Eat Roo
In case you wanted another reason to eat kangaroo rather than beef: they emit just 0.003 tonnes of greenhouse gases per animal per year, compared to 1.67 tonnes per cow per year. And they don’t just...
View ArticleGas Mileage: Overrated
I never thought I’d say this, but America has become too obsessed with gas mileage. Prius owners use their real-time mileage readout to try and get the absolute maximum number of miles out of every...
View ArticleCO2 Emission Datapoint of the Day
Barbara Kiviat reports: Over a 24-hour period, a single cargo ship sitting at Long Beach with its engines running throws off more emissions than all the passenger car traffic in the Los Angeles metro...
View ArticleClimate Engineering Proposal of the Day
Freeman Dyson waxes imaginative in the NYRB: Snow-dumping in East Antarctica would be a good way to stop sea levels from rising… East Antarctica is much colder and larger than Greenland and West...
View ArticleDrilling for Revenues
Free Exchange has it right, I think, and Tyler Cowen is being needlessly self-abnegating. Drilling for US oil might well make sense as a matter of fiscal policy, especially for Alaska; it gets us...
View ArticleCan Carbon Markets Help Stop Deforestation in the Amazon?
I spent the morning at a meeting in midtown on the subject of the nascent carbon markets in Brazil. They’re tiny at the moment, and they’re likely to remain tiny — unless and until the US implements a...
View ArticleCap-and-Trade in the US
Did you know that September 29 saw the largest carbon auction the world has ever seen? OK, it was pretty small on an absolute level — it raised just $39 million, and the price per ton of carbon emitted...
View ArticleThe Problem With Cap-and-Trade Offsets
Richard Sandor, the chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange, is an old-school Chicago trader who doesn’t often self-censor. But in this case, he most definitely should have: The debate over whether or...
View ArticleWhen Buying a Hybrid Isn’t Green
If I were ever to have a nice little place in the Hudson valley (a chap can dream), I’d need a car to keep at the train station while I was in the city and to run me into the nearest town when I was in...
View ArticleTaxing Falling Carbon Emissions
Back in November 2007, in a long post on the relative merits of a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system, I said that one big advantage of cap-and-trade was that it was "a dynamic hedge of fat-tail CO2...
View ArticleCarbon Tax Arrives in British Columbia
Many congratulations to British Columbia and its finance minister Carole Taylor, who has introduced a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The sums involved are not insignificant: The carbon tax will start at a...
View ArticleEthanol’s Not Green
How did I miss this, when it was published a couple of weeks ago? Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing...
View ArticleSmall Feet, Large Footprints
Tyler Cowen explains why those of us without children should be less worried about our carbon footprint: Your net carbon impact depends far more on the number of children you will have than any other...
View ArticleThe Prius Conundrum
Dan Ariely asks why people are more willing to shell out for a Prius than they are to spend a similar amount of money to save much more CO2 by making their houses energy-efficient. And I think a large...
View ArticleWhy Bush Doesn’t Like Cap-and-Trade
You want an argument for why a cap-and-trade system makes more sense than a carbon tax if you want to reduce carbon emissions? Take a look at all the noise surrounding the Bush speech on the subject...
View ArticleGeorge Bush Gets Good News on Oil
George Bush, who wants to slow down the growth of US carbon emissions, got great news today: oil’s over $115 a barrel! I look forward to the White House statement embracing the fact that market...
View ArticleDo People Drive Less When There’s a Carbon Tax?
Peter Zimonjic makes an important point today: that a carbon tax, in itself, and over the short-to-medium term, will have very little effect on gasoline consumption. What Zimonjic doesn’t mention is...
View ArticleCap-and-Trade vs Fuel Efficiency Requirements
This is one of the silliest arguments I’ve yet seen against cap-and-trade: Although the transportation sector represents around 35 percent of the nation’s carbon emissions, oil companies and refiners —...
View ArticleAnnals of Dubious Branding, Audi Edition
Kit Roane doesn’t belabor the irony, but I can’t resist: Tanya Mastoloni went a step further, buying a 49cc scooter to replace her Audi Allroad Wagon. "It goes about 150 miles on one gallon of gas,"...
View ArticleWhy Cap-and-Trade Beats a Carbon Tax
Brad DeLong reckons that the relative merits of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade "roughly offset each other". "To first order cap-and-trade and carbon taxes are the same," he says, but there are second-...
View ArticleExxon’s Hoard
I missed this, last week: Exxon Mobil has amassed a large pile of common stock held in treasury. At the end of 2007, the company had 2.367 billion shares held in treasury, for which it paid $113...
View ArticleHow to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in a World of Corporate Pork
Daniel Hall unwraps a rarely-heard yet very powerful argument in favor of cap-and-trade over carbon taxes. Essentially, coporate pork in a cap-and-trade system (free emissions allowances) is much less...
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The Disastrous Future of the US
The insurance industry is fighting back against the kind of articles which accuse it of price-gouging, especially when it comes to natural disasters in general and hurricanes in particular. Yesterday...
View ArticleWhy the Energy Crisis Won’t Solve Itself
Will Wilkinson is optimistic about energy. Don’t worry about peak oil, he says: as oil prices rise, alternative energy sources will become more attractive, and eventually innovation and competition in...
View ArticleDetroit: Tow Ridiculous
Fuel-economy standards are a good idea because they prevent automobile manufacturers from gaming the system. If everybody is forced to make fuel-efficient cars, there’s a level playing field; if it’s...
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