jfleck at inkstain

A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico

$10 bill on the sidewalk

There’s this old joke. Two economists are walking down the street when one points to the ground and says, “Look, a ten dollar bill!” The second economist replies, “That’s crazy. If that was a ten dollar bill someone would have picked it up already.” I love it because there’s a really interesting dynamic in it [...]

National Research Council on the scarcity value of water

Another tidbit from the National Research Council’s new report on the problems of the California Bay-Delta: By assigning to water a scarcity value of zero, many current policies signal consumers that water is available without limit, even while the limits imposed by scarcity are intensifying. As a result, more water is used than would be [...]

Another New West real estate metric: dog pee

My interest in water lured me into an interest in real estate, because of the way the West’s housing boom ramped up the demand for water, and the way the bust has scrambled the equation. So I’m looking for new ways of measuring the housing market’s recovery. I’m still scratching my head about this one, [...]

Snowbirds

During our just-completed trip across the deserts of southern Arizona and southeastern California, the persistence of the snowbirds was one of the most striking features. I’d noticed them when I was down in Yuma in April 2010, but that was late in the season. Late February-early March is earlier, and they were everywhere. Canadian license [...]

On data and incentives

I’ve long been suspicious of ski area snow reports, preferring to go with Snotel data when writing about storms. It turns out my skepticism was warranted. From Zinman and Zitzewitz (pdf): Ski resorts self-report substantially more natural snowfall on weekends. Resorts that plausibly reap greater benefits from exaggerating do it more.  

The Jevons Paradox and greywater reuse

Hey lazyweb – anybody know if someone’s looked rigorously at the question of greywater use in the context of a Jevons-like paradox? Putting together some notes for a talk this weekend to the Xeriscape Garden Club of Albuquerque (Sat. 10 a.m. at the Garden Center if you’re in town), I’ve been thinking anew about the question [...]

How US home builders screwed up

Anthony Downs at Brookings, from “What’s Wrong With American Housing“: Even before the dramatic collapse of housing starts after 2005, it should have been obvious to home building firms that they were in for a downward ride after starts surpassed two million in both 2004 and 2005. Those years of peak production led to an oversupply in [...]

Graphing the energy boom

I’ve not been writing much about energy for the last couple of years, and only following it shallowly, so the fact that New Mexico’s oil production has reached the highest level since 1998 kinda snuck up on me. But what’s going on here is child’s play. Look at North Dakota: John McChesney’s done some good [...]

Conservation and the water pricing dilemma

We see this over and over again. Generally speaking, water is free to municipal/industrial customers in the United States. What we pay in our water bill is for the cost of delivery – the pumps and pipes. We’re paying for water delivery infrastructure, not the commodity itself. But we nevertheless generally price the water by [...]

Will Sunbelt Growth Return?

The question of how much water we’ll need in the Southwest going forward is dominated by uncertainty over what future population growth will look like. And I confess that I’ve got no earthly idea how to think well about this question. Consider Phoenix. In his new ebook The Gated City, Ryan Avent argues that Phoenix [...]

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