the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration, former president of progressive think tank Resources for the Future, says the government isn’t very good at doing energy research, and that a price on carbon would do more to stimulate productive energy research than targeted grants for specific […]
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McCain adviser, unlike McCain, advocates stimulus spending
Martin Feldstein — a conservative Harvard economist and adviser to the McCain campaign — joins the call for stimulus spending: The president-elect should focus on developing a mechanism for identifying and funding spending initiatives that can occur quickly and that would otherwise not be done. While it would be good if some of the increased […]
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U.K. secretary: Economic downturn will not delay measures that could speed economy
“In order to stimulate Britain’s economic growth and support our position as a leading world economy it is essential that we make the right long-term investments in our transport infrastructure and that we plan for future growth, in a way which is consistent with reducing greenhouse gas emissions overall.” — U.K. Transport Secretary Geoff […]
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Voices in favor of green stimulus spending
I think it kind of disappeared in the rush late last week, so if you haven’t already, check out this op-ed from Chip and me in the Seattle Times. It seems to be part of a growing chorus calling out for green stimulus spending. Here’s Michael Northrop, director of the Sustainable Development Program at the […]
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Public spending on transit is an easy call
Katharine Mieszkowski tells the sordid story: in the U.S., ridership for public transit is up, demand is up, but funding is going down and transit systems are decaying. The Washington Post says "[D.C.] Metro and 30 other transit agencies across the country may have to pay billions of dollars to large banks as years-old financing […]
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Recession is the time to build a low-carbon future
Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, has a good article in the U.K.’s Guardian, “Green routes to growth.” The former chief economist with the World Bank offers up “two crucial lessons we must learn from the financial turbulence the world has been facing”: First, this crisis has […]
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More on the media’s quest to manufacture a clean-energy backlash
A huge "amen!" to Joe’s post on the mainstream media’s desperate quest to find a backlash against green energy in the wake of the economic downturn. Read it if you haven’t. A while back, a reporter from … er, a reasonably prominent public radio show to remain unnamed gave me a call to see if […]
