Clean and Green
Expert credibility in climate change
William Anderegg, James Prall, Jacob Harold & Stephen Schneider
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
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Climate Policy and Labor Markets
Olivier Deschenes
NBER Working Paper, June 2010
Abstract:
An important component of the debate surrounding climate legislation in the United States is its potential impact on labor markets. Theoretically the connection is ambiguous and depends on the sign of cross-elasticity of labor demand with respect to energy prices, which is a priori unknown. This paper provides some new evidence on this question by estimating the relationship between real electricity prices and indicators of labor market activity using data for 1976-2007. A key contribution of this analysis is that it relies on within-state variation in electricity prices to identify the models and considers all sectors of the U.S. economy rather than focusing only on the manufacturing sector. The main finding is that employment rates are weakly related to electricity prices with implied cross elasticity of full-time equivalent (FTE) employment with respect to electricity prices ranging from -0.16% to -0.10%. I conclude by interpreting these empirical estimates in the context of increases in electricity prices consistent with H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The preferred estimates in this paper suggest that in the short-run, an increase in electricity price of 4% would lead to a reduction in aggregate FTE employment of about 460,000 or 0.6%.
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Economic aspects of global warming in a post-Copenhagen environment
William Nordhaus
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The science of global warming has reached a consensus on the high likelihood of substantial warming over the coming century. Nations have taken only limited steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since the first agreement in Kyoto in 1997, and little progress was made at the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009. The present study examines alternative outcomes for emissions, climate change, and damages under different policy scenarios. It uses an updated version of the regional integrated model of climate and the economy (RICE model). Recent projections suggest that substantial future warming will occur if no abatement policies are implemented. The model also calculates the path of carbon prices necessary to keep the increase in global mean temperature to 2 °C or less in an efficient manner. The carbon price for 2010 associated with that goal is estimated to be $59 per ton (at 2005 prices), compared with an effective global average price today of around $5 per ton. However, it is unlikely that the Copenhagen temperature goal will be attained even if countries meet their ambitious stated objectives under the Copenhagen Accord.
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Matthew Kotchen
NBER Working Paper, June 2010
Abstract:
Can simple government programs effectively promote voluntary initiatives to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions? This paper provides an evaluation of how the Connecticut Clean Energy Communities program affects household decisions to voluntarily purchase "green" electricity, which is electricity generated from renewable sources of energy. The results suggest that, within participating communities, subsidizing municipal solar panels as matching grants for reaching green-electricity enrollment targets increases the number of household purchases by 35 percent. The Clean Energy Communities program thus demonstrates how mostly symbolic incentives can mobilize voluntary initiatives within communities and promote demand for renewable energy.
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Bart Terwel, Fieke Harinck, Naomi Ellemers & Dancker Daamen
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, June 2010, Pages 173-186
Abstract:
The implementation of carbon dioxide capture and storage technology (CCS) is considered an important climate change mitigation strategy, but the viability of this technology will depend on public acceptance of CCS policy decisions. The results of three experiments with students as participants show that whether or not interest groups receive an opportunity to express their opinions in the decision-making process (i.e., group voice) affects acceptance of CCS policy decisions, with inferred trustworthiness of the decision maker mediating this effect. Decision-making procedures providing different interest groups with equal opportunities to voice their opinions instigate more trust in the decision maker and, in turn, lead to greater willingness to accept decisions compared to no-voice procedures (i.e., unilateral decision-making-Study 1) and unequal group-voice procedures (i.e., when one type of interest group receives voice, but another type of interest group does not-Study 2). Study 3 further shows that an individual's own level of knowledge about CCS moderates the desire for an opportunity for members of the general public to voice opinions in the decision-making process, inferred trustworthiness of decision makers, and policy acceptance. These results imply that people care about voice in decision-making even when they are not directly personally involved in the decision-making process. We conclude that people tend to use procedural information when deciding to accept or oppose policy decisions on political complex issues; hence, it is important that policymakers use fair group-voice procedures and that they communicate to the public how they arrive at their decisions.
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Belts and Suspenders: Interactions Among Climate Policy Regulations
Arik Levinson
NBER Working Paper, June 2010
Abstract:
With few exceptions, economic analyses of "cap-and-trade" permit trading mechanisms for climate change mitigation have been based on first-best scenarios without pre-existing distortions or regulations. The reason is obvious: interactions between permit trading and other regulations will be complex. However, climate policy proposed for the U.S. will certainly interact with existing laws, and will also likely include additional regulatory changes with their own sets of interactions. Major bills introduced in the U.S. Congress have included both permit trading and traditional command and control regulations - a combination sometimes called "belts and suspenders." This paper discusses interactions between these instruments, and begins to lay out a framework for thinking about them systematically. The most important determinant of how the two types of instruments interact involves whether or not the cap-and-trade permit price would induce more or less abatement than mandated by the traditional standards alone. Moreover, economists' experience predicting the costs of environmental regulations suggests we are more likely to overestimate the costs of cap-and-trade, and therefore the price of carbon permits, than we are to overestimate the costs of a traditional regulatory standard, and that therefore the regulatory standards will likely reduce the cost-effectiveness benefits of cap-and-trade.
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Public acceptability of personal carbon trading and carbon tax
Abigail Bristow, Mark Wardman, Alberto Zanni & Phani Chintakayala
Ecological Economics, 15 July 2010, Pages 1824-1837
Abstract:
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges confronting the international community requiring action to achieve deep cuts in carbon emissions. The implementation of potentially uncomfortable but necessary policy measures is, though, critically dependent upon public acceptability. This paper reports a novel application of stated preference techniques to explore the influence of key design attributes on the acceptability of a personal carbon trading scheme in isolation and when compared to a carbon tax. Illustrative forecasts from the models developed indicate the importance of design attributes, especially the basis of the initial permit allocation for personal carbon trading and the use to which revenues are put for carbon tax. Results indicate that the "best" scheme designs could be acceptable to a majority of respondents.
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Timothy Bonebrake & Michael Mastrandrea
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Global patterns of biodiversity and comparisons between tropical and temperate ecosystems have pervaded ecology from its inception. However, the urgency in understanding these global patterns has been accentuated by the threat of rapid climate change. We apply an adaptive model of environmental tolerance evolution to global climate data and climate change model projections to examine the relative impacts of climate change on different regions of the globe. Our results project more adverse impacts of warming on tropical populations due to environmental tolerance adaptation to conditions of low interannual variability in temperature. When applied to present variability and future forecasts of precipitation data, the tolerance adaptation model found large reductions in fitness predicted for populations in high-latitude northern hemisphere regions, although some tropical regions had comparable reductions in fitness. We formulated an evolutionary regional climate change index (ERCCI) to additionally incorporate the predicted changes in the interannual variability of temperature and precipitation. Based on this index, we suggest that the magnitude of climate change impacts could be much more heterogeneous across latitude than previously thought. Specifically, tropical regions are likely to be just as affected as temperate regions and, in some regions under some circumstances, possibly more so.
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Lucas Davis
NBER Working Paper, June 2010
Abstract:
While public discussion of HR 2454 (the "Waxman Markey" bill) has focused on the cap-and trade program that would be established for carbon emissions, the bill also includes provisions that would tighten energy efficiency standards for consumer appliances. Supporters argue that appliance standards help address a number of market failures. In particular, many studies have pointed out that landlords may buy cheap inefficient appliances when their tenants pay the utility bill. Although this landlord-tenant problem has been widely discussed in the literature, there is little empirical evidence on the magnitude of the distortion. This paper compares appliance ownership patterns between homeowners and renters using household-level data from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The results show that, controlling for household income and other household characteristics, renters are significantly less likely to have energy efficient refrigerators, clothes washers and dishwashers.
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Tim Frazier, Nathan Wood, Brent Yarnal & Denise Bauer
Applied Geography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although the potential for hurricanes under current climatic conditions continue to threaten coastal communities, there is concern that climate change, specifically potential increases in sea level, could influence the impacts of future hurricanes. To examine the potential effect of sea level rise on community vulnerability to future hurricanes, we assess variations in socioeconomic exposure in Sarasota County, FL, to contemporary hurricane storm-surge hazards and to storm-surge hazards enhanced by sea level rise scenarios. Analysis indicates that significant portions of the population, economic activity, and critical facilities are in contemporary and future hurricane storm-surge hazard zones. The addition of sea level rise to contemporary storm-surge hazard zones effectively causes population and asset (infrastructure, natural resources, etc) exposure to be equal to or greater than what is in the hazard zone of the next higher contemporary Saffir-Simpson hurricane category. There is variability among communities for this increased exposure, with greater increases in socioeconomic exposure due to the addition of sea level rise to storm-surge hazard zones as one progresses south along the shoreline. Analysis of the 2050 comprehensive land use plan suggests efforts to manage future growth in residential, economic and infrastructure development in Sarasota County may increase societal exposure to hurricane storm-surge hazards.
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Gender differences in relationships between urban green space and health in the United Kingdom
Elizabeth Richardson & Richard Mitchell
Social Science & Medicine, August 2010, Pages 568-575
Abstract:
Natural environments, or 'green spaces', have been associated with a wide range of health benefits. Gender differences in neighbourhood effects on health have been found in a number of studies, although these have not been explored in relation to green space. We conducted the first UK-wide study of the relationship between urban green space and health, and the first such study to investigate gender differences in this relationship. An ecological approach was used. Two land use datasets were used to create a proportional green space measure (% by area) at the UK Census Area Statistic ward scale. Our sample consisted of 6432 urban wards, with a total population of 28.6 million adults aged 16-64 years in 2001. We selected health outcomes that were plausibly related to green space (cardiovascular disease mortality, respiratory disease mortality and self-reported limiting long-term illness) and another that was expected to be unrelated (lung cancer mortality). Negative binomial regression models examined associations between urban green space and these health outcomes, after controlling for relevant confounders. Gender differences in these associations were observed and tested. Male cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease mortality rates decreased with increasing green space, but no significant associations were found for women. No protective associations were observed between green space and lung cancer mortality or self-reported limiting long-term illness for either men or women. Possible explanations for the observed gender differences in the green space and health relationship are gender differences in perceptions and usage of urban green spaces. We conclude that it is important not to assume uniform health benefits of urban green space for all population subgroups. Additionally, urban green space measures that capture quality as well as quantity could be more suited to studying green space and health relationships for women.