Environmental Economics

Revision: Climate Change Policies

A brief revision PowerPoint used in a lesson on climate change policies .... I kept the analysis diagrams outside of the presentation

PowerPoint
Climate_Change_Policies.ppt

Carbon Trading - News Update

Here are three good articles on carbon trading for students wanting to be up to date and have some more arguments to hand:

BBC: “Carbon market’s value hits $64bn”

Nova Scotia News: “Canada may hook up with the EU carbon trading scheme”

Reuters: “British government shelves plans for personal carbon trading”

Jeffrey Sachs on Carbon Trading

Jeffrey Sachs features on “You ask the Questions” in today’s Independent. There are loads of interesting questions and answers - Sachs remains positive about China’s growth potential although he expects it to decelerate to around seven per cent in the years ahead. Here he is on a question about carbon trading .... good evaluation here for students preparing for a question on carbon trading versus carbon taxes versus other policy measures:

“There is a good case for putting a price on carbon emissions but it is more straightforward to do it as a tax rather than a system of tradable permits. It would be easier to tax carbon at source – coal, oil, and gas companies. Tradable permits or carbon taxes will not help develop low-emission technologies. We need to combine carbon pricing with initiatives to promote sustainable energy and farming technologies.”

Catch the remainder of his article here

The external costs of food waste

Over 4 million apples and over a million and a half bananas are thrown away in Britain every day. This video from Newsnight is excellent on the external costs of the food we throw away - estimated by some to be worth around £8 billion a year. Should we actively encourage food scavengers? What are the strategies we should be adopting to reduce the amount of food thrown away? This is a good topic to use to teach evaluation skills for AS microeconomics.

Unsustainable world

BBC’s Newsnight has been running an excellent series of programmes - Unsustainable World” - here is the link to the relevant web site

Simple ideas work best

Sometimes the simplest ideas work the best especially when it comes to environmental policy. Today the Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England launches its Stop the Drop campaign in a bid to raise awareness of the impact of litter and fly-tipping. And Government minister Joan Ruddock is quoted in today’s Times saying that she is receptive to the idea of restoring compulsory deposits on plastic drinks bottles and aluminium containers as a way of incentivising people to take bottle back for recycling and reducing the volumes heading for landfill. It has worked in the past - ask the good people of Oregon. What is stopping the government? Get on with it!

Bio-fuel curse and cure

Today marks the introduction of the new EU Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation and there has been a huge amount of coverage about the economic and environmental impact of the switch towards biofuel production.

Al Gore’s new presentation

In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting - previewed here on Ted. Clearly a work in progress and heavy on rhetoric but a taste of his follow on presentation from An Inconvenient Truth.

Gone fishing?

The Marine Bill comes before parliament today and yesterday the latest statistics were published on the state of the UK marine fishing industry. It is a good example of a sector in long term structural decline affected greatly by EU fishing quotas and also by the collapse in fish stocks brought about by over-fishing in years gone by.

Some snippets on the industry

Carbon prices head higher as emissions targets start to bite

There was some important information this week from over 10,000 power generators, steel, cement and aluminum manufacturers.  The effectiveness of carbon trading in creating the right incentives for power users to cut emissions depends on there being a scarcity of carbon permits reflected in a price high enough (and sufficiently predictable in the medium term) for investment in improved fuel efficiency to be commercially viable. A couple of years ago the market price of carbon collapsed when it became clear that the EU had been overly generous in handing out free gifts of carbon permits. The criticisms were valid and the long term future of the carbon trading scheme was called into question.

But the signs for the second phase of this innovative market mechanism look more promising.