Games. Iceland. Dollars. 2009. Depression. Robert B. Reich, The politics of an economic nightmare. Scorse_What_Environmentalists_Need_to_Know_entire.pdf (application/pdf Object) Global Climate Network: Home. Section submenu: Current Articles By David Nash New Era Economics Thinking Post - 21 February 2011 In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, governments worldwide are intervening in the economy to get growth back on track.
But what can government intervention to stimulate key growth sectors, or industrial policy as it is more commonly known, teach us about responding to climate change? In this article, ippr's David Nash, outlines three lessons for policymakers seeking to embark on the transition to a low-carbon economy. globalclimatenetwork.info - 01 January 2011 In recent times, India has been particularly active in supporting international climate cooperation. Three angles on 'green growth' How can you marry environment and development?
Over the past two years, governments and businesses have begun to trumpet ‘green growth’ as one way of boosting economic growth without compromising environmental sustainability. The most active players are the ‘big’ ones — the OECD recently launched its Green Growth Strategy; aid agencies are talking about how to support green growth in poor countries; and academic and business leaders have established a green growth council, a leadership forum, and a global institute. Commission on Growth and Development. The limits to environmentalism – Part 3. A year on from our controversial review of Growth isn’t Possible by the New Economics Foundation, we’re venturing back into the fray.
As it comes out in paperback, here’s our take on one the most high-profile and influential environmentalist books of the last year – Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (henceforth PWG). Very very briefly, PWG says that economic growth cannot continue without doing serious damage to our ecology (especially through climate change), that we don’t need to be rich to be healthy and well-educated, and that, far from making us happy, spending money makes us unhappy and insecure. You won’t be that surprised to learn that he goes on to say that another world is possible – the world of a no-growth, steady state economy, which can exist within ecological limits and in which we can flourish. There are one or two similarities between Prosperity without growth and Growth isn’t possible. Stuff Happens. Endogenize ideology.
Paul Krugman has a nice column on how moral issues now constrain and complicate economic policymaking [italics mine in both quotes]:
The Krugman question. Yasheng Huang: The Fallacy of the Beijing Consensus. A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin. - By Charles Munger. In the early 1700s, Europeans discovered in the Pacific Ocean a large, unpopulated island with a temperate climate, rich in all nature's bounty except coal, oil, and natural gas. Reflecting its lack of civilization, they named this island "Basicland. " The Europeans rapidly repopulated Basicland, creating a new nation. They installed a system of government like that of the early United States. There was much encouragement of trade, and no internal tariff or other impediment to such trade. Property rights were greatly respected and strongly enforced. Moreover, almost no debt was used to purchase or carry securities or other investments, including real estate and tangible personal property. In its first 150 years, the government of Basicland spent no more than 7 percent of its gross domestic product in providing its citizens with essential services such as fire protection, water, sewage and garbage removal, some education, defense forces, courts, and immigration control.
Growth isn't Possible. China’s punishment, Treasuries’ pain (Updated) So, China starts selling its US debt (including Treasuries and Agencies) en masse.
Obama announces that China has declared economic "war" on the US, therefore extraordinary measures might be needed. Result: J6P patriotically bashes & blames China. What Are They Up To In Davos? The economy is broken.
Goldman Sachs - the economics of climate change. An Economic View of the Environment » The Wonderful Politics of Cap-and-Trade: A Closer Look at Waxman-Markey. The headline of this post is not meant to be ironic.
The Last Experiment. Line up a dozen environmentalists, ask them to conjure up an image of the sort of scientist who might save the planet from global warming, and it’s a safe bet none of them will imagine somebody like Benjamin Ho.
For one thing, Ho worked for a time in the Bush White House. For another, he’s not even a climate scientist. He doesn’t study global sea rise or Arctic ice melt, and he doesn’t project temperature increases. The Quiet Coup - The Atlantic (May 2009) The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States.
One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. Surprise—Economists Agree! Crisis Talk - The World Bank Group. A Freakonomics Quorum: How Will the Recession Affect Clean Technology? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com. Way back when in 2006, here’s what venture-capital legend John Doerr had to say about clean technology: “This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”
As recently as early 2008, plenty of investors and technology companies were still predicting a clean-tech boom. But now? With a recession that has scrambled nearly everyone’s spending and investing priorities, with a government deeply focused on the mainstream of the energy economy rather than the fringes, and with gas having fallen to about $2 a gallon, what does the future look like for clean tech? We asked George Tolley, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago and president of RCF Inc.; John Whitehead, professor in the Department of Economics at Appalachian State University and contributor to the blog Environmental Economics; and Ethan Zindler, head of North American research at New Energy Finance, to talk about this topic.
Tough climate goals may be easier than feared. Lomborg: "The green pseudo-revolution" Bjorn Lomborg the Danish statistican with a habit of upsetting environmentalists has written a Guardian opinion piece. This article links to a number of previous posts I have made on the topic of "green jobs". Academic articles are also beginning to emerge. LRB · John Lanchester: Cityphobia.
Byron wrote that ‘I think it great affectation not to quote oneself.’ On that basis, I’d like to quote what I wrote in a piece about the City of London, in the aftermath of the Northern Rock fiasco: ‘If our laws are not extended to control the new kinds of super-powerful, super-complex and potentially super-risky investment vehicles, they will one day cause a financial disaster of global-systemic proportions.’[*]＊ The prediction was right, but the tense was wrong. The disaster had already happened, it just hadn’t yet played itself out in the markets.
It is doing so now, though. Lehman Brothers lets carbon sink (without trace) The day the big banks fell cannot pass without a Lehman Brothers related post. Whilst thousands are losing their jobs we must consider the environmental implications. One of the most obvious is the closure of the carbon trading desk. This is basically a none story cooked up by journalists looking for an environmental angle. Lehman Brothers Shuts Carbon Trading Desk [PlanetArk] LONDON - Lehman Brothers shut down its carbon emissions trading desk after the bank filed for bankruptcy protection, a source close to the company told Reuters on Monday. " Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America. The payoff from being environmentally correct.